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Sega Denies Wii U Aliens Colonial Marines Cancelation
Without question, this week’s release of Aliens: Colonial Marines has become one of the more interesting stories to try and unravel. Not just a disappointment in terms of expectations versus reality, ACM is providing an insight into how games get made—or, more specifically, how bad games get made.
Over the last two days, we’ve gotten conflicting reports about how much of the game was developed by Gearbox, how much was handled by TimeGate, and a whole mess of finger pointing and credit-taking, not to mention the video comparing the pre-release demo footage to the final product. Today, publisher Sega has responded to rumors that the as-yet unreleased Wii U version is still planned for release.
A Kotaku post cites an unnamed tipster who says that the game’s been “postponed indefinitely.” But according to a post on Eurogamer, a Sega UK rep has denied that rumor: “It’s not true. We haven’t announced the release date for it yet but that’s it.” The post also points out that the Wii U version’s Amazon listing has also been mysteriously removed.
But that’s not the end of the ACM updates today! How could it be? Over on Destructoid, they point out a Reddit post from a supposed TimeGate employee who responds to yesterday’s Reddit comment that supposedly came from a former Gearbox employee:
“Just to clarify, everything Timegate did was under clear and explicit direction from Gearbox. Gearbox had creative control of everything that occurred at TG. In addition, Gearbox was responsible for firing some of the most talented people (and internationally recognized as such) TG had employed, all of which were snatched up immediately by competitors. It was Gearbox’s shitty oversight of the project that led to the product you all now have before you. I wouldn’t expect you to understand, considering you’re probably some QA who has no idea what goes on outside of his department. But TG had absolutely no control of what was produced, they did exactly what they were asked to. You should be furious with Gearbox for assigning such shit quality creative directors to the project.”
It’s pretty interesting to see how this whole situation has devolved into public—if anonymous –mud-slinging. It’s not as if there aren’t mediocre or average games released all the time, but none seem to involve this much back and forth in terms of who screwed up what. Most of the time, game-makers take their lumps, probably send angry memos back and forth, and the gamers and media folks sit and wonder how it all went wrong.
But for some reason, the case of Aliens: Colonial Marines seems to have inspired a somewhat unique response in the people who made it. One thing’s for sure: no one comes off looking too good, no matter who is or isn’t responsible for the end result. Not Sega, not Gearbox, not TimeGate—and especially not the xenomorphs.
I mean, look at this:
Via Eurogamer, Kotaku, and Destructoid
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Would anybody buy it on the nintendo. After reading the reviews & angry things people have sad. I know if the reviews came out before realese i would of canceled my preorder.
Gearbox’s president has been talking up the Wii U version of the game for a while–the way it’ll work with the in-game tracker and things like that. As lousy as this game turned out, I’m still curious to see the ideas they had for the Wii U version. And it’s not like the Wii U has a ton of other games to even choose from…
Man that motion tracker pissed me off. You can turn off the pop up warning in the menu. I thought doing that would make the game a little bit scary. But it still makes a scripted beep. Even when your gun is drawn.
fool me once with duke nukem shame on me fool me twice with acm shame on you gearbox.
lesson learned, never pre-order and if a review embargo is in place automatically assume is a crap game.
Real important point here: pretty much every game has a review embargo. Very rarely–in my experience, at least–is there no pre-release embargo on reviews. So…you know…there’s that.
Yeah pretty much every embargo lifts at 12:01 AM of the day of release of the game.
Pre-ordering is fine, just make sure to always check reviews from an outlet you trust before dropping $60 on anything. Never hurts to be sure, yeah?
I definitely think that A:CM has proven that we can necessarily trust demos and tell the devs to shut up and take our money. They’ll have to shut up and earn it, now.
However, pre-orders aren’t truly binding, as most places let you pick up the order sometime within 48 hours of the release (though digital downloads are a different story, but then you don’t have to necessarily reserve a copy, due to a theorhetically infinite stock). So, if you get the game in a physical format, you can wait at least 1 day for the reviews to roll in and decide if it’s worth your cash.
Also, most places let you move the pre-order cash to a different game. I changed my mind about Modern Warfare 3 just prior to release, so I went out on the day after it came out to that particular gamestop and moved the down-payment to another game.