News Snatch: Bafta Noms, Aliens Wasn’t Developed In-House, Superman And Homebrew Portal DS

Yesterday I was having a little moan about how we could not talk about Aliens: Colonial Marines due to NDAs, even though the game had shipped and reviews were appearing all over YouTube. Later that afternoon the video above appeared and it’s a thousand times worse than anything any games site would write (well, almost).

You can read our thoughts on the game here.

It’s such a shame that what could have been a fantastic game has turned out to be rather useless but perhaps there is a reason for this. According to this post by someone who “used to work at Gearbox” the single player campaign was not developed in-house.

“Gearbox isn’t even making the game, except for the multiplayer. Primary development was outsourced to TimeGate Studios, which has a less than stellar past.” Perhaps that explains why you can run through an entire level on the Hardened difficulty level without firing a single shot.


This year’s British Academy Games Awards nominees (or BAFTAs to you and me) have been revealed and Journey has picked up eight nominations including Best Game.

Also nominated in that category are Dishonored, Far Cry 3, Mass Effect 3, The Walking Dead and FIFA 13  and one of our favourite indie games, Thomas Was Alone, which has picked up three nominations including a nod in the Story category.

Dara O’Briain will be hosting the awards at the Hilton Park Lane, London, on March 5th. Hopefully they’ve forgotton about the incident with Duncan from Blue from a couple of years ago and they might let me attend this year.


Today’s Next Gen Rumour: You will have to keep Kinect plugged in to the Xbox 720 at all times! This is headline news for some reason, even though we expect a new version of Kinect to ship with the next Xbox. Why would you unplug Kinect if it’s part of the shipped product? I don’t look at my studio and think “Hmm, today I’ll disconnect the right monitor speaker just for fun.”


Naughty Dog have posted a number of Valentine cards for you to send to your loved one. They feature characters from Uncharted and The Last Of Us and some truly terribly puns.


RAWR!

Concept art for Dead Nation 2 has surfaced and it shows… dinosaurs? Eh?

Artist Amar Djouad has posted a number of images that were created for Housemarque but they have quickly issued a statement.

“Housemarque would like to clarify the situation regarding recent rumors: Amar Djouad doesn’t currently hold any position within the company. As for the artworks on display, they belong to a discarded batch and are not representative of projects we might or might not be working on.”

“We are flattered by the interest surrounding our future releases, and would like to reassure our fans that official announcements will be made when the time is right.”

Now I know little Kris will be salivating at the thought of some Dino action but this next picture may very well make him explode in puff of pure joy. It appears Housemarque were/are working on a Superman game….

Wow

…and a Walking Dead game.

walkingd


Bioware have announced a Mass Effect themed version of the classic board game Risk. “Oh yes, it’s real, and it’s coming this Fall!” they said on their Facebook page, prompting hundreds of comments including “I guess it’s like normal Risk but when it’s time to decide who won you have three choices and all of them suck… AMIRITE?”


And Finally, a homebrew version of Portal on the Nintendo DS.

10 Comments

  1. Portal DS looks like someone took the original Portal, got a three year old to draw it frame-by-frame and then put it behind one of those obscured glass windows that you get in the bathroom.

  2. Completely forgot about the idea of a Dead Nation 2. Yes please! With or without dino-zombie-saurs. Don’t care!

    • I concur with that, loved Dead Nation!

  3. I don’t know what to think about the whole “Gearbox only made the multiplayer” issue. I mean, Is this just being said so people throw the blame onto the other studio for a poor game instead of laying it at gearbox’s feet?

    If Gearbox didn’t make the single player…why make us believe they did for all this time? Just say who is really making the game…jeez.

  4. Portal DS looks pretty good even if it is a little pixelated. Shows they could do wonders on the 3DS and Vita, if they wanted too which they probably don’t.

    Do they broadcast the GAME BAFTA awards at all or is just a closed viewing affair?

  5. if gearbox didn’t actually make the game, why were they always talking about it as though they were?
    like how authentic it was, though the lack of any playable female marines made the game as authentic as Sean Connery’s russian accent in hunt for red october.

    they got the sounds right but bugger all else it seems.

    i know they made the multiplayer, but then why were they going on about how the storyline is considered cannon?

    i think maybe gearbox should stick to their own ip, borderlands is a really good game, and the sequel is also pretty good, though it’s still badly balanced for solo players.

    maybe they just don’t care as much if they don’t own the ip.

    also, if Age Of Zombies is any indication, and i happen to think it is, zombie dinosaurs would be freaking awesome.

  6. http://www.dsogaming.com/news/sega-aliens-colonial-marines-sp-was-not-outsourced-to-timegate-studios/

    “Playnews – an independent news agency that focuses on the games industry – has informed us about an interesting statement from SEGA’s senior producer, Matthew J. Powers. According to the news, Aliens: Colonial Marines primary development has not been outsourced to TimeGate and Gearbox Software was not responsible just for the game’s multiplayer, Sega of America’s Senior Producer Matthew J. Powers confirmed to Playnews on Tuesday.

    As Powers told Playnews during the Italian Aliens: Colonial Marines’ launch event:

    “Absolutely not, the game has been developed by Gearbox Software. Other studios [like Timegate] helped Gearbox on the production of single and multiplayer.”

    Powers debunked the rumor spread by a forum post made by an alleged former Gearbox member on Texags back in May, stating that the game’s primary development was apparently outsourced to Section 8′s team TimeGate Studios.

    So there you have it everyone, straight from the horse’s mouth. The SP mode was made by Gearbox and the other studios helped the team behind the Borderlands series to complete it. Of course we don’t know how much those studios contributed to it, but fact is that Gearbox is responsible for the SP mode too (and not for only the MP mode).”

    i guess gearbox will have to take responsibility now. o_O

    • Developed by means nothing. Maybe they developed the single player storyline. Maybe they developed the shitty graphics.

      Maybe not.

      • well i usually take “developed by” to mean, made by, at least where software is concerned.

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