8 Video Games That Turned Out Nothing Like We Were Promised

1. Aliens: Colonial Marines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2qVebxlUo Well, here it is: the game that inspired this list, and the chagrin of everybody in the world who was excited to get their hands on it. To put it simply, Aliens: Colonial Marines - a spin-off game based around that of James Cameron's awesome sequel to Alien - was a disaster. The game itself is boring, repetitive, uninspired, ugly and terribly written... the problem is that nobody really got the gist of that from the original demo footage, which kind of made the game look awesome. Atmospheric, filled with great touches and details... it looked like a blast to play. It wasn't. Check out the comparison video above, and you'll instantly see why Aliens fans were p*ssed. First of all, the cool, dark, movie-esque lighting effects are all but missing from the final version. Okay, so, maybe that's something of a minor point, but... well, no, it isn't: a game like this is all about the atmosphere, isn't it? Next, you'll see that lots of basic things have been removed for no reason. When a Marine crashes into some glass and splatters blood everywhere in the original demo footage, the glass cracks. When it happens in the final version, we get nothing. The final version is, simply, a rather painful and dumbed down version of the demo with no redeeming qualities. Which begs the question, of course: was the demo footage actually pre-rendered footage made to look like gameplay? And if so, how can we stop developers from getting our hopes up with stuff like this years before their games actually come out (especially if they label it as both "gameplay" and "work in progress")? Again, maybe it's unfair to target Aliens: Colonial Marines specifically when BioShock Infinite, for example, is guilty of doing exactly the same thing. But it's also easy to do so, because BioShock Infinite was still magnificent, and Aliens: Colonial Marines feels like a cheap, pointless straight-to-DVD monstrosity hatched from a egg. Like this article? Got any to add? Let us know in the comments section below.
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