Aliens: Colonial Marines Message Board  

How is the gameplay and story? How long is the campaign? Since it has been advertised as a story driven game I am hoping it is at least twenty hours.

As for the length so far my mate is 15mins x 19 into the game.

So about five hours in. Did he say the end was in sight or that the game is starting to go to its conclusion?

He feels it close to it. But cant remember how long it lasts for.

I am not a visual fanatic. Graphics are not the determining factor here. The gamplay feels like a game from the early 2000ies. Almost no destructable environment, well.. basically no interaction at all with anything, terrible hit detection, no markers for mission goals, the acid is not scary, the shadows are gameplay irrelevant which is a crime for an alien game, etc.

anyone getting kicked back to the main menu constantly, i start a coop game and shortly after im back at the main menu.

this game is a mess.

Welp, I think we have another Alpha Protocol on our hands, here.
All the reviews are out and this game is being literally torn to pieces by virtually everyone, and I just don't f**king get it.

Sure, it's linear, sure, it's nothing groundbreaking, sure, it's another film-style shooter, almost akin to CoD with xenos, sure, it's more of a horde-style game (But then, they're aliens...), but you know what? This game is fun as BALLS (And in one part especially, terrifying. It's a mission that involves no guns, just to give you an idea...)

I've been playing it now since 3am, so I'm about eight hours in and I have another two missions to go as far as I can tell, but then there's multiplayer modes, co-op with friends (Which will be hysterical), and the beauty of it is that your character level is shared across all game modes, so no more playing single player then starting multiplayer at level 1 with basic guns.

The weapon upgrade system is pretty good (And the hit detection is fine, it's just that guns like the pulse rifle are inaccurate as hell beyond 20 yards), plenty of unlocks to get via both leveling and challenges, the challenges themselves add a nice little side quest to your gameplay (The melee kill one was brutal to do).

It does need a little polish, though not as much as reviewers would have you believe. It's a straight forward movie-style shooter, like the campaigns in CoD, and whilst I myself and many other gamers are anxiously awaiting new styles of FPS games, the fact that they give mega ratings to CoD and CoD clones and choose this one to decry as an 'Utter waste of the license' is bull****. Destructoid even goes so far as to say "The desperate or the gullible may find a glimmer of fun hidden somewhere in the pit.", which implies that I'm one of those things for enjoying this game, which in turn annoys me even further, pompous swines.

Because the reviews are so bad across the board, reviewers have probably already killed this game, and it's a crying goddamn shame. Again, it's nothing groundbreaking, but it in no way deserves the crap that's being flung at it from every direction. Alpha Protocol was a similar thing; Decent game, decent story, multiple endings, new genre, and it got disgusted ratings across the board for no reason as well, which is why we'll never see a sequel.

Today, I hate reviewers with a burning passion, but I'm enjoying the hell out of mowing down xenos with an arsenal that would make the most hardcore of Texans salivate over. If people want to wait until it drops in price a little before having a look, I can't fault you for that, but I urge you to look for yourself before you cross this title off.

I finished Alpha Protocol three times and loved it. This game is more like Alpha Prime ( google it). They did a very good job in recreating the movie setting of Aliens. That alone will have to do for me.

Now that I browed through some of them: The reviews are actually very bad. IGN with it's 4.5 sums up my impression.

[Edited by madatcheats, 2/12/2013 5:45:46 AM]