You're annoyed? Think of how annoyed the people who are complaining are at being lied to. So no, despite your please, I nor anyone else saying it are going to stop saying it.

You can use air quotes and demean us with ad hominems about caricatures grabbing pitchforks all you want, it's not going to change what gearbox did and quite frankly is outright insulting. Why even go there? Have I insulted you personally?

You then move on to the argument that just because other companies got away with it in the past that gearbox should too. How is that a logical argument? People get away with lots of things, it doesn't mean we shouldn't take those to task who get caught doing it. Should Lance Armstrong just be let off? Should we abolish the entire concept of crime and punishment? That's where that flawed logic leads.

Lastly, comparing the gameplay demo to CGI cinematics is barely even worth arguing against, ACM had it's own CGI cinematic that was different to the demo (and ofcourse looked even better) that you would compare a gameplay demo to a CGI cinematic is astonishing and to me really shows just how these companies can get away with it, they target an audience that WANTS to be lied to.

I'm not saying other companies got away with it in the past. I'm saying that this level of hate for something like this is ridiculous. I'm beginning to think I got a completely different copy of the game because I don't see any of the problems everyone complains about, and if there was anyone who was going to be insanely critical of an Aliens game it's going to be me. The Aliens don't just walk up to me, they run, pounce, and flank. Acid blood has killed me numerous times in SP and MP.

I watched gameplay videos before release, but I didn't watch the E3 demos. I watched the gameplay trailers on websites that showed actual game footage a month or two before release. It looks the same in those trailers. I guess I fail to understand the lied to argument because I fail to see where I was lied to at any point in the process. What we were promised was an Aliens game and experience. They delivered on that.

The issue I find insulting is what this mentality is doing to gaming as a whole. Gamers are getting a huge sense of entitlement, and it's not just on PC. If something doesn't meet our increasingly insane expectations we lash out. This is just one of many examples, the other most recent offender was Mass Effect 3. We are probably the only demographic that has this many levels of expectations on a company and we demand they fulfill every single one of them. If they don't do what we want, we bitch and moan until we either get what we want or basically boycott a dev/pub.

Yes you did, allow me to requote you. Here you're saying they got away with it and no one complained, so we shouldn't here either. By that logic you can happily say that no company ever lies to you. They stated specifics, showed specifics, you're talking about a generalization. Of course they delivered an aliens game, the issue is that they didn't deliver the one they pitched to the public. Here is a problem with modern consumerism, companies have sold us on the idea that complaining is seen as a "bad" thing. I'm relegated to being called "entitled" by my fellows gamers just because I expect something to be as advertised. That we have so many expectations SHOULD be seen as a good thing, particularly when those are expectations these companies advertise to us.

I do have to ask...

Are we playing the same game here, guys? I totally agree with Wraith. The game's pretty good. Not excellent, but okay. How come other games gets a pass with that?

Perhaps there were two builds released. One good and one bad. The majority got the worse one and I got the better. That is the only explanation I can come up with.

Seriously though. Don't bash a game without actually playing it first. It's like DA2. So much hate, so much bashing. And when asked if s/he had played the game, answer was "no need to. I read reviews". Right..

Well if your game does not look like it was from 2007 then you got a different game than me=) Even Duke Nukem Forever on max looks better than this game on max.

btw..i7-3770k, GTX 670 and on max graphics the game looks like shit. Sure graphics are not everything but this game is not even in the same class as recent AAA titles or hell, AAA titles from the last couple of years. And for an Aliens game, it is is missing all the atmospheric effects that the in game demo showed such as fog, smoke, better explosions, dynamic lighting...blah blah blah.

Now let's compare this to Dead Space 3, Crysis 3 (100x better graphically) - both these games actually have amazing graphics and Crysis 3 makes my computer drop to 20fps on maxed out settings and it looks beautiful. I am actually going to most likely by another GTX 670 to go SLI mode for it or buy the Titan coming soon so get that baby up to 60fps on max. Dead Space 3 looks great and although the gameplay is slightly different at least it is a solid game with great graphics.

Spec Ops the Line....(20x better graphically)

In fact, i cannot think of a recent release that was this poor graphically when the game is set to ultra...it absolutely makes no sense...maybe because its stuck in dx9 and the majority of games since 2010 for myself take advantage of dx10 or dx11.

Yes compared to the original AvP the graphics are better=P But come on now, that was 14 years ago and it scared the crap out of me back in the day...but this game is below subpar...this game is basically on par with something prior to the dx10/11 days...


