When publisher Sega released Aliens: Colonial Marines in February, many gamers wondered what happened to the promising game they saw in previews. The final product looked generic and ugly even set to “Ultra” on a powerful PC.

Today, Sega and developer Gearbox Software are releasing a massive 3.8 GB update for the first-person Xenomorph shooter. The patch directly addresses the visual performance and numerous bugs.

In the video below, you can see a lot of particle effects and better-looking textures. Overall, it looks better than the launch game, but it better after making 4 gigs worth of changes.

Check out Colonial Marines running on PC with the new patch installed:

Here’s the full list of tweaks from Sega:

General

• Improved texture resolution.
• Various visual improvements.
• Added mouse smoothing to options menu.
• Fixed crashes tied to launch and motion tracker.
• Added additional safeguards to better protect save data.
• Resolved an issue where a player’s level could sometimes appear incorrect when backing out of a party.
• Addressed several scenarios under which players could spawn without a weapon.
• Changes to better prevent audio from sometimes cutting out during end of mission cinematics.
• Fixed issue where Xenomorph death animation was not properly calculating momentum of the killing blow.
• Smart Gun animation now properly tracks targets.
• Addressed some instances where Xenomorphs would display erratic animations.
• Increased light radius for player’s shoulder lamp.
• Adjusted aim assist to better reflect player input.
• Addressed an issue that could sometimes cause co-op player revival to not work under certain circumstances.
• Addressed issues with players not spawning into a level properly.
• Fixed a marine player invincibility exploit.
• Resolved several instances where players could walk or fall outside of maps.
• Addressed an issue where Ripley’s Flamethrower (bonus content) would sometimes fire continuously without player input.
• Fixed an issue that could cause localized text to sometimes display incorrectly.
• Addressed an issue where weapon ammunition was not always highlighted properly.
• General user interface improvements.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Campaign

• Tweaked enemy and friendly A.I. to be more aggressive and responsive.
• Modified campaign difficulty to account for improved A.I. responsiveness.
• Improved enemy collision detection regarding doors and Power Loader.
• Addressed some issues that could cause improper warping for co-op players.
• Various tweaks to address instances where NPC characters would not always properly navigate to objectives.
• Players will no longer bleed out immediately when downed in a Power Loader.

Versus

• Fixed issues that could cause clients to report inaccurate results and statistics.
• Addressed instances where a map would appear to “pop in” when loading into a new match.
• New Xeno appearance customization added.
• Multiplayer teams should now correctly auto-balance between rounds.
• Increased duration of Lurker Pounce Challenge “Cat-Like Reflexes” from 10 to 20 seconds.
• Fixed issue where certain multiplayer challenges would not unlock properly for all characters.
• Crusher pick-ups now correctly appear as highlighted for clients.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, SimCity launches but suffers catastrophic sever issues, PETA claims Ubisoft is glorifying whaling in Assassin’s Creed IV, and Boy Scouts can now earn badges for game design.

You’ll also find reviews for SimCity, God of War: Ascension, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate, and Dollar Dash, as well as previews for Dead Space 3 Awakened and Gears of War: Judgment.

News

• The DeanBeat: The revenge of the old farts who outlast evil and survive in the games business
• Maxis: It’s ‘fair’ that reviewers ‘punished’ SimCity for server issues
• Lord British returns with his first new role-playing game in 15 years
• SyFy’s Defiance television show and Trion World’s online game are in the home stretch after five years
• Free-to-play online gaming company Bigpoint gets a new CEO
• SimCity producer addresses fan outrage over server issues
• Videogamer: The Film explores gaming innovation from all perspectives
• Researcher uses Xbox 360′s Kinect game sensor to measure your breathing
• Amazon stops selling digital copies of SimCity as EA shuts off in-game features (update)
• SimCity not working for you? 5 alternative city-building games
• Boy Scouts can now earn a badge for game design
• You’ll either love or hate this new Deadpool trailer — first good look at gameplay
• Bunchball launches Nitro 5.0 with focus on enterprise gamification
• Core-gamer spending slows as industry prepares to transition to the next generation
• EA closes SimCity servers for maintenance, and even the alert message is broken
• Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter blazes to $900k goal in six hours
• Xbox Kinect’s upcoming midair multitouch is gunning for you, Leap Motion
• Ubisoft to PETA: ‘We do not condone whaling, just as we don’t condone a pirate lifestyle’
• From Flash to Steam — how Adult Swim is building a publishing empire
• EA: Rumor that we’re killing Dead Space is ‘patently false’
• With a magic puff of smoke: Snoop is back in Way of the Dogg rhythm game
• Wizard of Oz social game hits a million players on Facebook (exclusive)
• Journey’s art director starts his own studio
• EA shuts down BioWare San Francisco
• Can’t download SimCity? You’re not alone (update)
• Aliens: Colonial Marines co-developer TimeGate Studios lays off some staff
• SimCity’s always-online functionality trips up the review process
• PETA: It’s ‘disgraceful’ for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to ‘glorify’ whaling
• Dota 2 surpasses Skyrim’s record for most concurrent players on Steam
• Skyrim 1.9 update: New difficulty setting and ‘Legendary Skills’
• You are the new Desmond in Assassin’s Creed IV
• Ubisoft: 40 percent of Assassin’s Creed IV is naval missions
• Assassins’ Creed IV: Black Flag is pirates vs. ninja
• Call of Duty co-creator Jason West leaves startup Respawn Entertainment

Mobile News

• AdColony sees huge growth for video ads in mobile apps, with 1 billion views to date
• Happy birthday to you: Free stuff from Google for your Android phone
• Subway Surfers creator explains why co-development is key in mobile games
• Chasing Temple Run, Zynga launches Running With Friends mobile game
• Humble Android Bundle 5 live: Super Hexagon and more
• Proletariat releases iPhone game LetterRush from the ashes of Zynga Boston
• How Green Throttle’s Arena will surpass Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo
• iPadocalypse: ‘iPad shipments collapse’ 50% in January (but there may be a very good reason)
• With Temple Run: Oz, Disney will test how far a hit franchise can run
• Guitar Hero creator’s Green Throttle Arena turns Android gaming into a hardcore experience (exclusive video)

Reviews

• Kratos’s softer side still kicks plenty of ass in God of War: Ascension (review)
• Dollar Dash is not worth your dimes (review)
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow — Mirror of Fate can’t quite translate 3D gameplay into 2D (review)
• A ‘big data’ experience revives the glory of SimCity (review)

Previews

• Psychological horror returns to Dead Space with Dead Space 3 Awakened (preview)
• Gears of War: Judgment makes some refreshing tweaks to an old formula (preview)
• Underneath Fuse’s brilliant combat system is a steep learning curve (preview)

Interviews

• Gears of War: Judgment writers debunk the series’ dude-bro reputation (interview)
• Crytek chief puts on his Warface and says why Crysis 3 for Wii U ‘had to die’ (interview)

Pieces of Flair

• SimCity server errors inspire a wave of memes (gallery)
• Electronic Arts’ digital revenue will surpass physical game sales this year (infographic)
• New Thief in the works at Eidos Montréal — here’s a bunch of confirmed screenshots

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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The Xenomorph business isn’t as lucrative as it once was.

TimeGate Studios, one of the co-developers for Aliens: Colonial Marines, cut down its staff today, according to Polygon. The developer reportedly produced most of the single-player campaign in the much maligned first-person Aliens shooter before Gearbox Software, the headline studio, took the reins.

TimeGate president Adel Chaveleh explained the layoffs in a statement made to Polygon:

Today, we had to make the difficult decision to let go of some great game developers. This is never easy, and we’re doing all we can to assist those developers affected. TimeGate is preparing, as is the entire industry, for the transition to next-generation consoles and new business models. As part of this reinvention, all projects and strategic initiatives continue to move forward at the studio.

Chaveleh didn’t specify the number of people who lost their jobs, but rumors put the figure around two dozen.

TimeGate is a Houston-based developer founded in 1998. It released the real-time-strategy game Axis & Allies in 2004. It then worked on expansion content for publisher Vivendi Universal’s F.E.A.R. first-person shooter. In 2009, TimeGate debuted its own first-person shooter Section 8 for Xbox Live Arcade and PC. The company produced a sequel in 2011 called Section 8: Prejudice.

It’s still unclear exactly what TimeGate’s full involvement was in the development of Aliens: Colonial Marines. Gearbox was supposed to handle the bulk of the design on that game — but a common rumor claims that multiple other studios, including TimeGate, actually produced most of the work. Gearbox then crunched the game out to meet a final deadline from publisher Sega.

No matter how it happened, many of the studios involved with Aliens: Colonial Marines are now have somewhat tarnished brands.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Without music, many modern video games would not resonate with us on such an emotional level. It’s possible we would not feel a pang of dread as we rounded a blind corner in Dead Space 3, and we likely wouldn’t feel such urgency to hack our way through baddies in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The sometimes abrasive yet compelling quality to even dissonant tones can change how we perceive virtual worlds.

This month we take a look at Fire Emblem: Awakening, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Dead Space 3, and we discuss creating music out of non-musical items and the Tomb Raider soundtrack with composer Jason Graves.

Fire Emblem: Awakening
Composer: Yuka Tsujiyoko

Yuka Tsujiyoko’s music is the backbone of the Fire Emblem franchise. She’s the main composer for the series, which explains how organically music flows from one Fire Emblem to the next. Awakening’s score follows its predecessors with sometimes dreamy, often powerful orchestral melodies poised to elevate victorious highs and make us cry every time we lose a solider in battle.

Aliens: Colonial Marines
Composer: Kevin Riepl
Unlike the poorly received game housing it, Kevin Riepl’s score for Aliens: Colonial Marines is a true love letter to the film series. It plays with tonal similarities to both James Horner’s (Aliens) and Jerry Goldsmith’s (Alien) work on the film series while striking out on its own with gritty industrial sounds. You can feel the passion and dedication in every unsettling note and anvil strike Riepl uses. If you close your eyes and listen to the tracks linked to the picture above, you can imagine the much more frightening and generally more enjoyable game that Colonial Marines should have been.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
Composer: Jamie Christopherson
In fine Platinum Games tradition, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s soundtrack is very unconventional. When Platinum hired Jamie Christopherson to compose, they already had a pumping, heavy-metal sound in mind. The result is a very energetic album full of well-crafted guitar rifts and a successful hybridization of metal and electronic tones. It’s hard to imagine that Christopherson hadn’t written heavy metal on this scale before this project, but as he says in a supplemental interview to this article, it was all new to him.

Dead Space 3
Composer: Jason Graves, James Hannigan
Echoing, overwhelming percussion and spine-tingling dissonance is a hallmark of all three Dead Space scores, but Dead Space 3 combines those signature tones with more enjoyable orchestral movements. The result is a creepy soundtrack that is actually pleasant to listen to when removed from its game. The music is definitely much less claustrophobic, much like its inspiration.

