Aliens—Colonial Marines preview: Structurally imperfect after 5 years

Gearbox Software and Sega will release Aliens: Colonial Marines in February 2013, exactly five years after it was first announced to the public. The game's campaign looks promising but its multiplayer lacks magic.

It takes around ten months to release a game to the public. The press and hardcore video game hobbyists usually follow a game from a game’s initial announcement up until it’s release, usually around two years, but for the general public it’s ten months of television, print, and public marketing. Eight prior to the release, when the heaviest early previewing in the press takes place, and then two months following. That’s how good game business is done.

By that metric, Aliens—a collaboration between 20^th Century Fox, Sega, and Gearbox Software—has been terrible business. The game was announced via a cover feature in Game Informer magazine in February 2008. It will finally be released in February 2013. That’s not exactly within the proper business cycle. Based on a preview of a beta build of the game at the New York Comic Con last week, it’s hard to say one way or another if the game was worth the wait.

Sega and Gearbox had two samples of the game on hand, a playable version of its xenomorphs versus Marines competitive multiplayer mode and a guided, unplayable look at the early campaign. Of the two, the campaign looked the most promising. Take note: The next passage includes some story spoilers for both the movies and the game, so if you’ve never experienced the Alien series, skip it.

Picking up just weeks after James Cameron’s Aliens, Gearbox’s canonical sequel sees a full battalion of 400 Colonial Marines sent to the ill-fated planet LV 426 to investigate the disappearance of Ellen Ripley and the crew of the Sulacco. Weyland Yutani, the sinister corporation vying to get their hands on the vicious alien species hidden in a derelict spacecraft on the planet’s surface, has covered up the destruction of the LV 426 colony and the deaths of the series’ protagonists, so the Marines are just doing due diligence to find out what happened to the crew. When they arrive at LV 426 though, Weyland Yutani’s private military is already there cleaning up, and they assault the marines looking to keep things quiet. The first level of the game—played second, strangely, during the demo—puts you in control of Marines fighting humans and trying to evacuate from the derelict Sulacco.

Gearbox’s president Randy Pitchford was explaining during the demo that his team decided that the game needed more complex, thoughtful enemies than just the berserker aliens in their game, and the WY forces (seen briefly at the end of Alien 3) were a perfect choice. In the demo shown, they didn’t seem particularly threatening though. While they certainly had mean firepower—the demo player almost died—they didn’t have very cunning AI, they just burst into the room and blasted away in the open. There were moments when both human forces were fending off aliens, but it was very brief, so it’s impossible to tell if those dynamics will be more seriously explored.

The following level demoed was a concentrated dose of fan service, with a fairly steady, atmospheric tour of LV 426’s surface, revisiting many scenes from the film. The Marines’ ground vehicle Ripley crashed outside, the post-meltdown atmospheric reactor, and the medical bay where Ripley and Newt were attacked by larval alien face huggers were all stops on the Old School Express. It was only at the end of the demo that the action picked back up with aliens popping out and trying to snack on the player character.

The game looked good, albeit not as good as these Sega-provided screenshots make it look. Running on beefy PCs, Gearbox’s proprietary engine (a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 according to Pitchford) rendered a world as dark, wet, and mean as the one in Cameron’s movie. The character models, human and otherwise, looked nice with smooth animation, but at least in the campaign the aliens moved a bit too slowly in some moments. Gearbox stressed, though, that the game is in beta, meaning the content’s all in place but  still being polished. Janky-looking effects, like garish, solid-colored blood spatters from humans and aliens, certainly demonstrate that the game’s delay from fall 2012 was wise.

The competitive multiplayer  justified the delay as well. While the inclusion of competitive multiplayer is expected—not only as a modern necessity as a feature, but also as a tradition in Aliens video games like Aliens vs. Predator—my session made it seem like an after thought. Three types of alien were available for play, two swift soldier classes and a beefy bull-like alien that the player could upgrade to based on performance. Controlling the soldiers aliens was frustrating because it often simply didn’t work. Puling the controller’s trigger should make you stick to a wall to sneak up on unwitting marines, but it didn’t always work. The bull class, meanwhile, was too slow to be useful, lumbering around and only killing the most oblivious opponent. It was hard not to feel like Gearbox would have been better served not making the multiplayer component at all, instead focusing on the campaign. Another multiplayer mode was on hand but I didn’t get a chance to try it to see if it fared better.

Aliens looks like a solid piece of fiction in a rich, established sci-fi universe, but it did not look or feel like a game that’s been in production for five years. The campaign looks promising, but without getting actual hands on time with it, it’s still too early to say it looks good. Here’s hoping Gearbox makes the most of these next few months.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Borderlands 2 dev explains the art and science of ‘distilling fun’

We spoke with Matt Charles, Gearbox producer for Borderlands 2 about the recently released game, the future of the industry, and the merits of the Super Mario Bros. movie.

Last week 2K Games and Gearbox’s Borderland 2 arrived with a bang. Most people suspected that it would be a hit thanks to the pre-orders as well as the general popularity of the franchise, but we didn’t know that it would also be one of the best games of the year. We hoped it would be, but we had no way of telling until the copies were released from the protective clutches of the developer.