The only people i can assume who have no issues with the "graphics" either do not have video cards to take advantage of the latest graphics or have not played games on ultra for the last 5 years=( Or just do not care about graphics.

I personally care about graphics and gameplay especially when I want to play a game to get immersed into. Sure System Shock 2 is a great game, and it is fun...but I also have a nostalgia factor when playing it...same with Half Life...and other first person games from back in the day.

I didn't personally shout out I was lied to about DX:IW, but many others did. Doom 3 got a pass for whatever reason that shall probably be forever unexplained. But let's also go back as far as 2001 and the Halo E3 Demo for PC/Mac which was a COMPLETELY different game. Many people still complain about what it eventually turned into and how different it was from the demo, even if it had the situation of being a console port later.

We are going to be constantly at odds over what was advertised because of our perception of what we thought was advertised. I'm at work so I can't access videos but go look at the MP and SP gameplay videos that were released in the last two months. I think they are on GamesRadar, at least the ones I saw, I know one of them opens with Hicks' distress call. IIRC, the E3 demo was the same demo that I saw at PAX 2011, and I was blown away by that when I saw it. I felt like the experience was the same, and visually I don't see any major differences. I didn't install the DX10 patch until after I had already beat the campaign and I didn't notice any mind blowing differences in visuals in my second playthrough.

I'm in no way saying complaining to a company is a bad thing, but there is a difference between criticism and unrealistic expectations. I'm not saying you are personally entitled, I'm talking about the hive mind mentality that gets caught up in the public perception. if you have a valid critique, that's fine. People don't like the story, I don't find it very compelling either TBH. The lighting is different from the demos, ok, fine, criticize that and ask if it can be changed. But demanding it be fixed or constantly shouting that people were personally lied is, in my opinion, a negative stereotype that gamers continually perpetuate. To use an analogy that is in no way close to gaming, it's like buying a car and saying "Well, the red doesn't look as bright as it did in the photos and the dyno says it actually has 5 less HP than advertised. Ford are liars who misrepresented their cars!"

As far as the two builds go, it's starting to become a theory of quite a few people actually. Some of us have no problems, others have tons. It wouldn't be the first time people got the wrong build. When Dead Island got released, we all got the alphas instead :/

GTX 680 here, no problems with graphics here. Textures could use a bit more definition but otherwise fine.

So you will say the graphics are on par with a current AAA title? And that the game gives you the same options as current AAA titles?

It needs much more defined textures, it needs the lighting and atmospheric effects, and the rain from the demo, it needs the fog/smoke explosions from the demo...and then it needs some tweaking to AI because while you may not be having issues with the Aliens doing stupid shit, the majority are otherwise it would not be getting blasted so much. And it is not just getting blasted for the graphics, but for both the graphics and the gameplay.

Looks like a bad port...

I dunno, I think it's getting blasted for the bugs above all else. I've tried to play it for like an hour or so at my friend's computer and while the game most certainly isn't bad, it's just ... Well, average, clipping issues, AI issues and just bugs of various kind should not, under any circumstances, be tolerated in such a high-profile game when it doesn't have content to outweight those (I've even died once, all of the sudden. There weren't enemies in the area, nothing exploded or anything, I just dropped dead). But... Aliens: Colonial Marines doesn't have that. There are a lot of nice ideas, I love the weapon upgrading for instance, but for everything cool it does, it manages to screw something up - and game itself just isn't good enough for me to excuse those obvious development mistakes.

Let's be realistic here: Aliens: Colonial Marines is not a AAA title. It's a movie license, and none of the AVP games could ever be considered AAA titles either. Just because Gearbox (and 4 other companies apparently) made it doesn't automatically make the game a AAA title. So no, it's not on par with, say, Crysis 3 or Skyrim. HOWEVER, I would like to point something out: I am as much a Deus Ex fan as I am an Aliens fan, and Human Revolution had some seriously downgraded textures in the world and some weird haze/smoke effects at time. That didn't stop it from being a good game, but graphically it wasn't as mind blowing as it could have been.

It likely is a port in some respects, but the game is visually nicer on PC than on consoles, and the textures are not THAT bad.