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Somebody must’ve recorded a thousand hours of assorted grunts, groans, gasps, screams, shrieks, whines, sighs, and labored panting for Tomb Raider, developer Crystal Dynamics’ revisionist take on the storied franchise. Iconic heroine Lara Croft throws out her first tortured moan roughly 10 seconds in and rarely stops for the next 15 hours. My wife honestly looked in on me to ask, “Are you watching porn?”

No. And it’s not torture porn, either, despite the controversy Tomb Raider (releasing March 5 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) generated by including threats of rape in its early demo reels. I can confirm that developer Crystal Dynamics chopped out two of the greasier moments I played last summer at the Electronic Entertainment Expo and excised any other hints of sexual assault from the rest of the game. If you still want it to offend, take heart. Regular assault is never in short supply. In the process, we see an innocent, talented, untested archeologist become Lara Croft, and the path we take to that end easily makes this Tomb Raider the grittiest, bloodiest, most brutal entry in the series’ 16-year history.

It’s also easily one of the best. Assuming you’re not too much of a traditionalist.

What you’ll like

You’re trapped on the island from Lost!

Tomb Raider’s been reimagined enough times — Crystal Dynamics first did it back in 2006 — to win a Mortal Kombat Re-Re-Retconned award, but this Lara Croft rings true. She’s fresh out of college, eager to prove herself, full of the self-doubt that comes with inexperience, and leading her first expedition to find the mythical Japanese kingdom of Yamatai. She finds it when a freak storm maroons her on the island from Lost.

I’m not kidding. A mysterious force kills anyone attempting to leave (or arrive, for that matter), and Lara’s best friend is quickly abducted by the Solarii, a hyper-violent cult not unlike the Others. And like Lost, the Solarii aren’t the island’s most dangerous inhabitants.

Those problems encourage Ms. Croft to do very dangerous things that she really doesn’t want to do, structured as linear missions in an open, beautifully designed world. The island is a fantastic mix of lush jungle and rusted-out industrialism, decorated with enough human skulls to suggest the entire Japanese army died here. Better still, unlike most action-platformers, it feels like a hostile environment where injury is commonplace — Lara gets banged up early and often — and not an obvious, video-gamey playground tailor-made for your climbing entertainment. That said, I never felt lost or coddled … not an easy balance to pull off. Visual cues benefit from smart, subtle integration, and “survivor instinct” lights up your path if you need the crutch.

Likewise, the direction impressed me simply by framing in-game shots with thought and care. Caves feel claustrophobic. Reveals have scope. Even something as mechanical as Lara climbing a ladder takes on a cinematic quality, as does Lara herself. She’s hesitant to creep past murderous cultists and climb a 200-foot radio tower in high winds, but after being hunted like an animal, suffering terrible injuries, losing friends, and killing someone for the first time, it’s such a pure, joyous moment of triumph when she actually does it.

Moments like that set this Tomb Raider apart. They made me eager to explore the island even more, and they gave me a heroine I could genuinely root for.

So a’raiding you will go!

Let’s take a random, 20-minute sampling of my playthrough: Lara got captured, escaped through a grisly mountain of body parts and viscera, discovered a new weapon, used it to gun down a horde of Solarii, evaded one of the island’s more insanely deadly natives, solved a destructive, wind-based puzzle, and then barreled through a gauntlet of shockingly frail wood buildings over a bottomless gorge as they disintegrated around her.

Oh, yeah. Tomb Raider moves.

If you loved solving the old-school puzzles … well, sorry. It doesn’t skimp on platforming and zip-lining excitement, but Tomb Raider puts the emphasis almost entirely on action. The good news is it pulls off that action very, very well. Combat feels a bit clunky at first — understandable, since Lara’s never used a weapon in anger — but a satisfying, strategic version of Uncharted’s high-pressure gunfights soon clicks into place. The stealth/cover system is nothing short of elegant. If danger’s close, Lara acts like it, hunching over so she’s de facto behind cover when you move against some. It’s also refreshing to feel pressured by an enemy A.I. that doesn’t do anything overtly stupid and constantly flushed me from cover with explosives.

Every gun in your pack comes in handy, but I fell in love with Tomb Raider’s signature weapon: Lara’s bow. It’s the first thing that gives her a sense of power, opening up the option for stealth-killing enemies at will. I cheerfully used it to clear scores of Solarii without raising the alarm, and I used it even more after amping up the arrows with fire, then napalm, and then explosives.

Seriously. You won’t even miss Lara’s old dual pistols.

And you become Lara Croft!

Initially, Lara doesn’t even have a credible melee attack. By Tomb Raider’s end, she’s kneecapping giants and daring an army of ancient samurai warriors to bring it while cradling a grenade-launching assault rifle.

Her evolution happens at a steady clip, and new, exciting challenges flow from one to the next with a terrific sense of momentum. Credit also goes to an upgrade system for Lara — based on earning experience points — and her gear — bought with “salvage” collected from crates, animals, and enemies — that feels vital. Two sets of higher-tier abilities unlock once you drop enough points into scrounging Survivor, fighting Brawler, and stalking Hunter categories, making it a slow burn that accelerates nicely. I really felt the changes, and my tactics often shifted based on my new skills. Tomb Raider also regularly introduces cool, new equipment like a climbing ax and rope arrows that open new areas. Or you can just yank enemies off ledges, which never gets old.

Everything comes together when the game drops you into harrowing, breakneck sequences where Lara careens through river rapids or leaps from zipline to zipline, and a single miss equals a gruesome death. Then it stops showing you the quick-time-event prompts because you just don’t need them anymore, and that’s when I finally felt like Lara Goddamn Croft, handling the situation because that’s what we do best.

Of course, one late-game miniboss becomes borderline-impossible to defeat without the right upgrades, and a thorough player can earn every skill, making those categories redundant. And unfortunately, those aren’t Tomb Raider’s only mistakes.

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Sony unveils it’s latest home console the PlayStation 4, Ziff Davis Media shuts down 1Up, UGO, and GameSpy, and Electronic Arts and Activision both lay off workers.

You’ll also find reviews for Crysis 3, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Serious Sam Double D XXL.

PlayStation 4

• The DeanBeat: Sorting through the significance of Sony’s PlayStation 4 revelation
• The biggest PlayStation 4 disappointments
• Grading the PlayStation 4 rumors
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is officially a next-gen title for PlayStation 4
• PlayStation 4: Sony impresses analysts — but others are not convinced the next Xbox won’t overshadow it
• Sony ‘not ready to talk about’ The Last Guardian — waiting for the ‘right time’
• Sony’s Shu Yoshida talks PlayStation 4: PS3/PSN compatibility, microtransactions, and more
• PlayStation 4: Reactions from around the Internet
• Used games will work on the PlayStation 4, says Sony
• Everything you need to know about the PlayStation 4 (so far)
• GamesBeat’s complete coverage of Sony’s PlayStation 4 announcement
• Here’s what a chip expert says about the PlayStation 4′s potential
• Ubisoft announces Watch Dogs for the PlayStation 4
• Blizzard announces Diablo III for PlayStation 4 (and PS3)
• Indie darling Jonathan Blow’s The Witness is headed to the PlayStation 4
• Sucker Punch reveals Infamous: Second Son as a PlayStation 4 exclusive
• Sony’s Evolution Studios reveals social racing Drive Club for PlayStation 4
• PlayStation Cloud streaming tech the ‘fastest gaming network in the world’ — and promises PS4 games on Vita
• Sony unveils Killzone: Shadow Fall for the PlayStation 4
• Knack is the first game confirmed for the PlayStation 4 (and it looks like a Pixar movie)
• Sony finally reveals the PlayStation 4 for holiday 2013 — but not the console or price
• A play-by-play of Sony’s big PlayStation 4 reveal

News

• Nevada governor signs online gambling bill into law
• More layoffs: Electronic Arts cuts jobs in L.A. and Montreal
• After buying IGN, Ziff Davis is shutting down UGO, 1UP, and GameSpy
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Monster Hunter, F-Zero, and Etrian Odyssey
• That PlayStation Vita price cut isn’t coming to North America
• King.com localizing 2 of its hugely popular free-to-play games for Japan and Korea
• Thanks for the #PlayStationMemories: The industry tweets Sony’s legacy
• Hey, devs, PaeDae’s Bartr turns advertising into a free service
• 2K Sports is the new publisher of WWE wrestling games — Yuke’s returns to develop
• New Torment game from developer InXile gets a subtitle and official webpage
• Total U.S. game market grew 39 percent in January if you count all segments
• What we can learn from past PlayStation reveals
• PlayStation Meeting: Six disappointing scenarios that aren’t PlayStation 4
• House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor calls publicly funded research into video games a ‘waste’
• Cmune raises funding for first-person shooters on mobile and Facebook
• Ubisoft releasing Rayman Legend’s online challenge mode on Wii U eShop for free this April
• Activision cuts around 30 jobs — expect fewer licensed games for 2013
• Poker Smash developer asking for $7.5K on Kickstarter to release PC version
• Agawi reveals new True Cloud gaming architecture
• Ubisoft welcomes third-party games on its Uplay digital distribution portal
• Fresh Gears of War: Judgment video details the game’s multiplayer modes
• Hotline Miami headed to PlayStation 3 and Vita this spring
• Irrational teases the powerful abilities of BioShock Infinite’s Elizabeth
• Tilera unveils 72-core processor chip for data networks and infrastructure
• Ascension developers might not need all 10 days of this gutsy Kickstarter
• Half the Sky Facebook game to create awareness about sex slave trafficking
• Farewell, rhythm genre: Rock Band downloadable content comes to an end in April
• Sony whacks the price of the PlayStation Vita in Japan
• Destiny revealed: The creators of Halo unveil their newest game
• Analyst: Wii U a ‘mistake’ for Nintendo — what the company needs to do to recover

Mobile News

• 2012 a very good year for casual game developer Wooga: It’s finally profitable
• Dedicated handheld consoles took a beating from iOS and Android during Q4 2012
• User acquisition may not be sexy, but it’s critical in mobile games (part 2)
• Shufflepix creator goes from zero to published iOS game in nine months
• Nvidia announces Tegra 4i with integrated LTE, enabling awesome smartphones
• User acquisition may not be sexy, but it’s critical in mobile games (part 1)

Reviews

• Crysis 3 is a thrilling hunt through the ravaged streets of New York (review)
• Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance unsheathes an action-packed, yet imperfect, experience (review)
• Serious Sam Double D XXL is an old-school concept full of newfangled ideas (review)

Pieces of Flair

• Aliens, Prometheus, and even Spaceballs: Spot the references in Colonial Marines
• If Luigi had a dating site profile
• This 13-year-old boy runs his own mobile game startup
• 20 Dead Space 3 details you may have missed (gallery)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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From the moment you board the marooned U.S.S. Sulaco to the daring escape from the musky moon of Acheron (aka LV-426), the amount of little background details that date back to the original Alien will make your chest burst with nostalgia. Compare the video game screenshots on top to the original film inspirations below.

SPOILER ALERT! The following images and information may spoil aspects of the game and movies, especially the last picture on page three.