If you need more proof that the game is a hit (beyond our review), just jump on PSN, Steam, or Xbox Live at any given time and check out how many friends you have playing it right now. If the answer is none, consider investing in some new online friends.

Now that the years of work have concluded and the game has shipped, there is a slight lull in the game’s development cycle before the work on the DLC begins (as well as a probable sequel, although Gearbox will probably defend that secret bitterly until it is ready to announce one). So what does a Borderlands 2 producer do with himself in that time? And what was the development like? And while we’re at it, can we expect a Borderlands movie, and if so is there any way to make it not suck? We ask Gearbox producer Matt Charles these questions and more.

How long have you been working on Borderlands 2?

The full history: Borderlands 1 came out, did great. We turned a small team to focus on the DLC efforts – the add-on content. Once those finished, we started work on Borderlands 2. So it’s a gray area, it doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s about 2 ½ years.

Did you expect Borderlands 1 to do as well as it did, or did its success surprise you?

Well we certainly hoped so. I’d say we were pleasantly surprised. We’d been working on that game for a long time. Brand new IP, brand new genre — we felt it was a new idea, blending the best of first person shooter and RPG and turning it into what we called the RPS. It was very much our baby.

When you have a game coming out with lofty expectations, how do you deal with the stress leading up to the launch day?

It’s interesting. It’s a dash of nerve wracking; it’s a dash of calm before the storm. It feels like a shuttle launch, like everything is done already, and we just have to wait and see what happens.

After a game is done and released, not counting the DLC, do you have to go through a cool down period, or are you eager to get back to work?

There’s a nice break in the work flow, naturally caused by the certification process with first parties, such as Microsoft and Sony. We do continue to work on the PC version, bug fixing for patches during that time, but that’s generally less intense than preparing for that period when everything’s got to be done and flawless and perfect and ready to be printed on disc. So that’s a great time for people to take some time off.

We also then immediately come back and hit the ground running with DLC, so it’s a short break.

What DLC for Borderlands 2 can you talk about?

There will, in fact, be a season pass. I look forward to seeing what we do there… [laughter].

I can also talk about the Mechromancer. She’s really interesting. At PAX East we announced that we had this idea, we had this beautiful little nugget of a word called “mechromancer,” that was really catchy to us, and she would come with Deathtrap, and that idea was really interesting to us as well — the polar opposite of Claptrap, essentially. Where he’s cracking wise, Deathtrap is about death and destruction, but obviously the friendly protector of the mechromancer.

How big is Gearbox now, including the other teams, like those working on Aliens: Colonial Marines?

Between 150 and 200 people.

Do you enjoy working in that type of larger environment, or is it more stressful?

I think we have a great organization. We’re obviously a multi-project studio, so there are teams within Gearbox, so no single person necessarily has to be worried about 200 other people. We have our own organizations within Gearbox. I really like the project cycles that we have at Gearbox as well, because it can go from a smaller, pre-production team to a very large team, and then back down a bit smaller team, as we don’t need to full force of the company behind it.

So it’s nice. I feel like I get to experience all parts of it.

In your opinion, what is it about Borderlands that makes it resonate with players?

It’s pure fun. It is distilled fun in every corner. That was actually the goal. “Ok, just make everything fun. We’ll figure out what that means as we start designing systems, features, and characters,” but that was always the goal. And I think that really touches everything in the game. When you start with that goal of “let’s make sure everything is fun, avoid frustration” it’s going to come through in a lot of ways.

Were there any technical limitations you hit?

It was interesting going from Borderlands 1 to Borderlands 2. We’re still releasing on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the PC. Of course PC has evolved, but with consoles the entire point is that you know what hardware is going to be there. But our ambitions never stopped growing, especially with the sequel to a hugely successful game. So it was interesting balancing what can we do on certain hardware versus what we want to do, what we can dream up.

So are you excited for the next generation of consoles, or are you happy with what we have now?

I still have to wait and see. I’m still waiting for more concrete info, so I’m going to reserve my judgment for now.

Where do you see the industry going five or ten years down the road?

That’s an interesting question, and I think we’ve seen unarguably a large push towards mobile gaming, and a focus on that recently. I’m really curious to see new console hardware — how that impacts the future as well. I think that we’re getting more social as an industry and as game players as well. I like the fact that games are taking advantage of that in the sense that it’s easy for me to hop on a game and see what my friends are doing. I love that aspect of it. So if we’re going more mobile, but also more connected, we’re going to have this wide mesh of the world with gamers playing against each other, and I think that’s really cool. I hope it goes more in that direction.

How do you see the gaming industry’s growth compared to other entertainment industries like film?

So…. I gotta make sure to get this right or my film teachers are gonna wack me upside the head… We’re able to look back at the film industry and see how that evolved. And I’m very glad that we have that example because in a lot of ways it is very similar to ours, and we’re able to look at that and plot our own relatively brief history of the video game industry, and sort of chart where we are, relatively speaking.

