EvaUnit02 on 12/2/2013 at 20:00
Quote Posted by VanBurenPhilips
Does anyone know if Gearbox outsourced Duke Nukem too? I guess there are lots of other reasons that turned out a dud, just wondering what's going on in the company to make them go from AA to trash and back and forth.
1. 3DR laid off their workforce.
2. Some of the former employees founded the new studio Triptych (including Duke co-creator, Alan Blum) and made a completable build of the SP campaign for PC out of their "home offices", pro bono.
3. Gearbox buys the franchise and decides to get DNF onto shelves. They already have a good relationship with DNF's publisher, Take 2, thanks to Borderlands. The lawsuit between 3DR and Take 2 gets settled.
4a. Gearbox contract 3rd party studios to A. create a MP component and B. port the game to consoles. (The MP component was probably the most praised aspect of DNF actually. It was made by Piranha Games, who've since released the well regarded MechWarrior Online.)
4b. Meanwhile Triptych polishes the SP campaign further under Gearbox's guidance.
5. The Doctor Who Cloned Me DLC was made by Triptych too.
In conclusion:- DNF is a 3D Realms title, through and through.
Phatose on 12/2/2013 at 20:07
Man, I haven't played that one in years. It was tense. Unfortunately, the friend who had it had a pirated version which made the Alien completely invincible. Did get to play a real version of it eventually though.
Way ahead of it's time in a lot of ways. Your crew all had morale meters, and personalities, sort of. Accidentally send Lambert into a room with a corpse, and she was likely to freeze up completely, at which point all you could do is wait for the Alien to get around to eating her. Parker and Ripley were more stalwart, but could still freeze up. One of your crew would turn out to be an Android and go berserk like Ash did.
You could blow up the ship and launch on the shuttle, but there was only room for 2 people and 1 cat. Oh, and they game wouldn't let you launch the shuttle if there was anybody alive on the ship - including the cat - so trying to catch Jones without being eaten was a long-term survival goal.
Tense as hell. You got text pop ups for the characters you weren't using. "A grill bursts open in Airlock 1. Alien attacking Brett."
And then "Your crew are all dead. The Nostromo returns to earth. The alien reaches earth. Game Over."
june gloom on 12/2/2013 at 21:21
Quote Posted by Vivian
This penny arcade review (which is actually funny. Who knew PA could be funny
Penny Arcade Report is a separate entity from Penny Arcade itself. Gabe and Tycho generally don't get involved in reviews.
Phatose on 12/2/2013 at 23:13
OK, so...uh....yeah, this definitely sucks.
And not just in mechanical ways. They go through all that hype about staying true to aliens. Mission 1, you see the names on the lockers....and half of them are fucking wrong.
The first alien, and I mean the very first alien in the entire fucking game, ran the fuck away from me and hid behind a corner, and then stared at mean aimlessly for 3 seconds before fucking walking at me.
Oh, and a chestburster that apparently was loaded with pyrotechnics and went off like a fucking firecracker.
All the marines talk like fucking call of duty. Did you hear Oscar Mike in Aliens? No.
What the fuck.
SubJeff on 12/2/2013 at 23:16
I can believe they've messed the mechanics up, but the names from Aliens? Are you sure?
WingedKagouti on 12/2/2013 at 23:54
Quote Posted by Phatose
pre-ordering
That's the major part of your mistake.
You should only preorder a game if it's either a) delayed in your region and other regions have given it the thumbs up (the one advantage of being in Europe) or b) substantially discounted (like -25% or comes with free season pass).
Phatose on 13/2/2013 at 00:10
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
I can believe they've messed the mechanics up, but the names from Aliens? Are you sure?
Just loaded up to check. The labels on the lockers were different this time. Still.....
Apone. Gorman. Hicks. Hudson. Dietrich. Vasquez. All those are right.
"Civ. S. Crow" - There was a Crowe on the squad, but he was a private and his name was spelled with an e at the end.
And PFC N.Wood, and I have no fucking clue who that is.
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
That's the major part of your mistake.
You should only preorder a game if it's either a) delayed in your region and other regions have given it the thumbs up (the one advantage of being in Europe) or b) substantially discounted (like -25% or comes with free season pass).
GoGamer was running a 25% off sale and I bit.
Edit: Oh, and to add to the WTFery, if you're playing a multiplayer match and the arbitrarily decided host quits, it completely ends the match and kicks everybody back to the "Find game" screen.
gunsmoke on 13/2/2013 at 00:20
No Wierzbowski? Oh well, if they cannot fucking spell Crowe's name properly, what hope had they there...
Phatose on 13/2/2013 at 00:23
Curiously, the first time I played Wierzbowski was on one of the 8 lockers. Apparently it randomly decides at load time - some of them are accurate, some of them are just whatever. Maybe Gearbox's version of an easter egg or something like the people on ME3's memorial wall. But that is not something you do on the first level of your game when you've going on about accuracy, cause that ain't accuracy.
Edit: OK, apparently I hallucinated that, and it's always the same two wrong names.
....I so wanted this to be a good Aliens game. Why is it so hard to make a good game with this license? It's like, 2/10 don't suck.
Volitions Advocate on 13/2/2013 at 01:27
I don't understand the animosity toward AVP 2010, it was a great game, length of the alien campaign notwithstanding.
I suppose if nobody buys this I'll get it for 3.75 in a future steam sale and feel like I got my moneys worth.
The other problem would be that if this thing totally bombs, I'll bet nobody will fund another title. However, maybe it is just the setting getting old. Aliens was fantastic, but it's also the film in the franchise that ruined the whole thing by making it marketable. Something more akin to Alien 3, no pulse rifles, no marines, no large scale starcraft style alien war. Get back to basics, make the monster scary etc. an Amnesia and / or SS2 style surhor would be a welcome change. The setting can be anywhere, the monster should be the star of any title in any format, not the pulse rifle.