Bishop’s remains

The xenomorph queen rips Bishop in half during the final minutes of Aliens, yet he still manages to save Newt from flying out of an open airlock. In Aliens: Colonial Marines, you’ll find Bishop’s lower half inside the Sulaco‘s cargo bay. Shouldn’t those legs be floating in space along with the queen?

Sulaco crew’s lockers

Take a close look at the lockers inside the Sulaco and you’ll see the names of the crew on them along with their respective ranks. Corporal Hick’s locker is open, but it doesn’t have a poster of a naked woman on the door like in the movie. Boo!

USCM poster

A USCM (United States Colonial Marines) poster hangs on a wall inside the Sulaco. It’s the same emblem that Lieutenant Gorman has on his sleeve, although it’s inverted for some reason.

Daihotai tractor

Once on LV-426, you’ll pass by an abandoned Daihotai tractor, the same one used by Newt’s family to investigate a crashed alien spacecraft.

M577 Armored Personnel Carrier

Besides the Jorden family’s Daihotai tractor, you’ll also see the M577 Armored Personnel Carrier that Gorman uses to transport the Colonial Marines from the Sulaco to the Hadley’s Hope colony. Try to ignore Bishop’s photobomb.

Hadley’s Hope colony

The road in Hadley’s Hope with the bar and grill neon sign doesn’t look as neat in the game as it did in the movie, but it’s still in pretty good shape considering the whole colony blew up in a 40 megaton explosion just 17 weeks earlier. …

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, World of Warplanes developer Wargaming bought Gas Powered Games, Nintendo announced a bunch of new content focused on Luigi as the company celebrates his 30th birthday, and both House of Representatives Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Barack Obama defended video games.

You’ll also find a review of Aliens: Colonial Marines and previews for Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and Darkstalkers Resurrection.

News:

• The DeanBeat: The state of free-to-play mobile gaming, by the numbers
• After last year’s boom, social casino games remain strong
• Zynga and EA settle lawsuit
• Four payment trends that will shape the future of game development
• $79 GameStick console now available for preorder
• January NPD: Xbox 360 outsells Wii U again
• The Ouya open Android console has nearly 500 confirmed games
• This is what a prototype PlayStation 4 controller reportedly looks like
• Valve officially releases Steam for Linux — and celebrates with a sale
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Wii Street U, Naruto, and Rabbids
• Game Closure launches free tools for anyone to build fast mobile-web games
• Wargaming buys Gas Powered Games following failed Kickstarter and layoffs
• Here’s some 3DS DLC and eShop love from today’s Nintendo Direct
• Nintendo announces Mario and Luigi: Dream Team, coming this summer
• Betable’s experiment with real-money gambling pays off in the U.K.
• PlayJam licenses its GameStick technology to Asian hardware manufacturer
• Kickstarter suspends online casino game’s campaign after four days
• Naughty Dog delays The Last of Us to June
• Valve reportedly cuts hardware jobs despite ‘Steam Box’ console rumors
• ‘Orbis’ vs. ‘Durango’: The altercation over rumored specifications for the next PlayStation and Xbox
• Hideo Kojima will talk Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes at GDC in March
• Next Batman Arkham game coming this year
• Mojang releases Minecraft: Pi Edition for the Raspberry Pi Linux computer
• Gas Powered Games’ chief Chris Taylor struggles to stay positive after crowdfunding failure
• Rayman Legends developers protest Wii U game’s delay
• GameStop’s Digital Ventures chief resigns
• Gas Powered Games kills Wildman Kickstarter project (updated)
• Crytek CEO: ‘Single-player modes will have to transform’ into co-op experiences in free-to-play future
• Nintendo announces Valentine’s Day 3DS for sweeties everywhere
• Skylanders crosses the $1B revenue mark with over 100M toys sold
• Warren Spector wants game developers to think about their legacies
• Nancy Pelosi defends video games on Fox News Sunday
• Path of Exile: Crowdfunding that isn’t following the Kickstarter crowd

Mobile News:

• Maybe social games are the cure for the Valentine’s Day singles
• From tabletop to digital: Why people are paying $500 for a game that’s not out yet
• New smartphone shooter The Drowning hopes to improve first-person controls on touch devices
• Everyplay lets you brag in mobile-game replay videos with FaceCam
• Playnomics launches PlayRM monetization and analytics for mobile
• Call of Duty alum Robert Bowling announces new iOS and Android tactical strategy game
• Leanplum creates A/B testing for small mobile game developers
• Activision dates Black Ops II Revolution map pack for PlayStation 3 and PC
• Fingerprint is a safe multiplayer gaming platform for kids using mobile devices
• Microsoft opens a Los Angeles Xbox entertainment studio for next generation
• Nomad Games seals deal with Thumbstar to publish Talisman on mobile
• Uzbekistani startup Spair plans to bring OnLive-like streaming technology to smartphone games

Reviews:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t the Aliens sequel you wanted (review)

Previews:

• Darkstalkers Resurrection is a detailed re-creation of the arcade experience (preview)
• Anatomy of a monster: Dissecting the beasts of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (preview)

Interviews:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines dev discusses the highs and lows of triple-A development (exclusive)
• With $7.7M raised via crowdfunding, Chris Roberts makes his sci-fi game in the public eye (interview)
• How much choice did the player really have in The Walking Dead? (interview)
• Gaming academic Jesse Schell expounds on chocofication and motivating players to play and pay (interview)
• Origin Stories: How Gearbox got to make Aliens: Colonial Marines

Pieces of Flair: 

• Obama says we need more gamers. Who are we to argue?
• Celebrate Valentine’s Day the gaming way
• University professor schools us on writing good video game poetry
• Show some love with GamesBeat’s gaming valentines
• 18 ridiculous(ly expensive) video game special editions

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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“I enjoyed almost all of your questions,” Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford says with a smile as we conclude our hour-long interview.

Those words from the outspoken Borderlands developer (who is apparently big on magic tricks) have left me wondering which question(s) didn’t go over so well. I always aim to take a tough but fair conversational approach, and Pitchford is particularly hard to read because, as he explains below, he’s almost always happy — to the point where he wonders if he’s “broken” and envies fellow developers who experience more dramatic emotional ups and downs during game development.

But Pitchford does have a lot to be happy about. Publisher 2K Games recently announced that Borderlands 2 has sold over six million copies worldwide, and Gearbox’s next title, Aliens: Colonial Marines, is now out. So I wanted to get Pitchford’s thoughts on a number of topics, most notably the state of triple-A game development and whether the role of publisher has become to help or hinder the creative teams.

GamesBeat: A discussion appeared on Twitter recently about whether the Borderlands 2 character of Tiny Tina was potentially racist. Someone asked lead writer Anthony Burch that if he felt it was inappropriate, would he go back and change his dialogue in the original game? Burch basically replied that it was technically impossible.

Randy Pitchford: You can, but the difficulty of that is –

GamesBeat: Maybe “improbable” is more like it? [Laughs]

Pitchford: And there are some people you’ll never be able to reach, because there’s physical media that’s in a box. It’s not connected to the Internet. There are people playing offline. We care about that guy. There’s nothing we could do there.

GamesBeat: My question is, if there was something larger — in any game, not just Borderlands — like an entire character that was instrumental to the story, do you think it’s worth a studio actually going back and changing it?

Pitchford: If you want to imagine infinite hypothetical scenarios, I bet we can. I’m a reasonably creative person. I’m sure you are, too. I bet we can imagine a scenario where everything should be on the table. I bet we can create a scenario where … “Who cares what is going on? Let’s change this!” Because the scenario we’ve created makes that the right decision. But we’re inventing a scenario. The reality is that it’s unlikely that we can create anything where some outside force would be so significant as to move that immovable object. Everything is on the table.

GamesBeat: I think Mass Effect 3 kind of proves that there are those scenarios, and gamers have — hopefully — started to feel that if they voice their opinions and band together intelligently, they may be able to make a difference.

Pitchford: I thought the Mass Effect 3 thing was really awesome and interesting. In one respect — I will confess, I didn’t finish Mass Effect 3, so I didn’t experience the ending myself. And I didn’t play the DLC. I’m not even sure if it came out yet. But I watched a bit of what was unfolding there. I thought, “Here’s a situation where, clearly, there’s a lot of love for this game. There’s a lot of love for this property, or else there would be no comments about it.

Here’s a situation where customers are saying, “I wanted something and I didn’t get it.” I think that’s a great position to be in if you’re a creator. Customers are saying, “I WANT SOMETHING FROM YOU AND YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN IT TO ME.” Well, fuck, that’s great! I can just give you something, and I already know you want it! Sweet! This is easy! I’ll just create that. Here, you can buy it. The hardest thing in the world is to try to imagine the thing that doesn’t exist yet that we can bet that customers will wish they had. If we can know in advance that they wish to have something, and all we have to do is manifest it, it makes it really easy to commit to manifesting it.

GamesBeat: It’s kind of like how dogs and cats can’t talk, so you never know when they’re sick or where it hurts. They can’t tell you how to fix them.

Pitchford: The fact that we’re increasingly in a world where creators and consumers of what we create can interact and entertain premises that we throw at one another, without necessarily accepting them — they can throw a premise out there and entertain what that would mean for a property or a brand or an experience or whatever. Customers and creators are doing this simultaneously. That’s really neat. The fact that, when we create something and put it into the world. It’s kind of not ours anymore. It becomes the world’s. The world’s position on what it is and what it should be almost becomes more important than whatever the creator imagined.

GamesBeat: Not everyone feels that way.

Pitchford: The old way, you couldn’t have that interaction. That’s why George Lucas happened. He grew up in a time when we didn’t have all these tools and these methods of interacting, but he created something we all passionately loved. It became ours. It was mine. Star Wars is mine, you know? But the creator feels that it’s his. We’re in this world now where because we’re having these interactions and we’re feeling that it works. It’s creating better results sometimes, when we’re interacting and we’re listening to each other. We’re offering stuff, and we’re hearing each other, and we’re letting that affect us. That creates better results than when we keep ourselves in the tunnel. The guy that stays in the tunnel gets punished for that.

GamesBeat: That perfectly segues into my question about the Borderlands 2’s level cap. I maxed out my Commando at 50 about halfway through my second playthrough.

Pitchford: You’re hardcore.

GamesBeat: That was before the game even came out. I didn’t sleep, I had a deadline! [Laughs]

Pitchford: Dude, that’s awesome. I like to hear that.

GamesBeat: And so I completed a quest right after that.

Pitchford: See, you did that before the game came out. Wow. That’s crazy. I don’t want to interrupt you, but I looked at it in December, and in December about 16.5 percent of all people who’ve ever played Borderlands 2 had a single character achieve level 50. I have some new questions from our data mining stuff that I’m going to get an answer to soon. The data is so much. We’re moving in this world where we have to start doing “big data” management. Sometimes we have so much data that to just answer a simple question, we have to dedicate a machine to processing the data and it doesn’t spit out an answer for days.

GamesBeat: Because there’s so much information?

Pitchford: There’s just so much data to parse. We’re collecting everything, but we’re not … it’s just stored as raw chunks of stuff. Google is fast because it can know exactly … it’s not fast because it can look at everything and find the right thing. It’s fast because it’s indexed itself and it knows exactly where to go for any given query. We have everything. We don’t know where the stuff is that we want. We have to look at everything and add up little bits along the way.

