What I find by playing every action game that has a single player mode, is the poorer games are often better than expected, while the good ones are often not as good as what they're made out to be. 

Damn, what a missed opportunity. I was reading an interview on Eurogamer I think it was with Randy and they were trying to get out of him what went wrong. All he could talk about is that he loves the game (and also loves DNF), makes excuses about the media being wrong, and that he wouldn't take back the 10-15mill in losses developing the game because he got to meet Syd Mead (apparently designed some Aliens stuff) and got to personally play with some of the original props. God, what a tool. He wouldn't admit a single thing wrong with the game and when the interviewer tried to bring it up, claims he can't remember that part.

Apparently Sega wanted it to be just like COD but in the Aliens universe, but they didn't do that. Who knows, it might have been better if they did. At least COD has some pretty epic scenes in most of their games.

Anyway, I give it about a 7/10, which is a lot better than the 4.5/10 on Metacritic. I think most users were just expecting too much, they went in with huge hopes because of Borderlands 2 being an amazing game.

How awesome would it have been if we had a game with the scope of Borderlands 2, but in the Aliens universe? That's more like how I would have made the game, except without all the damn looting. Then bring in some stealth bits, like Deus-Ex, make fewer enemies in the game, slower pace, more horror like (Metro 2033, Stalker, Dead Space).

Make it a proper open world game, with a size like Kingdoms Of Amalur but you just can't travel everywhere straight away because it's too dangerous. I'm not sure how you'd handle different enemies; you can't have a 30-50 hour action RPG with just 2 or 3 Xeno's. Are there other species or races in Aliens ? Perhaps it could take place over multiple worlds like Mass Effect.

Anyway, the game itself was a standard, linear FPS. The developers assumed you just got done watching the movies, because a lot of the story didn't make much sense to me since I haven't watched Alien/Aliens in decades. The weapons were average until I read halfway through the game you can actually open a menu and change your arsenal, and once upgraded quite fun near the end. It started to feel more like Borderlands weapons with the long range accuracy and scopes.

The game starts off not really that good, inside the spaceship. I wonder how many players quit too soon. Once on the planet the visuals get interesting, but I think the big alien ship was a missed opportunity full of corridors.

The graphics didn't seem that great to me, Gearbox obviously didn't make the engine as pretty as CI did with Alien Rage, but they didn't have some nice outdoor areas.

Later in the game you end up playing three levels you'd already gone through, which was really cheap. Limited budget or something? With the amount of content they made for B2 with the DLC's as well, I mean fuck the final DLC was almost as big as this game.

Oh and one big failure in the game was checkpoints, they were just put in the silliest of places, and often far apart.

Really just one big missed opportunity and Randy can't admit that. Rebellion's AVP wasn't any better though.

Also played Risen 2. I might post about that tomorrow, what a total fuckup that was. 

Late to the party, I know, I don't care.

Obviously I'm still correct that the GFX are technically inferior to Path Of Exile, textures, lighting, zoom level etc. And Bal is right that POE does ARPG uber-geeking gameplay better.

BUT. Actually D3 is really nice. Although the style is a bit more cartoony and low-res, it does a hell of a lot with the atmosphere, backgrounds, and setting, it actually feels more like a proper place than a game place, and some of the areas are just damn cool. The expansion pack might be my favourite so far:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zm31z1oGKOc/VoZV1bY9efI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/w9Iknnm2nRk/s1600/diablo3kindapretty.jpg

As people said above, gameplay in the main game is supercasual, even without using gems and shields there doesn't seem to be a way to get an actual challenge in the main game, however it is quite nice being just to waltz through it using just mouse and leaving other hand for wanking to cow scat pron.

Story is terrible and generic but at least it is comprehensible compared to POE.

Destructible items in environment are cool. I spend more time exploding crates carts and altars than actual enemy.

So, errr, yeah. 

Forgot to mention, it reminds me most of Guild Wars. Which is good enough. 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yfEhj0P7tXw/Voa2jVK1FEI/AAAAAAAAAfg/uqOU7mZqooM/s1600/diablo3kindafirey.jpg 

I enjoyed diablo 3 quite a bit 

Blizzard found no shortage of opportunities to make the world feel big and sweeping despite having the camera pointed down at the ground the whole time.

You do find yourself on the edge of quite a lot of chasms and valleys though. 

http://luniney.neocities.org/SuperMarioReMaker/

It's pretty damned impressive, I have the Wii-u version and this does decent job of recreating the experience. It's not as polished but it's worth having a go of. 

