Game developer discussion of the week: Gearbox Software

Another mixed bag developer as far as I'm concerned.

Neither are perfect but I like Aliens Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever, and I feel the good parts in both those games far outweigh any odd little minor lesser things one may run into. Sure they may have been different from what was originally promised but at least what was deliver was good enough to be enjoyable, at least in my opinion as I've enjoyed both quite a lot.

About Aliens Colonial marines, despite being one of many who was interested in it from the beginning, and followed the development of it and was initially disappointed by the game we got upon release, after getting hold of the Collector's Edition with the fantastic mech Vs. alien figure and having played the game myself properly (on Xbox 360), blasting away some aliens with my trusty pulse rifle while hearing the beeps of the motion tracker getting louder and more plentiful as I know more of those things are coming to get me, bringing me straight back to playing and absolutely loving Alien Trilogy back in the 90s all over again, I can safely say I'm glad Colonial Marines was as good as it turned out to be, because it could've been infinitely much worse.
As it stands it has some minor glitches overall that can occur, nothing major in my opinion, and the game gets a bit worse story wise later in the game when some dumb and literally unbelievable stuff happens, but overall I can ultimately live with it and the fun I've had with it have more than made up for any and all of those negative things several times over already.

As for Duke Nukem Forever, I never cared about it during the infamous development hell it went though, as I was never a big fan of the older games to begin with,
so I was very pleasantly suprised when I bought it dirt cheap brand new for both Xbox 360 and PS3, over just how much fun stuff they had packed into it, and it very quickly became my favorite game in that series by a very large margin.
I recently picked up another copy of both versions again, brand new and sealed, because they were on sale and I wanted to, the sale price was so low the posters and stuff included was worth the price alone.

The rest of the games they've been a part of I've either played and not liked or haven't played at all, and the ones I haven't played at all don't seem interesting enough to even try once, so enough said about that.

As far as I can recall, the only game that I haven't played that they've been a part of, that I'd like to at least give a try at some point, is the DS Aliens game.
Not that it seems great or anything, but I'd still like to have played it at least once.. at least enough to actually remember having played it after I'm done with it.
The annoying thing is I have some vague memory of playing it at some point and thinking it was okay, nothing more nothing less, but if I've already played it then I've forgotten about it to such a far degree at this point that I'd pretty much have to play it again anyway to say anything more about it, so whatever, if i come across it cheap enough I may give it a chance now that I own a 3DS that I can also play DS games on.

About Gearbox and the controversy surrounding some of the games they've been part of, lawsuits back and forth and what have you, I don't know enough to say much about it, and since I'll never work with them professionally and they aren't part of many games or franchises I care about, they're a virtually nonexistent blip on my radar a vast majority of the time.

I've never played any of their games, but my introduction to them was back in 2003 when I heard of their PC port of Halo CE, which at the time was considered one of the most significant PC ports ever due to its numerous enhancements over the console original such as exclusive new weapons, multiplayer maps, support for online play, and (in some versions) modding tools. It wasn't a perfect port but the exclusive new additions made it noteworthy in an era full of horrible outsourced PC ports of console titles. Honestly all it was missing was bot support for me to consider it the definitive version of Halo CE. I can't believe it has never been released digitally.

I must admit that most of their other work doesn't interest me, however I would be willing to try their Half Life expansions (Blue Shift and Opposing Forces) and We Happy Few as well. I've heard great things about the Borderlands games but I'm not personally interested in playing them.


Overall they seem like a mixed bag as Armored Core Raven said. Some good games, a few stinkers, and lots of controversial behind the scenes activity in the midst, which is why I was eager to hear the pub's opinion on them as a developer. Has anyone else here played their games? Cervantes winnersdontusedrugs You guys have played the Half Life expansions haven't you?

MeleeMonk - I've played the Half-Life expansions, they're worth it. But besides that, I don't think there was anything by Gearbox that catched my attention, and they surely did some very shady stuff (like the entire Colonial Marines debate).