GamesBeat: Do you plan to make one of those infographics where it’s like 700 million Bullymongs run over … ?

Pitchford: That would be cool. Maybe we should. Would that be interesting?

GamesBeat: Of course! I love those. It’s good insight.

Pitchford: OK, cool. I’ll toss that up as something we should do. We’ve redone and re-architected the way we’re managing our data. We’re in a big data world, and we never anticipated that we would be. What we kind of did, but we didn’t architect for it, because our Shift stuff, which is the way that … it doesn’t matter which platform you play it on. There’s an interaction between us and the software. That’s a whole new infrastructure. Most people don’t have anything like that. Even the ones that do, they’re like in 1 or 1.5. This is our 1.0. Anyway, I totally derailed. You were going somewhere?

GamesBeat: Right, so I hit level 50, and I completed one quest after that. I got a ton of experience and it just bounced off, because if you hit the cap XP becomes useless. I was like, “Oh, my God. I don’t want to play anymore.” [Laughs] I felt like I’d be wasting my time or wasting that precious XP. I just stopped. I have the season pass, so I’ve downloaded everything, but I haven’t played any of it.

Pitchford: Experience drives toward leveling up. You want that to also be in the loop when you’re experiencing the new campaign content, so you’re holding off on the campaign content until you have that. That makes a lot of sense.

GamesBeat: Partially because I know it’s coming, but I don’t know when. It even says in the achievement, “Capped out … for now.”

Pitchford: Yeah, “for now,” right. That’s a good indicator. We did it in Borderlands one.

GamesBeat: Especially with my Commando, there’s all these skill tree combinations that I want to do that I just need a few more skill points to get to.

Pitchford: That’s by design. Some of those things start to become game-breaking. This has actually created a huge problem for us. We designed the skills really well this time, but we did, for better or for worse, make a lot of the decisions with the knowledge that there will be no more skill points available to put into any trees after you reach level 50. We knew the impossible configurations. Some of the design exploits that. Some of the impossible configurations, if they were possible, would break the game. Sometimes very literally. “Oh, that’s gonna blow memory. Your Xbox will crash.”

We, as customers and gamers ourselves, hear the fans. People want to level up more. It makes sense. We totally get it. We did it in Borderlands 1, so we have the precedent. And we’re gonna break our fucking game if we change the math. If we change it up, who knows what the balance will do? People don’t want to just level up. They also want the game to level up with them. If I’m level 55 and everybody else is level 50, it’s a walkover. I want to get level 55 gear if I’m level 55. I want to fight level 55 enemies. Then we have to make the whole game over again.

It becomes this really “Oh, shit, have we painted ourselves into a corner here?” Yes, the Achievement indicates that some of us, somewhere, wrote that Achievement and anticipated it, just as many customers do, because of the last game. But we’re now in this world where we’re confronting the reality of what it means to do that work, and it’s terrifying and challenging. It’s easy to imagine, when we’re playing the game, “We could just change the number, and everything would be fine.” No, dude, there’s a lot. This is the most fundamental thing about the game. It’s a big deal.

GamesBeat: Are you saying that you used the word “anticipated.” But you didn’t map it out much ahead of time?

Pitchford: No. When we finished Borderlands 2, everything that we imagined was in Borderlands 2. Once that was finished, OK, now what do we do? We had just started asking ourselves, “OK, do we want to level up some more?” All of us do. A lot of us have level 50s as well. It’s time to tackle that. We dug in, and we were like, “Oh, shit. This is really hard. This is going to take a lot of time. It’s going to be really expensive. Oh, my God.” And we’ve got all these other priorities and all these other things to do. So we’re in the middle of that. That’s the world we’re living in right now. We’re excited about the goal, both as gamers and as creators. But … I mean, I’m not gonna lie. It’s a big challenge. It’s a big undertaking. It’s not going to just turn on. It’s a thing we have to work ourselves through.

GamesBeat: How do you feel about–

Pitchford: By the way, I don’t know where the story ends, either. We’re in the middle of it. There might be things that aren’t going to work the same way. We might have to radically change the game. We have to think, “What’s more important? Do you we maintain these skills, or do we let people level up? What if we have to change skills?” We shipped the game with this shield that was totally broken.

GamesBeat: The Bee?

Pitchford: Yeah, the Bee. A player that’s spec’d right can just melt the hardest boss in the game solo in like four to five seconds. That’s obviously not by design, right? If you go in, and you can melt Terramorphous in five seconds because you’re using a Conference Call and a Bee shield and you’re spec’d with a Gunzerker for throughput, that’s clearly not any designer’s intent. That’s a bug. That’s the one nerf we’ve ever done, and we got so much rage.

GamesBeat: You nerfed Amp Shields in general, right?

Pitchford: It was a number of related things. The way we had divided up certain effects across weapons … . The shotgun, for example, we did the math wrong. Every single pellet was being affected instead of just the shot. Then, when we fixed it, we did the math wrong again. We did it wrong differently. It’s really complicated stuff, so I forgive us. [Laughter] The intent was beautiful. The intent and the commitment to improve was there. That’s really important. But I’m grateful. We were going fast, too. We do this thing, and we know people want it. It looks right, and it feels right, and we test it, and we deliver it. Then suddenly we’ve got 6 million beta testers. “Oh, we found something.” “Oh, shit, we didn’t see that.” We did a lot of testing, thousands of hours. But we didn’t notice that because the fans have done millions of hours in one day.

GamesBeat: I feel like a lot of people expected the DLC to raise the level cap. That was what they were waiting for, and then it would also help them get more out of the DLC and their season pass.

Pitchford: I think that’s a fair expectation because we did offer a level cap increase in Borderlands 1 in line with the third DLC.

GamesBeat: And then another one after that.

Pitchford: Actually, that one was just detached. We felt like we made a mistake when we attached the level cap increase to the DLC. The second level cap increase in Borderlands 1 was completely detached. You didn’t have to buy a DLC to get it. That was a different kind of mistake. We learned lessons from that step as well. We did fix the earlier mistake, but there are others.

GamesBeat: It’s a Jenga tower.

Pitchford: You try it differently. “Oh, there’s some things with that too.” So we learn. We don’t want to make … . We are taking risks, and we are in uncharted territory very often, especially with this game. It’s a wild game. We haven’t done it before. No one’s done this kind of game before. We will make big mistakes, and we’ll make them often. But I’ll be damned if we want to make the same mistake twice. Our approach on this one is to try not to repeat mistakes we’ve already been aware of, that we’ve already experienced.

At the same time, we don’t want to make new mistakes. They’re inevitable when you do things you haven’t done before. Sometimes you stumble when you push yourself harder and you’re trying to run faster or whatever. We forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up, and keep running. We don’t cry and stop running because we skinned our knee. We definitely do not want to repeat mistakes we made before. Sometimes we trap ourselves. We get painted into corners on things. It’s tricky. But we’re committed to it. But yeah, I think that’s a fair expectation, given Borderlands 1.

[In response to the controversy surrounding Pitchford’s above comments, he confirmed that a level cap increase for Borderlands 2 will be released “this year.”]

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Though not the first, this latest narrative discrepancy was just staggeringly inept. Did the writers each spend the last six years in isolation, only meeting up a few weeks ago to stitch together their disparate ideas?

I’m running through a secret research facility, and I find an audio log with a recorded voice that informs me of the speaker’s dissatisfaction with the electric fence protecting the compound. The barrier doesn’t even have a backup generator, complains the man.

When I reach the control room to turn off the fence, my fellow marine says doing so will trigger the auxiliary power, so I have to disable some couplings first. What? Didn’t I just listen to an audio log complaining that the barrier doesn’t have such a security measure?

This is only one of many internal inconsistencies in developer Gearbox Software’s Aliens: Colonial Marines, which film studio 20th Century Fox has positioned as official canon in the Alien series’ storyline after the events of James Cameron’s much loved Aliens and David Fincher’s largely misunderstood Alien 3. As a slavish retelling of fan-favorite parts from the films, Colonial Marines offers few new ideas of its own, and what it does present is severely lacking in originality and creativity. If you were hoping that Gearbox could recapture the allure of Aliens that so many found lacking in Alien 3, prepare yourself for disappointment.

What You’ll Like

It’s mostly Aliens, all right … mostly
Like Rebellion, the studio that created the first and most recent Aliens vs. Predator games, Gearbox gets many of the small details right with Colonial Marines. The click of the motion tracker, the blaze of the pulse rifle, and the hiss of a stalking alien — these seem straight out of Aliens. The heads-up display has that same low-resolution light blue text from the pilot monitors of the Sulaco, the spacecraft that brought the Aliens team to the recently surveyed world of LV-426. Gearbox has even modeled in both Ridley Scott’s smoothed-headed creature from Alien and Cameron’s ridged one.

But unlike Rebellion’s 2010 release Aliens vs. Predator, something just feels a little … off. While the tracker’s blip sounds right, the device’s onscreen visual indicator uses a series of well-defined circles instead of that amorphous white blob that struck fear into Hudson when he proclaimed, “There’s movement all over the place!” The lack of that iconic alien death shriek is ever-present. The M56 smartgun has no sense of weight. It’s a little weird that my pulse rifle doesn’t hold a 99-round clip.

Rebellion already set expectations of authenticity high by nailing every last detail with tremendous accuracy, so every slight misstep that Gearbox takes is jarring. Colonial Marines keeps falling into a sort of uncanny valley where I feel right at home until the developer messes up one little thing that takes me out of the fantasy of reliving these classic films.

Weapon customization lets you be an ultimate badass
You’ve got your standard issue arsenal from the movie, like the M41A pulse rifle, the M56 smartgun, and the pump-action shotgun for close encounters. Colonial Marines adds several new weapons to this mix, including an assault rifle that fires in short, controlled bursts; a battle rifle that acts as a high-powered sniper’s gun; a tactical shotgun for rapid-fire buckshot, and a submachine gun. Gearbox, though, is not satisfied with static weapons.

Throughout the campaign, you’ll earn experience. With each character level earned, you can unlock new components for the personal armory that you’re hauling on your back. These include swapping out the pulse rifle’s secondary-fire grenade launcher with a shotgun or mounting a laser sight on just about any firearm you have.

Your progression carries over into new campaigns and multiplayer modes. While that affects balance when playing competitively, it also makes replaying the single-player portion a bit more attractive, which Gearbox hopes you’ll do since the highest difficulty, Ultimate Badass, is clearly the intended way to play. Not only are you more fragile, but the entire HUD is gone (and crosshairs, too, making that laser-pointer upgrade worthwhile). You have to judge your armor, health, and ammo levels entirely without any onscreen counters, and that makes Colonial Marines a much more tense and gratifying experience.

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Gearbox Software started production on Aliens: Colonial Marines back in 2007, and after a torturous five-year development cycle pockmarked with delays, layoffs, and more delays, it finally comes out Feb. 12. But it started, like a lot of things do, with a list.