There are a lot of differences, and I think we’ve figured out some of the variables that make us different, and why we’re not exactly following in film’s footsteps, so to speak in terms of industry growth. But at the same time we’re almost on the cutting edge of technology anyway, so I don’t know, I think we may sort of diverge. It’s hard for me to predict whether we will see explosive growth like film did, or whether it’ll be a steadier pace, or what’s going to happen. I don’t see it decline.

As games get bigger and more complex, are they getting more difficult to create, or do the improving tools make it easier?

Film is obviously still huge, but their models have changed and their delivery method, and everyone is still experimenting with the viewing experience. 3D is the obvious example. That’s the technology that could go wide and we could see more 3D games; Nintendo 3DS being a great example of that. I think it’ll be driven by technology and what’s cutting edge.

Honestly, it’s kind of both. Because as technology comes out, as new hardware comes out, our creative minds go wild and our ambitions totally soar. And then we have to build the tools that let us chip away at what we have in our head that’s possible with this new tech. And then over time those tools get better and better and better, and then it becomes much easier on a relatively small scale to do those things.

For example, I’m going to segue a bit and tie this into something we did for Borderlands 2. In Borderlands 1, everything was data driven, for example our weapons. 17 million guns, and that was all a combination of parts system, but it was very manual entry. The same was true for creating an enemy, or managing a player’s skills behind the scenes. In Borderlands 2 we doubled down and made this tool called “constructs” internally for ourselves that turns all that data entry into a much more visual tool. So you can say with this block over here, let’s tie it to this other thing and it should interact in that way. So we can actually see it; it was almost like a blue print for what we wanted to see happen in a game. So in that sense, that’s one of the things that helped us. We scraped all the old guns from the first game in order to make new ones, all the while offering a lot more creature type and variety. We wouldn’t have been able to do that had we not invested in a new tool set.

Yes it does get faster. At the same time, our production team is also bigger this time around because our tools help us do things faster, but our ambitions are always growing.

It was recently announced that there is going to be a four-part Borderlands comic mini-series due out later this year. Any plans to further explore the Borderlands universe in other mediums? Maybe an animated movie like EA’s Dead Space?

That would be really interesting. I’d be very interested to explore all parts of the Borderlands universe, it’s huge. I think it would be great to see other mediums try to explore it.

Could Borderlands work as a movie?

[Laughter] That’s interesting.

Maybe a better question would be could any game really work as a movie?

Well I liked Super Mario Bros. [Laughter].

That’s a bold claim.

I say that while smiling very heavily.

You may be the first person ever to say those exact words in that order.

I think I was 3 when I saw it, so my opinion may have changed since then.

Do you think there will be a day when gaming movies can get it together and reach the heights of comic book movies?

I think so. This is certainly just my opinion… The video game industry is still relatively new and the film industry has been around for a long time, and the comics industry has been around longer than video games as well. So I think comics and film have learned how to work together. I think we’re still trying to figure that out, the relationship – rather the translation between film and video games. But I think once we do understand the sorts of things we can do that translate very well and the things that don’t, we’ll start to see more of those.

With the Borderlands series, what is the single thing you are most proud of?

As a producer, shipping on time [laughter].

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Borderlands 2 glitch erases Badass Rank, locks out completed challenges

A number of players are reporting a Borderlands 2 glitch that wipes out their hard earned Badass Rank. Gearbox says its investigating.

One of the many marvelously user-friendly features in Gearbox’s Borderlands 2 is the Badass Rank. Slowly unlocked perks separate from your character’s level and skillset, the Badass Rank is an elegant version of the New Game+. Borderlands 2 is a lengthy, involved game, but you’re going to want to start new characters depending on who you’re playing with, and the Badass Rank ties to any character you create, giving you a base level of improving stats that make revisiting the game from different angles accessible without making it too easy and boring. Smart stuff. Too bad there’s a bug in the game that will wipe out your Badass Rank.

A number of users in Gearbox’s official forums have reported a problem where their Badass Rank is set back to zero and all the associated bonuses, including the stat boosts and unlocked character customization options, are wiped away. Compounding the problem is the fact that the challenges that raise the Badass Rank (e.g. shoot this many enemies, collect this many guns, etc.) aren’t reset alongside the rank itself so affected players can’t simply rebuild what’s been lost.

While the initial report about the problem was from a player on the Xbox 360 version, others playing the PC and PlayStation 3 versions of the game have also reported the same problem.

Gearbox community manager Chris Faylor said that the studio is working fast to fix the problem. “Our engineers are looking into this, and the information you’ve provided has proven to be a great resource while we investigate,” said Faylor, “At the moment, it seems to be a fairly rare issue and we’ll keep you updated on when we resolve it.”

The original Borderlands was no stranger to glitches like this when it released in 2009. At least the Borderlands 2 glitch only erases the Badass Rank and its associated perks. The Borderlands glitch erased everything. When players would leave a multiplayer game on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, or PC they would lose all their weapons proficiencies and skill points, and though the proficiencies could be rebuilt, the skill points were erased forever meaning that they needed to restart the entire game.

Gearbox fixed that problem eventually though, and this new glitch will definitely be addressed. Players affected by the Borderlands 2 glitch should take comfort in the fact that their lost Badass Rank might even be salvageable since the challenges that earn the rank aren’t reset.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com