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And I liked it!
It taste like cherry chapstick. Seriously, though: No wonder this game gets such poor ratings. The graphics are fairly dated, but that's not even the problem. It's a mediocre military/sci-fi shooter that has Alien models instead of soldiers, typical generic gameplay and a ridiculously bad AI. It would probably pass as one of those games, but it since it takes on the Alien franchise and thus carries a lot of baggage, invoking expectations which it fails to satisfy, it has to be judged on different terms.
The strength of the Alien theme, the idea of facing a superior species, uncompromising and extemely deadly, is reduced to absurdity. Here, they are slow and weak fragbait that you can push away and QTE to death. Or maybe just walk past if the AI decides not to notice you. And what about the acid blood? Admittedly, the other Alien FPS games, especially the latest AvP, weren't particularly masterpieces either, but this one manages to set the bar to the lowest possible point. I didn't expect much, especially after that dumbass trailer, and was ready to blame it all on contemporary console bollocks/decline of the industry blahetc, but this game doesn't even seem to live 'up' to that standard. A proper Alien game needs the tension and suspense of being alone in a dark maze-like sci-fi environment under constant pressure; always having to be 200% aware of the surroundings and a single fuckup means instant death. Perhaps something along the lines of a blend between Stalker and Amnesia. Unlikely to happen, though. This one was okay. No improvement over DS2, but not worse, either. It probably could have used more variation in the environments. Apart from that I don't really have any negative impressions or complaints - though neither do I remember any part of it as special or outstanding. Gameplay was fun in parts and mostly routine. The game seems to lack one or more clearly distinguishable or definite 'highlights'. At least it concluded the story (unfortunately still with a backdoor for sequels).
Making some levels optional missions was a good choice considering the overall picture. Those levels reminded me of the side missions in Rage, they consist basically of grinding for loot and a few bits of background story. Surprisingly long play time overall. So metl, which levels did you work on? There were a couple of Rubiconish areas!? I think A:CM is quite good. I found one reviewer that gave it a 4/5. The graphics are a little dated, but the AI is quite good if you put the game on hard, and the level design is decent. Very decent.
I can honestly say that I don't regret paying �30 for it. The graphics in AvP we're a little bit more modern looking. But not by much. But the characters and story in A:CM is better. The voice acting is better too. The musical score is well implemented. I don't think it's bad at all TBH. I've been enjoying it. I've heard that the 360 version looks bad or is buggy or something. But playing it on the PC here (with Anti Aliasing forced on the GPU which runs nice and smooth too), it seems perfectly OK to me. And the levels are pretty, well designed, crafty in places and BIG. Maybe I'm biased. I like Aliens. I built prologue and chapters 14-15 start to finish, but i also did the LD block for 10, 11, 12, 16, and parts of 17 & 18, but those levels were handed off to other LDs after that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_588812&feature=iv&src_vid=3z2qVebxlUo&v=6lGXDM3LGnk
I still can't believe that a developer did this, it looks like all the dynamic lights and lots of the decals were removed from the final game. Maybe it was some performance pass because it was a multi-platform release. The demo looks amazing, the final game is worse! Now there's talk of an 8GB patch. That's crazy - the game is only 6.8GB or something. Still - maybe it will put a bunch of things back in that have apparently been stripped.
I must admit that Sock's video shocked me a little. You don't really notice that stuff but when you see it side by side you realise what you're missing. It's like they accidentally gave everybody else the WiiU version, and just canned the PC version completely. And now they apparently are cannign the Wii version completely. maybe they decided to not to risk falling into the doom3 trap where everyone hated how dark it was. the demo was much darker.
hadley's hope was completely ruined though. I would guess it's performance / multi-platform woes. I think it's common to run your tradeshow demos on a beast of a PC and sort out the performance later. The art looks damn good, bring on the next console generation and hopefully the rendering / post-processing will stop letting the side down.
So I don't play any modern shooters; here's some firsrt impressions.
Too many mechanics, some good most not, diluting each other. Sprint buttons suck. The bullet storm style melee insta-kill button is meh. Especially when there's a satisfying weapon (hammer) that does the same job. Iron sights make it harder to aim. Enemy design is varied, some are great... but again they threw in a generic shotgun trooper who could be from any game for no particular reason. The bigger an enemy is the better it's AI needs to be - not the case here :[ Where are the hordes? Spiders are cool, although the larger version is made pointless by the melee instakill. Despite all the niggles the game isn't broken, just has rough edges and seems to have lost some of its soul (hordes). Still the core mechanics feel good, and there's plenty of variety in the things to shoot at. Hordes are back, all is forgiven.
The melee mechanic now makes sense although sprint is still meh. aka Dead Space 3.
Only about 2 hours in so far but daaaaamn son dis shit is off da hook yo. Etc etc. The weapon system is just fucking awesome. Seriously whoever designed that needs to be given the videogame equivalent of an oscar. So many hilarious combinations and I'm sure I'll unlock more as I get further in. Gameplay wise it's pretty much standard DS so far. Don't think I've seen anything particularly new added there, aside from the weapon system. It's the constant tense atmosphere that really makes the game shine, it's done so brilliantly just like the other two titles in the series. There are moments of horror but mostly it's a slow burning dread that permeates just about activity in the game. Pressing a button in this game is scary, haha. So far things seem super easy on normal difficulty. I've got health kits, ammo and stasis packs coming out of my arse and can craft 300x more if needed at the work benches. I think I really should have picked hard! I decided against it as I'm quite slow playing with a 360 pad, but in hindsight I think I would have been just fine. Tip for you lot! :) Now go map Quake metl :) Visceral Games just need to make an Aliens 3rd person survival horror game and I'll be in heaven.
http://www.gamefront.com/destiny-not-for-pc-cause-no-one-plays-with-mouse-and-keyboard-bungie/
studio�s co-founder Jason Jones reasoned that the PC would not be a suitable platform for the first person shooter simply because nobody plays shooters with a mouse and keyboard. Is the PC FPS market really a thing of the past? even if it is, that's still a flimsy reason not to develop for the pc since you can plug any usb controller into one.
Online shooters are evolving, even for the PC.
Look at Blacklight, Planetside and Natural Selection 2. All better than Halo, all modern shooters, all on the PC, all played by skilled players with keyboards and mice. The dude is obviously high on glue. He probably owns an iPhone.....
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