“We’d just finished our first Brothers in Arms game,” says Randy Pitchford, the cofounder of Gearbox Software. After years of playing in other company’s properties — most notably creating side-story games in the Half-Life and Counter-Strike franchises and porting Halo to PC for Microsoft — Gearbox finally took a chance on its own property. Brothers In Arms: Road to Hill 30 was a World War II first-person shooter in a market already over-saturated with World War II first-person shooters.

The risk paid off.

“It was a big success,” says Pitchford, “Sold 3.2 million units — this is 2005, so that’s a lot — lots of 90-plus reviews. So we had all this credibility, all this new experience, and now we had resources.

“We decided we were going to do more Brothers In Arms, and we were also going to create something original that no one else was doing, and that’s what led to Borderlands. The third thing we decided was that we should work with someone else’s property that we liked. It’s fun to create original things, but there’s a lot of awesome stuff in this world that’s just a joy to work with. It’s one of the reasons why we created Gearbox.”

So much awesome stuff, in fact, that picking their targets wasn’t easy. “We put a list together,” says Pitchford. “Brands and properties that it would just be incredible to do something with.”

Blade Runner earned a spot on the list. So did Michael Mann’s Heat, and Pitchford secured a license to adapt Mann’s epic heist film into an epic heist game. “I think there’s value in that set-up, where it’s less about being stealthy and more about the plan. I wanted more of a brute force approach.” Pitchford also wanted to present both sides of the fight — the heavily armed thieves and the police called out in force to stop them.

Heat: The Game never materialized, but Pitchford still had his first choice left. “Aliens was at the top of our list.”

Pitchford’s partner, Brian Martel — who’d put Blade Runner on the list — scored a meeting with the man behind both properties, director Ridley Scott. “They talked about Blade Runner, and they talked about Aliens,” says Pitchford. “During the meeting, Ridley took out his original, hand-drawn storyboards for the film, blew the dust off this book that probably hadn’t been looked at for 15 years, right? They just nerded out together, talking about this universe that Ridley created.”

“Brian discovered all kinds of interesting things,” Pitchford adds. “Things I’d been wondering about for a long time. It really just invigorated us and got us excited, and it also proved that there could be a path to making a game.”

Approaching the talent side definitely provided a geeky thrill, but Gearbox still didn’t have a license, a publisher, or a game. A year later, in 2006, that all changed when an offer came in from an entirely different direction.

“We’d been flirting with Sega for a while and imagining what we could possibly do together,” says Pitchford. Then out of the blue, a Sega rep approached them. “He said he’d been in discussions on the business side for Aliens, and he believed he could make that work out. We were like, ‘Whoa, no way!’”

In an amazingly rare moment of corporate symbiosis, the creative and business angles suddenly aligned and struck a deal. Gearbox got the full go-ahead from film studio 20th Century Fox to build a canon sequel to the movie narratives. Two years after making the list, Aliens: Colonial Marines went forward in 2007, with Mantel directing. Multiple delays would push its development out to nearly five years, but Pitchford’s first pick has finally become a real game.

“It was like a dream come true,” he says.

Aliens: Colonial Marines releases Tuesday for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC with a Wii U port to follow.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Updated at 9 a.m. Pacific with new info about the Walmart exclusive.

A first-person shooter can’t consider itself a man until it has at least four pieces of downloadable content under its belt. It’s a right of passage.

Upcoming first-person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines (due out Feb. 12 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) from developer Gearbox Software is well on its way to manhood with a $29.99 Season Pass that grants gamers access to all four planned DLC add-ons. Without the Season Pass, the combined cost of the four expansions is $50.

For the unaware, Aliens: Colonial Marines is an action game set in the popular Aliens movie universe. It follows a group of United States Colonial Marines as they take on a herd of the galaxy’s most dangerous animal, the Xenomorphs. The game also features a multiplayer game with a variety of modes, including one that allows players to control the titular extraterrestrials.

Gearbox and publisher Sega only detailed the game’s first DLC pack, Bug Hunt, which is due in March. It provides a new multiplayer mode where players cooperate to take on waves of alien hordes. Bug Hunt also adds three new maps based on locations from the multiple Aliens films.

Separately, Sega partnered with Walmart to give free access to the Bug Hunt DLC to anyone who purchases the game at one of the retailer’s stores.

While Gearbox isn’t saying anything about the three other DLC expansions, I hope it bases one of them on Bill Paxton’s character from Aliens. They could call it “Game Over, Man! Game Over!”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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I can, at any given moment, tell you how long before BioShock Infinite releases in months, hours, and minutes. I keep that figure in my head at all times.

No lie, people in the gaming industry get to see and play some of the coolest, most anticipated games long before anyone else does, but generally speaking, that really only applies to the games they’re working on. Unless their desk is in the same building as the development team — and sometimes not even then — they have to sit around and wait just like everybody else.

So we polled a few famous names in the game industry and asked what they were waiting for. Specifically, we asked this: Aside from any project you’re involved in, what game are you looking forward to the most in 2013 and why?

Edmund McMillen, Team Meat (Super Meat Boy, Mew-Genics)

I’m most looking forward to playing The Witness. I was part of beta testing early on and actually asked to no longer be a part because I really wanted to experience the game how it was meant to be played.

Andy Gavin, author (Untimed) and retired cofounder, Naughty Dog (Jak and Daxter)

The Last of Us. I’m not personally involved, but call me twisted — the idea of a teen girl in a postapocalyptic world is pretty cool. And I’m not just talking sticking a girl in there gratuitously; Naughty Dog can be counted on to write a good story and actually deal with the visceral/emotional experience.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu, editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

BioShock Infinite, no doubt. Anyone who picks anything else for 2013 is simply crazy — don’t listen to any of the nonsense coming out of their mouths, ever. The original BioShock is one of the best games of all time, and I can’t wait to be immersed in another imaginative, dreamy (or nightmarish) world by the same developers.

Randy Pitchford, CEO, Gearbox Software (Borderlands 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines)

In just a few days, Ni no Kuni comes out, and I can’t wait! [Hey, Randy, it's out! --Ed.]

Jenova Chen, cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey)

I’m mostly looking forward to Grand Theft Auto V. I’ve seen some online in-game footage that really makes me fantasize about the things you can do in the game. I hope it delivers the fantasy.

Yoshinori Ono, producer, Capcom (Street Fighter IV)

I would have to go with Pikmin 3 for the Wii U! There hasn’t been a new release for this series in a while, so even if there aren’t many changes since the previous iteration, I am definitely looking forward to playing it. Nintendo must have some innovative ways to utilize the Wii U GamePad up their sleeves as well, so that is another thing I will be watching out for.

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If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Bethesda finally announces The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim expansions for the PlayStation 3, Disney shuts down Epic Mickey developer Junction Point Studios, and Rock Star pushes the Grand Theft Auto V release date to Sept. 17.

You’ll also find reviews for Antichamber, Omerta: City of Gangsters, Fire Emblem: Awakening, and Skulls of the Shogun as well as previews for Tearaway, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Serious Sam Double D XXL.

News:

• The DeanBeat: Does it make sense for game developers to publish on the doomed BlackBerry?
• Former chief game designer Brian Reynolds: On Zynga, games, and the future
• Bethesda announces dates for PlayStation 3 Skyrim expansions
• Ubisoft creative director discusses hooking fans again with Splinter Cell: Blacklist (video)
• Sony invites the world to see the future of PlayStation on Feb. 20
• Drone pilots stationed in Afghanistan talk video games in a Reddit AMA
• Splinter Cell’s creative director has the best Minecraft story ever
• Chartboost invites international developers to experience Silicon Valley
• This week in the Nintendo Download: Fire Emblem, Puddle, and The Cave
• Brain-training service Lumosity hits 35M users and is now adding 100K users a day
• Grand Theft Auto V release date delayed to Sept. 17
• Nintendo president: No price cut for Wii U
• EA’s top executives paint the game industry’s grim picture — and how new consoles will change it
• EA’s CEO makes a passionate response on game violence controversy question
• Dishonorable discharge? EA removing Medal of Honor from release rotation
• Electronic Arts delays Insomniac’s Fuse beyond April
• Origin has 39 million users (and 4 other surprising numbers about EA)
• U.S. senator: ‘I think video games [are] a bigger problem than guns’ — and other out-of-touch old dudes
• EA narrowly beats expectations for holiday game sales
• Anti-censorship group: Massachusetts removing games from rest stops is ‘constitutionally problematic’
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist has side missions and may ship without a main menu
• Black Ops II’s in-game live-streaming feature adds support for Twitch
• FanDuel raises $11M for daily fantasy sports contests
• Nintendo reports a thin third-fiscal-quarter profit and sells 3M Wii U consoles in first season
• Zynga’s chief game designer, Brian Reynolds, resigns
• Sony harnesses the power of the Internet to promote Planetside 2
• Aksys Games to release HD version of Muramasa: The Demon Blade for PlayStation Vita
• EA DICE is porting Frostbite engine to Mac (Update)
• League of Legends Season 3: Taking the ‘e’ out of e-sports
• Disney closes Epic Mickey developer Junction Point Studios (updated with comments from Warren Spector)
• Crytek picks up some former Darksiders developers for a new Austin-based studio
• Experience earned in Gears of War: Judgment demo carries over to final game
• DICE Summit to open with J.J. Abrams and Gabe Newell

Mobile News:

• Open-source social-mobile games platform OpenKit goes into closed-beta test
• Temple Run 2 hits 50 million downloads in 2 weeks
• Memorabilia company Steiner Sports partners with SportsPicker to gamify its marketing
• PlayPhone signs up more developers for its mobile social gaming network
• Layoffs at Disney-owned studios could signal increased focus on mobile and social
• Mobile game monetization startup PlayHaven’s new COO: ‘There is life after Google’
• Google Play revenue growing 10X faster than Apple’s iOS app store
• Google Play and Apple app store sales increasingly dominated by Japan, Korea, and China
• Epic Games finally releases Epic Citadel on Android

Interviews:

• How Ubisoft’s designers transformed Sam Fisher into a ‘panther’ and a leader in Splinter Cell: Blacklist (interview)
• The Final Fantasy franchise’s future hinges on Lightning Returns (interview)
• Why developer teamPixel is making a bid for the Homeworld series (interview)
• Gearbox CEO: ‘Invoking the legacy’ for Aliens: Colonial Marines
• From the ashes of THQ: Left 4 Dead developer ‘super excited’ to work with 2K Games (exclusive interview)
• Life after Epic: Getting to know Cliff Bleszinski (exclusive interview, part three: his opinions on shooters)
• Former KingsIsle VP and creative director Todd Coleman on what’s next for him (exclusive interview)

Previews:

• Tearaway is a digital love letter to physical paper (hands-on preview)
• Splinter Cell: Blacklist lets you play like a ghost, a gunman, or a panther (preview)
• Injustice: Gods Among Us is not a reskinned Mortal Kombat (hands-on preview)
• Serious Sam Double D XXL’s multiplayer is like insane sour cream on crazy-ass nachos (hands-on preview)

Reviews:

• Calling all game developers: You need to play and learn from Antichamber (review)
• Omerta: City of Gangsters brings an authentic yet rough mobster experience (review)
• Fire Emblem: Awakening is one of the deepest and best 3DS games (review)
• Skulls of the Shogun is a balanced turn-based tactics game with clever writing (review)

Community Spotlight:

• Cubicle culture and the potential of indie games to tell stories differently
• Developer responsibility: What’s missing from video game violence
• Should Wii U owners demand more GamePad-friendly ports?
• The extremes people go to when hunting down Achievement points

Pieces of Flair:

• Required listening: Ni no Kuni, Anarchy Reigns, and an interview with Aliens: Colonial Marines composer Kevin Riepl
• Evoland shows how action-adventure games have matured, without the boring history lesson
• Dude blasts through Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 in about 4 minutes
• Surgeon Simulator 2013 shows the frightening real-world discrepancy between knowledge and experience
• This is what a 2,800-strong space battle in Eve Online looks like (gallery)

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Game music isn’t all chirpy chip tunes or sweeping symphonic movements. Just like film scores, soundtracks inspire us, scare us, and can even bring us to tears with a well-placed melody or a jarring action cue.

