News Pitchford promises Aliens: Colonial Marines investigation

My guess is the demo footage is from before the game was dumbed down to work on Console's
Its a sad state of gaming today that a lot of cross platform releases don't take advantage of what good PC's have to offer, instead they opt for what works on all.

 

I kept reading his name as Pitchfork.... is it a sign

 

It seems pretty obvious that it was watered down to get it running on consoles: dynamic lighting ,high object / poly count and hi res textures, none of it comes performance cheap. Sadly for them, in a franchise such as Aliens, atmosphere is everything and removal pretty much ruined the experience, and the story/ gameplay wasn't good enough to overlook these things.

Even with that said though, it doesn't explain the PC version. Although, usually studios come up with some guff about ...'having to ensure the same experience across all platforms' (why?) . Which usually means, we didn't want to spend anything optimizing for PC .

 

There is already a mod out for A:CM with DX10 and 11 support, took the work of a few fans less than a month to do.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/aliensdx10-better-grafik-and-light

 

In all fairness, reviews only going up once launched etc is all par for the course nowadays, so A:CM can hardly be singled out here.

That said, I wasn't even impressed by the gameplay demo mentioned in the article, although it certainly looked to be of much higher quality than the released game.

 

i think (and i know i'm right ) is that this was what the game looked like all along! the low textures, zero lighting IMO, etc all smells of last gen graphics... since this game was suppose to come out on ps2 and others and dont care they saying its was for xbox360 and ps3 when clearly it looks like a last gen game.

the made it for last gen and just took that piece of the game and really worked on it (gearbox prob did only this part as much) for the 2012 demo to get hype.

garebox knew what was going on.

 

Ouch! I just watched the video link and it's preceeded by an ad for A:CM!

Ouch ouch OUCH!

 

Does there really need to be an 'investigation'? The game is bad and Gearbox should feel bad.

To anyone reading this who plans to make an Alien game in the future:
1) Watch the first two films.
2) Program an AI that reacts to the player and actively tries to attack from a direction which no-one is looking in.
3) ??? Co-op.
4) Profit All motion sensor, all the time.

 

From what I've heard, graphics are the least of this game's worries.

 

i would say in co-op, give each a role. one has just a pistal and the motion sensor, another the big tracking gun, etc.. get my point? true co-op, with fear that just one team mate going down is like a limb coming off. up the intensity.

and why not have a multiplayer match where all have been impregnated and have limited time to get into status or something with i dont know injections along the way if u can risk going off the path to give u more time. and u have to be on ur guard for enemies and each other for when they "might" burst out of ur once partner then u need to kill them before they burst. but killing a team mate is like i said, cutting off a limb. now that will be super exciting! IMHO

 

Griffter get your ass to a game development company now.........sound idea's

 

How can you be so disconnected from the product that you don't know where it went wrong and need to investigate?
He must at least have some idea already.

 

I don't agree that it was "dumbed down" for consoles, it isn't logical and it also doesn't explain the huge amount of game play issues on all platforms.

I'm of the opinion Gearbox made the decision to hand the SP over to a cheap (read: crap) studio knowing full well the next generation of consoles were on their way, and they wanted to focus both in money and manpower on next gen titles.

This game failing is one thing, a next generation title flopping could nearly kill off a studio. Risk management pure and simple.

 

I had hopes that this game will push co-op far than Left 4 Dead did and I still asume that L4D has most innovative co-op mode in history of FPS.
Aliens, next time.

I'm eager to know on what game are Turtle Rock Studios working now...

 

Speed - the graphics ARE dumbed down for consoles - they just have the resoruces for the lighting etc of the demo ; since thats at the very least DX10!

 

Did I read that wrong? He's checking why the demo was of superior quality? As if it wasn't supposed to be that good?

I thought it would be the other way around. Check why the release was so bad, because it was supposed to be much better?

But then, when you look at the DX:HR cinematics, that video had a lot of stuff that never turned up in the actual game. No gameplay elements, but the visual elements didn't transfer.

 

That might be the case but my point was that you can't blame everything on "dumbing it down" for consoles, there are countless successful games that work well on all platforms. Ultimately as shirty mentioned, the graphics are the least of the games problems. Dumbing the graphics down for consoles does not explain the issues it has on ALL platforms in fundamental areas; the story, gameplay, AI, bugs etc etc. Those issues almost all come from using a lesser cheaper studio so that Gearbox can put their full resources into next gen titles. The issues not attributed to the studio they fobbed the game off onto come from its long development cycle. There were warning signs nearly a year ago that this game would never live up to the hype.

 

Skyrim is a great of example of what can go right with a console and PC release. The game looks good on the console, but looks amazing on a decent PC. Even before they released the Hi-Rez Texture Packs, it still looked like a modern PC game. Claims of having to dumb down graphics because a game is also a console release is ridiculous.

I doubt better graphics could ever redeem Aliens: Colonial Marines based on gameplay reviews, but it is very curious looking at the demo graphics versus final release. There is a stunning difference between the two. I remember watching the original ACM demo, and thankfully I waited till the reviews came out. It's a damn shame they failed to deliver on the teases they provided in the demo.

 

aye i do agree the gfx are the least of the issues - being able to complete entire levels without shooting anything or even avoiding stuff