Because of some of the hate and because I don't experience what other people do, I will be doing a livestream of A:CM tonight at 5:30pm PST for two hours on select levels (Sulaco and Hadley's Hope being the two certain ones) to show gameplay and how I play the game. Of course, now that I've said I don't have any of the glitches, I'll probably get tons because that's just how life works :P I do have the DX10 mod installed but that's it, so this will be a mostly unaltered run on Soldier or hardened difficulty....maybe Ultimate Badass if I want to show how dangerous the aliens are at higher difficulties.

Livestream link for tonight.

Good news : all these horrible reviews of colonial marines made me resume playing avp3 (or re-avp, or whatever its name), a game that i loathed and had abandonned, before realising how many critiques of colonial marines wouldn't apply to it.

It's not completely unatmospheric, and the aliens move very very sneakily, in that game.

I wouldn't say the Smartgun is overpowered in the 1999 AvP. The tracking is sluggish enough that when you're facing several xenos in enclosed spaces (which is most of the game), you have to be able to do a fair amount of manual compensation, or you'll waste most of your ammo firing at the space where your target used to be. The Aliens are simply too fast and agile to get a lock on unless you're in one of the larger levels like Stranded, or unless you stand still and wait for them to get really close, which means that you'll be taking a ton of damage from either their lunging attacks or their acid blood since it doesn't have the same sort of berzerk stopping power as the Minigun. I've found that "Free Mode" is often a better bet for anything other than single Xenos at medium-long range, which makes the Smartgun is basically just a slightly more effective version of the Pulse Rifle.

I booted up AvP Classic 2000 and tried a little bit of Skirmish mode with the Smartgun to make sure, and yeah... the autolock sometimes helped, but I also had situations where Xenos were able to zip in for a swipe while the tracking kept me from actually being able to hit them. And even with auto lock on, you have to be able to "help" it out a little by manually moving the crosshair toward the target--it's far too slow on its own. I tried playing a little while without doing any manual compensation, and it was basically impossible. By the time the game had gotten a bead on a given alien, it was already biting my head off.

So no, it's not overpowered. It's more powerful than the Pulse Rifle, but not to the point where it breaks the game's balance. And let's not even talk about multiplayer. In a Species match, I'd take a good Pulse Rifle with its under-barreled grenade launcher to a Smartgun any day.
I admit I still really want to give that game a try. It looks like it could be fun in a sort of low-budget B-grade way. I'd be more likely to buy it than Colonial Marines, actually :P

AVP 2010 is ok, but it lacks the atmosphere that AVP,, AVP2, and A:CM has. The first level for marines is the best IMO, but the rest felt extremely generic. It felt more like the comics than the movies. The temples were way overdone and controls were a little sluggish, at least for marines and predator. Aliens campaign was the true gem of the game.

The biggest let down was with the marines. I'm a HUGE Aliens fan and I have the Colonial Marines Technical Manual sitting next to my desk at home. For all their accuracy and attention to detail in the first game, Rebellion changed too much about the marines from the standard. The armor is way different, the pulse rifle is an "upgraded model" that just doesn't look right, the Smartgun is a downright bastardization of the original M56 model (The M58 in the game has the same features, but slower rate of fire and completely different firing sound). Also, weapons seemed severely underpowered.

It's a fun game but the Aliens purist in me rages at some of the marine choices. Doesn't mean you shouldn't play it, it's enjoyable enough, and I think A:CM will sit alongside it in time.

It was advertised like any other triple A title, it's priced as a triple A title. On my steam it's $80, let that pricetag sink in for a second.

Eighty. Dollars.

That's what Sega think this game is worth. It's the same price as Bioshock Infinite, Dead Space 3 and Crysis 3, $10 less than Black Ops 2, $10 more than Far Cry 3. Now sure I can get it elsewhere cheaper, but that's the price they've set for stores here, if they think it's worth that much then you'd bet your arse I want a game that meets those others in terms of quality.

Since when has a full retail price automatically mean a tripe-A release?

If your logic is that just because it's the same price as a triple AAA title, that's a piss poor excuse. There are plenty of titles that have the same price point because it's the MSRP for a new release for a multi-platform title. If they put it lower on launch they would have lost tons of money on it. Think realistically. Kane and Lynch was advertised in the same way and nobody would have assumed that was a AAA title for a second, especially the sequel. What about Homefront?

If you determined to hate it, which it seems you are, I'm not going to try to change your mind. You seem dead set that the game is crap and you have your right to that opinion. I don't know if you've played it or if you are solely basing your opinion off of reviews and Youtube videos, but if it goes down in price I hope you at least TRY it before slamming it further.