Because of this, I decided it was time we start paying attention to music as well as the people lovingly creating it. Try playing through Final Fantasy VII, Borderlands, or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim with the sound turned off. None of these are even half as good without their scores subtly shifting tone and setting scenes around us.

Each month, I’ll take you on a guided tour through some of the notable albums released in the last few weeks and interview a composer on an upcoming project.

This month, we’ll take a look at Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, DmC: Devil May Cry, and Anarchy Reigns. We’ve also got an in-depth interview with Aliens: Colonial Marines composer Kevin Riepl.

January albums

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch
Composer: Joe Hisaishi

It’s a bit disheartening that many Japanese role-playing games these days are moving away from jaunty adventuring tunes. Long-time Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi’s score for Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch delightfully combines the orchestral bombast found in older Final Fantasys and Dragon Quests with his own playful melodies.

Hisaishi’s music enhances the overall Ghibli quality to Ni No Kuni. You could use the studio’s art style and even the same story with any other composer’s work but it wouldn’t retain that feeling that you’re diving into a Miyazaki film. With Hisaishi’s help, Ni No Kuni gets a little extra sprinkle of magic in an already fantastic adventure.

DmC: Devil May Cry
Composers: Noisia and Tom Colvin

This is probably the least comfortable soundtrack I’ve listened to in many years. DmC: Devil May Cry leans heavily on pulsating and grating dissonance with an occasional burst of tinny orchestral melody.

Dutch electronic group Noisia took a step away from their signature drum ‘n’ bass for most of Devil May Cry and focused instead on a grungy and oppressively synthetic wall of noise.

Fans of dubstep insisting on “dirty” bass drops will likely enjoy the soul-vibrating nastiness to the bass lines in “Mundus Theme” and “Lilith’s Club.” Dubstep is already an overplayed addition to most games, but Noisia’s attempts fit it into Devil May Cry’s overall tone and maintains a feeling that the world is constantly shifting between reality and Limbo.

Anarchy Reigns
Composers: Compilation

I dare you to not want to kick some ass after listening to Anarchy Reigns. Every song drips with that “hardcore” sound Sega established in Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi in the late ’90s, but here it updates it for a more hip-hop-aware world. Fat beats and heavily repetitive lyrics deliver a perfect one-two punch for tireless combos and horrible acts of digital violence.

Nothing about Anarchy Reigns is particularly classy or subtle, so it stands to reason that the music glorifies vengeance and thuggish braggadocio. Spending a few minutes with “Kill ‘Em All” and “Laughing at U” will almost certainly make you put on some gloves and destroy a punching bag.

Unlike Ni No Kuni and Devil May Cry, Anarchy Reigns’ music is always in your face like an overzealous hype man urging you to feel the beat.

Well, it worked. Excuse me while I go to the gym.

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A recent article on Destructoid brought up a good point about developers who don’t plan to port multiplatform titles to Nintendo’s Wii U console because they can’t figure out ways to make the games special enough for the GamePad controller. Consider it recommended reading for the new Wii U owners wondering what the hell is up with most of the spring releases apparently skipping the system, but the article’s main thrust is that the GamePad, despite its attention-grabbing touch screen, is still just a controller.

Two developers now — Gearbox Software and Crystal Dynamics — have explained that they didn’t move forward with Wii U versions of Borderlands 2 and the reboot of Tomb Raider, respectively, because they couldn’t work in some kind of “wowza” factor with the GamePad. This is particularly strange in Gearbox’s case because it did find that hook for the Wii U version of the upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines.

I find the “Wii U’s GamePad is just so special that we couldn’t find a worthy use for it” argument not only condescending but also intellectually dishonest. No one bought a Wii U last November because the only way people want to play video games is with shoehorned-in touch controls. I think Wii U owners would be psyched about getting Tomb Raider on the console, not bummed that they couldn’t use the touch pad to tickle Lara Croft onscreen.

Honestly, all it would take to sell me on a Wii U version of a game is to make it fully playable on the GamePad. That way, when my wife turns on a three-hour block of Say Yes to the Dress, I can pick up and play on the other side of the couch.

So what’s really up?

I don’t expect an answer from the PR machines on this, but any Wii U owner with a healthy amount of skepticism knows we’re not being told the full story here. My question is, when are gamers going to get mad and organized enough to start demanding some answers or, better yet, ports of these missing games?

An online petition for Tomb Raider on Wii U is live and, as of this writing, has 23 signatures. I also found at least one forum with rumblings about a petition for Borderlands 2 on the Nintendo platform. It doesn’t seem like anything too serious is coming together yet — nothing on the level of an Operation Rainfall, which successfully petitioned imports for three Japanese role-playing games on the Wii.

Maybe the majority of Wii U owners just don’t care. Nintendo is following its own trajectory in the industry. While that may not bear fruit with every multiplatform game on the market, it will generate some unique titles over the course of the console’s life span.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In an early deleted scene from James Cameron’s genre-defining film, Aliens, Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) assures Lieutenant Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) that he “and my squad of ultimate badasses will protect you!” Unaware that he’ll spend most of the movie as a blubbery, terrified mess, Hudson even tells her how. “We got tactical smart missiles, phase-plasma pulse rifles, RPGs — we got sonic-electronic ball breakers! We got nukes, we got knives, sharp sticks!”

And the team at Gearbox Software got to put all of it into their upcoming bug hunt, Aliens: Colonial Marines (releasing February 12 for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, with an undated Wii U port following). Even the sharp sticks “are represented,” according to Gearbox co-founder and chief executive Randy Pitchford.

It’s a level of granularity not often seen in previous attempts to do the franchise right. But as a 20th Century Fox-approved, canon sequel to Cameron’s film, the team at Gearbox had to step up and make an Aliens game that hit you in the gut exactly like an Aliens movie could. That meant “invoking the legacy” of the films, as Pitchford put it, and then applying that source material to the game.

“To the extent that we’re capturing what was in the movies, it’s really fantasy fulfillment,” says Pitchford. “Every time we saw the colonial marines and thought about how awesome they are, how badass they are, how cool their equipment is, and how gnarly that situation was — and even the specific environments like the Sulaco, and Hadley’s Hope, and the derelict ship from Alien — those were fantasies we wanted to fulfill. Sometimes it’s the script and narrative. Sometimes it’s experiential.”

It’s not easy to deliver on those fantasies when you consider the movies offer very different experiences. “Even in Aliens, which is mostly an action movie, there’s a bit of a monster-in-the-house scenario,” says Pitchford. “Here’s a group of guys. Some of them are going to get it. Who’s going to get it next?”

So while Colonial Marines isn’t short on straight-up fights, it also picks up and incorporates the survival-horror elements found in the movies. Making Colonial Marines its own stand-alone story gave Gearbox opportunities to keep the “who gets it next” tension high and turn that horror vibe into a gameplay experience.

‘The first time I faced off against one of the new species that’s introduced, I felt scared,” says Pitchford. “It’s less about brute force and rushing at you and dying. It’s more a stealthy hunter. And when you first encounter this thing, you’re vulnerable. I did not know where it was, and I could hear my motion tracker pinging. And that sound the motion tracker makes? It’s like, ‘Oh shit!’ I feel I’m one of the guys in the movie.”

That eerie motion tracker ping — science fiction’s version of the Jaws theme — doesn’t hurt with building atmosphere, either. On the Wii U port, it even appears on the GamePad screen. Players will hold it up to find their targets just like the marines do.

Gearbox also had to build out other iconic gear like the M56 Smart Gun — made from a German heavy machine gun and mounted on a steadicam unit. “The HUD of the smart gun is cool,” says Pitchford, referring to a targeting system hinted at in the movie but never actually seen. “This is what they were looking at through that eyepiece. This is why it’s called a smart gun. It’s actually helping me to aim.”

But to really build out the marines’ universe, they had to figure a few things out, starting with a few of Hudson’s throwaway lines.

“You’re thinking, ‘What’s a sonic-electronic ball breaker?’” says Pitchford. “We had to think about what that would be and create it. OK, it’s probably an acronym for S.E.B.B., so sonic-electronic B.B. — what would the B.B. be? What’s the actual name that would make the marines nick-name it that?”

“Oh, well, it’s probably a bouncing betty,” says Pitchford, citing the famous trip-mines that spring off the ground and detonate right about at crotch height. “We felt like geniuses. What else could it be? Well, it was just some improv Bill Paxton did for all we know.”

Unfortunately, Pitchford didn’t get to ask Paxton in person. But after pulling together the right tempo and toys, he hired the right talent. Gearbox wanted to ice its cake with an extra layer of authenticity, so it brought in actors like Michael Biehn (Cpl. Hicks), Al Mathews (Sgt. Apone), and William Hope (Lt. Gorman) to perform voice work, though not always as their original characters. One, however, did reprise his Aliens role.

“And seeing Lance Henricksen as Bishop!” Pitchford gives in to the pure geeky thrill of it. “Bishop’s back! Holy crap! There’s Bishop! I’m spending time with Bishop! This is happening! We’re making an Aliens story here! A real one!”

“It’s moments like those that get you,” says Pitchford.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Remember all the way back in January, when we looked at all the games that were coming out in 2012 and thought, “Holy crap! This is going to be the Best Year Ever (for gaming)™!” Well, this is December, and some of us are looking back to those wide-eyed, optimistic past versions of ourselves and wondering why they ever looked forward to some of the stuff we got in 2012. Sure, some of those anticipated titles lived up to our expectations, but in a lot of cases, that optimism was just the first step on a journey of regret and nonstop head shaking.

Here are some of our picks for the most disappointing games and events of 2012.