I like how that site says "All copyrighted material is � Nintendo" at the bottom.

You know, except Strong Bad from Homestar Runner, various Undertale characters, The Kid from I Want to be The Guy, or Quote from Cave Story... but I guess all their creators aren't big enough to worry about them suing, so their copyrights don't matter.

Motherfucker should've just run with 'you can make 2d platformer levels and there are a bunch of toys for you to play with'... no theft of graphics and IP needed. Hopefully Nintendo is quick with their cease and desist so this idiot can scrub the junk out, and then persist in making something that would genuinely be cool. 

Read a good review of it on the Codex. It's an isometric CRPG with pretty kickass art (the good kind of pixel art) and a cool story. Played for an hour and so far I like it. I died horribly to some wolves and goblins.

Only downside is that combat is in real time (with pause on specific actions) which I think doesn't really work too well unless your game is Diablo. I would've preferred turn based but eh, to each their own. 

Skacky, it's pretty and pixelated, but I don't think it's pixel art:

http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

I like this kind of art anyway. 

When I say "the good kind of pixel art" I mean not your usual lazy indie game ""pixel art"". 

This might interest a few here.

Coop arcadey claustrophobic marines vs aliens roguelike fps (yes, random levels). Got a decent bit of space hulk vibe.

Its pretty simple, effective and fun. Could just as well be a top down arcade game but the FPS perspective suits the vibe well.

Currently being developed, there is a demo on the website but I hear pretty outdated as to current Early Access version.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/357330/ 

Well worth it. Boss fights are boring as fuck, rest of it is great. A few neat tweaks and some really nice settings (possibly the most "someone make that in Quake FFS" ones), everything a mission pack should be (boss difficulty spikes aside). 

Just put the nagelring on

*boom* boss be ded 

Complete Spack Hulk clone done in a 1998 engine with no level design set in the pitch black?? SOLD!

The idea might be decent but it doesn't look at all inspiring. 

I hate the way people are still saying "procedurally generated levels" as if it's a badge of honour, and not just indicative of a program that bolts together a bunch of L and T shapes into shit-tastic and repetitive Wolfenstein 3D levels. 

Astroneer is showing off the "vast amount of environments" you can explore, by showing little astro-man running through a series of the exact same environment over and over but with a different color fog each time:

https://twitter.com/astroneergame/status/678295654553161729

but the metaball hill generator probably has slightly different parameters every time too 

It depends on how its done though. Ideally the person who makes the segments should be the one to code the system as well, for best results.

How granular it is basically means how much level design is in the game. And if you don't have sub environments then just go home. Minecraft realised that early on with biomes.

The idea of many indies seems to be that by doing procedural you save yourself time on level design, when in fact, it takes a lot more effort.

Unless it's crap of course.

Really it depends on what game you're making and how dedicated you are to that, rather than the fuzzy concept of 'infinite levels!' which tends to result in a load of samey guff nobody wants to explore because they keep recognising the segments. 

Shamb yeah, its only any good if you like arcade action games and roguelikes a la Binding of Isaac...with the claustropobic FPS space hulk/alien shtick. (I'm not saying its anywhere near Binding of Isaac in action roguelike awesomeness...)

#8785 If anyone claims random generated levels like a badge they are fucktarded.
Maybe when someone works a good one out using deep learning that might be something interesting in itself.

They serve a purpose for certain type of games, roguelikes being one where it is the nature of most of them. 

the fuzzy concept of 'infinite levels!' which tends to result in a load of samey guff nobody wants to explore because they keep recognising the segments.

Spelunky HD was shit for this. Isaac has:

1) tons more variety in room designs
2) rare (1/1000) designs
3) entire batches of new designs added periodically 

I guess as a counterpoint to the procedural bitching, I could offer Minecraft? 

Really though, Minecraft is a level editor with a resource-gathering metagame and wandering monsters. The random environments are appropriate in this case because the game is all about the building and gathering.

Imagine if you couldn't modify the environment in Minecraft? 

Maybe it's the building block size that makes it work. Minecraft is working at a much more granular level than the previously mentioned L and T shaped areas being snapped together. 

"Infinite levels" yah, its marketing speak. You know in 95% of the cases its gonna be samey who cares stuff.

In a roguelike I couldnt give a crap.
The point is just to change things up to make sure you are not getting a predictable playthrough - the point being in getting good at a roguelike of this type is you are supposed to be getting good at dealing with any situation thrown up and not getting good at predicting what is coming. I think so at least.

A newb will win an occasional favorable random seed, a skilled player will win in 80% of the seeds thrown at him.