Assassin’s Creed III

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Occasionally, a little time and distance softens the heart, and you remember things more fondly than what you actually felt at the time. I, on the other hand, despise Assassin’s Creed III more now than when I gave it a midrange score back in October. Oh, my man-love for its naval missions continues unabated, but I indulge in those behind the back of the main game and its sloppy mechanics, frustrating chases, and worthless side missions. I’m gratified that it doesn’t whitewash our nation’s origins as some altruistic crusade for peace and freedom (often spoken of in earshot of working slaves), but Creed “concludes” its overarching, modern-day plot with a firm middle finger to its most loyal fans. At least it finally settled one lingering question: Desmond is indeed as pointless and useless a diversion as we always suspected.

The delays

Contributing editor Stephanie Carmichael

Most of the games I was looking forward to all year are now coming out in 2013. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (or whatever we’re calling it now) are the handful I’ve been most itching to play. Other titles like South Park: The Stick of Truth, Devil May Cry, and Aliens: Colonial Marines have experienced delays as well. I guess I can’t complain too much. More time in development means a better chance of getting these games right, but it also means I’ll be burning a big hole in my wallet come spring.

Capcom continues to lock content in game discs

Contributor Samir Torres

F*** you, Capcom!

Twisted Metal’s online multiplayer

Intern Giancarlo Valdes

As a huge fan of the Twisted Metal games since the original PlayStation days, I was ecstatic when I finally got my hands on the PS3 reboot earlier this year. The folks at developer Eat Sleep Play did a fantastic job of bringing its unique brand of vehicular combat to a new generation of consoles with its campaign mode, and playing these levels with a friend in local multiplayer was fun, too. But going online was a different story: Starting from launch day and lasting for weeks, a host of problems made it almost impossible (for me at least) to stay connected to a match. The developers deployed various updates to fix these problems, but I had already moved on.

Disney Epic Mickey 2

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

After hearing, yet again, legendary designer Warren Spector’s “big picture” idea of games needing to be open-ended, with multiple paths, as well as not judging players for their “playstyle,” I really think this game was a huge disappointment. It changed very little from the first installment and was just another mess of control, camera, and barely comprehensible storyline. As with most things disappointing in life, the real problem was going into it with such a high set of expectations.

Endless Space

Copy editor Jason Wilson

We saw a couple of space-themed 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) strategy titles this year (Genesis Wars, Legacy of Pegasus, the final “all clear” for Sword of the Stars II). But the one that many space strategy fans were looking forward to was Endless Space, a game that turned out to be style over substance. Endless Space sports a good-looking user interface and some kick-ass ship designs, but it commits one of the biggest errors that any single-player strategy game can make: The A.I. isn’t good at its game. Your foes don’t do a good job of using its systems — like combat — against you, ultimately providing a limited challenged against a skilled player. And for the demanding fans of strategy games, this is a tactic that just doesn’t work.

Mass Effect 3′s ending

Intern Jason Lomberg

From an artistic standpoint, my biggest disappointment was that developer BioWare pulled a George Lucas and “fixed” the ending. That’s not how it should work — you don’t “fix” art.

A piece of art represents the succinct vision of its creator. It’s also a product of its time and, therefore, a cultural artifact. The best films – like Star Wars – engender a certain timeless quality, but even so, it’s not hard to discern that Lucas’s masterpiece reflects the norms and attitudes of the ’70s. By mucking with his own creations to “update” the special effects or modify story elements, Lucas is destroying a piece of history. This is why fans reacted so negatively to Star Wars: Special Edition (and the innumerable “updates” before and since), and it’s why BioWare should not have changed the Mass Effect 3 ending. For gaming to take its rightful place among other artistic media, it shouldn’t be so malleable and subject to “revision.” Numerous gamers took issue with the game’s ending – and I’d be hard-pressed to disagree – but we should criticize ME3 as a piece of art, not a software program that its makers can patch. We should analyze the creator’s vision and not treat it like a technical glitch.

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation

Intern Mike Minotti

I was excited to have a real Assassin’s Creed experience on a portable system, and I was hoping that such a game could be a great showcase for the PlayStation Vita. Sadly, Liberation was a boring, uninspired slog through the bog hampered by technical problems and an empty open world.

Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Intern Evan Killham

Developer Level-5′s series of puzzle-driven adventure games sold me both a Nintendo DS and a 3DS. I love everything about them: the full-on animated cutscenes, the stories, and even the bizarre idea of a universe in which brain-teasers work as a sort of social currency. But I’m not sure what happened with the franchise’s fifth installment. The plot and style are as good as ever, but the riddles in this one are inexplicably obtuse at times (I’m convinced that one challenge’s “clever” solution is not a valid answer to the setup) and blatantly not puzzles at others. A maze, for example, is not a puzzle by my definition, and this Professor Layton contains several of them.

Miracle Mask is the first Layton game that has felt like a chore.

XCOM’s lack of longevity

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

A game about saving the world from an alien invasion is probably beyond cliché at this point. You’d think that such a premise would doom the entire experience to a single playthrough, never to be touched again. But this wasn’t the case with the original X-Com strategy games, where I felt like anything could happen at any time. My first encounter could be the extraterrestrial menace terrorizing an urban populace or a dogfight with high-flying UFO that segues into a ground assault or even a struggle for survival within the supposedly safe confines of my only operational headquarters! Add in a healthy dose of pseudo-randomization, and X-Com felt fresh over and over no matter how many campaigns I played.

But Developer Firaxis’ recent reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, unfortunately starts to feel all too similar all too quickly. Even during your first game, you’ll see the same premade maps again and again. Some missions feel scripted (even featuring monster closets!) and like long, narrow hallways (I don’t ever want to play the final stage again because it’s such a boring slog). I’m convinced that Firaxis doesn’t really want me to play another campaign, which is crystal clear because the game forces me to listen to the same unskippable explanatory voiceovers with every new start.

After well over 100 hours, I’m just about done with XCOM. And it shouldn’t have been this way.

Zynga’s belly-flop

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Zynga was supposed to be the next big thing in gaming, but then it flopped … hard. Its stock became the joke of the industry (currently: $2.39, down from $9.50 at the initial public offering and a peak of $14.69 back in March, and rather than make a bunch of new Silicon Valley millionaires, it had to lay people off. Not many people are rooting for the company that regularly spams Facebook walls. But when the guys leading the charge for social gaming fails that badly, it’s a very bad sign for the health of the business as a whole.

Nearly everything Resident Evil

Intern Jasmine Rea

This year, I found myself sympathizing with legions of Sonic the Hedgehog fans because at our core, we are far too loyal for our own good. Like them, I go into every Resident Evil game with the same naive hope that the series isn’t spiraling the drain. Operation Raccoon City and Resident Evil 6 were nearly enough to make me give up on playing any console-based entries in the series. Poor execution, tedious gameplay, and wretched quick-time events have finally broken me. I’ll go into 2013 with a dull ache for another Resident Evil: Revelations, but I doubt I’ll get that.

Will I buy the inevitable Resident Evil 7? Of course I will, and that’s why gin exists.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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While Gearbox Software celebrates the release of the critically acclaimed Borderlands 2 this week, GamesBeat sat down with CEO Randy Pitchford’s unofficial stunt double, John Mulkey, to talk about the studio’s other big shooter. Mulkey is the design director for the long-in-development Aliens: Colonial Marines, which is set for a February 12 street date next year, If being the canonical sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens film wasn’t a lofty enough responsibility, Gearbox is also promising to make Alien 3 a better movie. What wizardry do they wield?! Find out below.

John Mulkey

GamesBeat: I have to ask: Do people often mistake you for Randy Pitchford?

John Mulkey: Yes, all the time. People that work at the company, even. I was upstairs, and there was … Christine is the person who does our financials and all that kind of stuff. I’m walking along, and she looks at me and says, “This is a different look for you.” And I’m like, “Who do you think I am?” And she says, “Oh my God, you’re not Randy.’ No, I’m not! So even people who have worked with Randy for years mistake me for Randy. It’s just weird.

Randy Pitchford

GamesBeat: Do you guys ever mess with new hires or anything like that?

Mulkey: We haven’t done anything like that yet. My concern about what’s happening is I’m going to be the guy who gets assassinated, like the body double who gets shot. That’s gonna be terrible.

GamesBeat: You’re his Keira Knightley.

Mulkey: [Laughs] Yeah.

GamesBeat: Okay, we should probably talk about the game.

Mulkey: Why not? We’re here. We came all this way.

GamesBeat: This game’s actually been in development for a while, and some speculate that it’s been caught in development hell. Did it go through hell?

Mulkey: All development is hell. [Laughs] I hate to burst your bubble. But, no. … It was basically put on hold for a little while. There was a period of time when we weren’t doing anything with it because we were focused on other things. Then we came back to it and pushed on it hard. Now we’re finishing it up.

GamesBeat: For the old PC version, the one by Monolith. …

Mulkey: I used to work there. They did Aliens Vs. Predator 2. Rebellion did AVP, and then Monolith did AVP2, then Rebellion came back and did another game and called it AVP, just so it would be all nice and clear.

GamesBeat: Right, right. So the first two on PC were actually really good. They were very well-received.

Mulkey: Yeah, they were pretty good.

GamesBeat: And it seems like we’re getting that same kinda flavor again here.

Mulkey: Yeah. Well, this one. … This doesn’t have the “P” in it. This is entirely the Aliens universe and the Colonial Marines. This is the sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens film. There’s not the whole Predator crossover thing. This is the canonical sequel to that story. So it’s a little different.

GamesBeat: You’ll play as both Aliens and Marines?

Mulkey: You’ll only play as Aliens in the competitive game. The campaign is very much a narrative campaign. It’s a story.

GamesBeat: Do you feel like you have no narrative to tell from the Alien’s view?

Mulkey: Oh, no. You could do all sorts of stuff with that. That’d be awesome. It’s just that we wanted to focus…we got the opportunity to make the sequel to James Cameron’s film. The sequel that fans of the films always wanted to see. So that’s what we embraced. “Yes, please, we will do that.” The idea that we get to be official is awesome. This isn’t just us running off and telling some goofy story. This is all fully sanctioned by Fox, and they’re involved. If any other films are made, they can take advantage of what we’ve done with this storyline. We’re doing some very cool stuff. I can’t spoil it, but we’re doing some really cool stuff. If we pull it off right, we’re going to make Alien 3 a better movie. Which is pretty sweet.

GamesBeat: Well, good luck with that.

Mulkey: [Laughs] I’m not saying it was a bad movie. … Not saying it was a bad movie. But we’re gonna make it even cooler.

GamesBeat: Was James Cameron involved at all?

Mulkey: He has not been involved. But we got together with Ridley Scott. Brian Martel, the creative director for our project, got to go meet with Ridley and sit down and talk with him. Ridley pulled out his original script from Alien and was thumbing through his original storyboards, where he had all his markups and everything. He talked to him about it, which was pretty sweet. Totally jealous he got to do that. But he was getting some insight into the perspective of the Alien and that kind of thing, which was really cool.

And we got some other guys. We got Syd Mead involved. He’s a concept guy, a futurist. He designed Blade Runner and Tron. He also designed the Sulaco for the Aliens film. We contacted him, because we’re like, “We want to go back on the Sulaco. We want to be official, but we want to take them places that weren’t seen in the film. You’re the guy that designed it. What do you say?” So he got involved. That was pretty cool.

GamesBeat: Gearbox has a pretty wide-reaching sense of humor in all your games, for the most part. Will Colonial Marines have some of this, or is this arguably the darkest game you guys have done?

Mulkey: I would say that we haven’t put any over-the-top humor in it. But it is a drama, you know? And a bit of a horror story. Life is funny, but life isn’t a comedy. It’s that kind of thing. There’s going to be humor in the adventure that you’re going on. But Claptrap isn’t gonna show up and start cracking wise or anything like that.

GamesBeat: I guess Brothers in Arms also wasn’t very funny.

Mulkey: No, it wasn’t very funny. This was probably funnier than that. I don’t know. …

GamesBeat: Like Bill Paxton funny, but not. …

Mulkey: Right. It’ll be more the camaraderie kind of stuff. That mystique of the Marines. The Colonial Marines that James Cameron created.

GamesBeat: The multiplayer modes in single-player narrative-driven games, a lot of times they feel tacked on. Yager Development just got done saying that 2K shoehorned the multiplayer into Spec Ops and made it a much worse game. What can players expect on the multiplayer side? What have you done to make it a whole experience on its own?

Mulkey: Well, we’ve taken an interesting approach. We’ve got our campaign, which is co-op, so you can play with your friends through the campaign. Then you can play through the competitive multiplayer aspect of it. We have an overarching metagame that crosses between the two types of gameplay. You can go into campaign and be gaining rank, unlocking upgrades, purchasing upgrades, and then jump right into a competitive game with all of that and all of your customizations. Then you can rank up there some more and jump back into the campaign. You can go fluidly between the two different kinds of gameplay, which is pretty cool, I think. It helps to tie them together.

GamesBeat: At the same time, though, couldn’t you level up all the way through single-player, then jump in and immediately dominate multiplayer?

Mulkey: We’ve got some checks and balances in place to make it so that it doesn’t become an unbalanced game that way. Yeah, that’s a huge concern. It was a huge challenge to us, trying to accomplish this. Typically it’s separate. A lot of games will have their narrative that’s a completely separate game from their competitive. The competitive has the upgrade path and all that stuff. We wanted to have it so that you’re a Marine, that’s who you are, and you share that across the game. It was pretty cool.

GamesBeat: Playing as the Aliens, will it be more like Left 4 Dead, or will it be more like Dead Space 2?

Mulkey: It’ll be Aliens: Colonial Marines. [Laughs] It’s pretty fun. You really start to find yourself playing the role of the Aliens that you’ve seen in the film. It’s kind of awesome to watch people come in who have not touched the game, and you hand them the controller and say, “Hey, go be an Alien.” Very quickly, you watch them become the Alien from the films. They realize very quickly that running into all of the bullets is not going to be the best way to play. They start working together as a pack and setting up ambushes. Using the ceilings. All this stuff. Really hunting and stalking their prey. Trying to break the Marines up so they can’t stick together.

They’re very strong together, but they’re in trouble when they’re all by themselves. That’s really awesome. It’s cool to see, because people are very much getting in touch with what the game’s about and embracing the mechanics and having a great time. They’re going right into these roles. It’s been really successful. Really fun so far.

John Mulkey image via x360a.org / Randy Pitchford image via Dual Shockers

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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This morning, Nintendo finally announced the price and launch date for its upcoming Wii U video game console as well as its new TVii feature that lets you use it as a Netflix/Hulu/Tivo/whatever box. Of course, you can also play video games on the Wii U, and we have the complete list of the system’s launch window games, as well as screenshots of many of them.

The Wii U console is in stores Nov. 18, with the basic version costing $300 and the deluxe $350; for specifics on each package, see our story from this morning.

Now, the system’s “launch window” extends from when the Wii U comes out all the way until March of next year. That means a few of these might not actually be available in 2012, but Nintendo still includes them in the “launch window.” It makes sense if you try not to think about it too much.

Either way, check out the list and gallery below to see all of the games you’ll be playing on your hot new Wii U … at some point within the next six or seven months.

• Funky Barn
• NBA 2K13
• 007 Legends
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Transformers Prime
• Wipeout 3
• Skylanders Giants
• Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts 2013
• Rapala Pro Bass Fishing
• Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
• Rise of the Guardians: The Video Game
• Ben 10: Omniverse
• Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade
• Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two
• Mass Effect 3
• Madden NFL 13
• FIFA Soccer 13
• Trine 2: Director’s Cut
• Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien
• Zumba Fitness Core
• Jett Tailfin
• Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Wii U Edition
• Tank! Tank! Tank!
• Nintendo Land
• New Super Mario Bros. U
• Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge
• Sing Party
• Lego City: Undercover
• Wii Fit U
• Game & Wario
• Pikmin 3
• The Wonderful 101
• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
• Nano Assault Neo
• Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper
• Darksiders II
• Wheel of Fortune
• Jeopardy!
• Toki Tori 2
• Assassin’s Creed III
• Just Dance 4
• Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth
• Rabbids Land
• ESPN Sports Connection
• Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2013
• ZombiU
• Rayman Legends
• Scribblenauts Unlimited
• Game Party Champions
• Batman: Arkham City — Armored Edition

The gallery is below, but if you prefer your pictures to move and have sound, take a look at these Wii U launch trailers.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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If you’re a journalist who hits enough behind-closed-doors appointments at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, someone will offer you something. Maybe just a bottled water. Possibly an art book. Almost certainly a USB hub that transforms into a USB robot (nope, not making that one up). Swag is the universal language of E3, as ubiquitous as booth babes and banner ads.

Apparel, however, rules the show. Nothing marks status like walking around the L.A. Convention Center with a fairly exclusive — and free — t-shirt nonchalantly draped over your shoulder. And these were the absolute best shirts (plus a few extras) we saw…or took home ourselves.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Borderlands 2 is one of 2012’s most anticipated shooters. It’s developed by Gearbox Software, the same team behind Duke Nukem Forever and the upcoming Aliens: Colonial Marines, but the details about the game have been scarce since last year’s unveiling at PAX Prime.

Not content to wait, GamesBeat caught up with Gearbox Co-Founder & CEO Randy Pitchford, Executive VP & Chief Creative Officer Brian Martel, and writer Anthony Burch to squeeze some Claptrap-related information out of the trio (along with the two pieces of exclusive concept art you see above and below). What is the likable-but-occasionally-diabolical tin can up to these days? What role will he play in the sequel? And most important, can robots love?

GamesBeat: One of the more interesting things that you talked about with Duke Nukem Forever was implementing a “gay robot sidekick,” but you said it didn’t fit with 3D Realms’ original vision for that game. With Borderlands 2 coming up — the Claptraps and everything in that lore — you have the opportunity to re-explore that. Is that something you’re considering?

Randy Pitchford: I was actually at the BAFTA awards when I was asked some questions, and I talked about… What I was joking about, and I thought the implication was a little more clear than how I had made it, but what I was joking about was, Claptrap would be in Duke Nukem Forever. Which of course is not the case. Of course, the idea that a robot can have a sexual identity is kind of an absurd one. But it’s fun to play with that notion.

GamesBeat: But then also the idea that a robot could be an interplanetary–

Pitchford: –ninja assassin, right?! [laughs] It’s a little more likely, actually, than a robot re-creating… Sex is a function of biology, the necessity to reproduce, right? Robots don’t need to reproduce that way. Having said that, this character, Claptrap, has emotions, right? He can feel them, and that’s really interesting. And so what we learn is… Love, harmony… We can divorce that from sex. And we can have people that can have love for one another. It doesn’t matter. Gender, species, or even whether they’re robotic or not I was kinda playing with commentary on that level. But I think people interpreted things differently than what I was expressing. I’ll put that on me. I think I was more ambiguous than I should have been when I was joking around there.

GamesBeat: Claptrap’s dialogue and even his dance moves are inspired by countless pop culture references, but what about Claptrap himself? Where did the idea and his design come from?

Brian Martel: It was pure luck. One of our concept artists, Lorin Wood, posted a quick sketch of him as a joke in a task for another one of our projects we were working on. We all instantly fell in love when we saw it and asked him to do some additional riffs as we could picture him being in the Borderlands universe. The rest was history!

GamesBeat: Is it hard to write for the sequel, knowing how high expectations are for Claptrap to be funny and interesting?

Anthony Burch: It’s a bit more difficult. In earlier drafts of the script, I wrote Claptrap much closer to how he behaves in the web shorts: arrogant, insulting, profane, etcetera. It took a bit of internal discussion, and a couple of rewrites, to put Claptrap in a place where fans who hadn’t seen the shorts wouldn’t be shocked at Claptrap’s sudden doucheitude in BL2, while also making sure that he wasn’t just the exact same guy from the first game. It’s been five years, and Claptrap’s had some hairy stuff happen to him — he’s gotta be a bit worse for wear.

GamesBeat: Who does Claptrap see as his primary competition? Is there any internal aim to have Claptrap be more beloved by fans than GlaDOS or Wheatley, or at the very least, the Companion Cube?

Burch: “Write a character more beloved than the Companion Cube” is number seven on my list of Things That Would Be Awesome and Will Literally Never Happen, right before “play seven minutes in heaven with Tina Fey” and right after “high-five David Hayter while playing seven minutes in heaven with Tina Fey.”

So, no. Speaking personally, that’s never been an aim of mine.

GamesBeat: Aside from the basic Claptraps, there are a number of unique models throughout the original Borderlands: the wooden Jakobs Claptrap in Zombie Island; the hidden claptrap in Fyrestone, and the tuxedoed Claptrap Banker in Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot. What are your favorites?

Burch: I like the Jakobs Claptrap — specifically, the bit where he gets sick of waiting for the player to finish a mission and whines, “stop grinding and get over here, already!”

GamesBeat: Where does a Claptrap go from being an Interplanetary Ninja Assassin? That’s kind of like the pinnacle of any robot’s life, I’d imagine.

Burch: You imagine correctly. Claptrap experienced about as much power as any Claptrap possibly could, and now his situation has totally reversed — he’s hiding out in the middle of nowhere, lonely and bitter at Hyperion for ruining Pandora.

After the robot revolution, the Hyperion Corporation wiped out all the CL4P-TP’s except for our original Claptrap friend. He now seeks vengeance for his race, but he employs humorous and slightly pathetic tactics.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Nintendo has been competing on the gaming front with Sony and Microsoft for years, so it’s a little funny to see the company using footage created for the other consoles. Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 have had strong graphical advantages over Nintendo’s Wii console since its release in 2006, and both the PS3 and Xbox 360 can transmit high-definition images while the original Wii cannot. The Wii U will work in 1080p HD.

The Wii U will be released sometime in 2012. The console features an inventive new touch-screen controller that expands gaming possibilities and interaction. One of Nintendo’s goals with the new system is to expand upon the more casual audience of the Wii by adding stronger third-party support that caters to hardcore gamers.

The three-minute reel for third-party games included footage from THQ’s Darksiders II, Sega’s Aliens Colonial Marines, Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online, Namco’s Tekken, and Tecmo Koei’s Ninja Gaiden 3.

Watch the full reel below:

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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