Mazy

Reminds me of Peri's shooter, only not as cool

It feels like I'm pretty close to the end , but it keeps going on every time I think it's winding down, so at this point it's hard to say. I think playing it in fairly short sessions (just under an hour or close to) is making for a much more enjoyable experience than what I'm hearing from others, however I really have very mixed feelings about this game as a whole. On one hand then it's got some of the most amazing and emergent horror moments I've ever seen in a game and the entire presentation is almost flawless, but like most stealth and horror games then their impact quickly fades when failure and repetition kick in, plus it feels severely padded for length. By far the best part of the game so far has still been the Medical Facility encounter, but the bit leading up to that is on paper pretty cleverly paced, but in execution it is stretched absolutely thin, and while I'd say I have much more patience and give games more chance than anyone I know, then Isolation really tried my patience in it's first 3 hours. It is definitely is the right choice to push the moment when you're finally first introduced to the xenomorph, but it's just done to such an extent that when it finally happened it almost felt a bit anti-climatic for me, even if the encounter itself is pretty brilliantly executed. Anyway, pretty much everything after that up until where I'm at has had a couple of terrific and memorable moments, but it most of it feels unnecessarily stretched for playtime, and I'd go as far as to say that removing 3/4 of all android/human encounters would make for a much better game IMO. Few of these have added anything but filler and frustration, and though I get that the story of Seegson as a failed android manufacturer is important to the overall story that they're trying to tell, then those encounters just always feel like the side dish. And I'm not saying remove everything that's a quiet moment with a narrative focus, it just feels like there's a bit too much fat on this and it would've served CA well if they'd been a lot more critical about what actually got into the game. As for the trial and error nature of the stealth gameplay then that's the reason why I'm often playing in very short bursts, I had 2 evenings of playing the game for roughly 45 minutes each where I actually didn't progress to another save point at all, lols. I've felt pretty fucking dumb after attempting to sneak through an area and playing as it feels like it was intended, standing in the same locker for 5 minutes to wait for the right to move on, and then keep getting caught by the alien just towards the end after playing for 10-15 minutes, and then realizing that running through the same area is often the most effective way to progress. Also, when it gives you a bunch of weapons it makes it feel much more comfortable and "enjoyable" for you playing the game, but in turn also makes it feel pretty dull. Pacing wise then it's nice to have that there to break the nonstop feeling of being nearly defenceless, but looking back now then it feels like most of the game has provided you with plenty of weapons, and it's probably at it's weakest when you play it like an action game. Maybe it's because I'm playing it on Normal, but after I got the flamethrower it just took out most of the tension in encounters with the alien and have kinda made it a bit awkward when it finally found me, with a few bursts scaring it off. I'm still playing it as a stealth game since it's a much better game that way, but it feels like a gaping hole in the design that there's so much flamethrower ammo that you can almost entirely hold back the alien. Overall then I do like the game tho, I really appreciate that something like this with big budget exists and it's going to interesting to see how it plays out from now, but it's also a game where I'd love to have seen a much more tight and well considered take on it where there wasn't quite so much fat on it. TL;DR: Game is way too long.

A lot of updates in this thread lately, really cool shit dudes, grats to ya'll~~

Ugh, I was waiting for some twist in that trailer where they flipped it around with it just being some kind of joke but, yeah, guess not.

Hah! That's me

Well, if you go all the way back then I've been here since early 2000 when Mapcore was actually Anarchy Design. I think it was just a search for some Half-Life tutorials that led me to the site, and after returning to the site a few times for some help then I ended up checking out the IRC channel, which I went to whenever I had any problems with some quite friendly folks hanging out there (there were some official CS mappers there too, so starstruck ) Then it kinda fell apart I guess (can't remember the exact reason for it changing or Anarchy Design shutting down) and changed into Mapcore, and I've been here since then. Kinda scary that it's almost 15 years since that first innocent search of mapping tutorials O_O That reminds me, does anyone have any idea what Euro*Brew is up to these days? He was Thrik before Thrik

Love the atmosphere so far, looks and sounds absolutely brilliant, but I haven't been particularly impressed with the pacing and the first bunch of human/android encounters (the very first one where you grab the tuner was pretty terrible to be honest)......but then I finally got the the , and man now I'm totally hooked. They've totally nailed the feel of sneaking around with the motion tracker, shifting focus between that and what's in front of you, even if it ended up with me staying under a bed for like 5 minutes at one point D:

Grats Chris, map looks great~~and great job everybody that submitted maps, all of them looks like they'd be a lot of fun to try out, we really should get a playtest arranged. I'm still a bit frustrated that I didn't get started earlier and find more time to work on my map, but at the very least then I've gotten my UE4 cherry popped Was a lot of fun~

Finished it earlier, would really have loved to see a New Game+ mode where they just beefed up everything and let you use most of your abilities and upgrades from the beginning, or just a harder difficulty option. The last few hours were way too easy and the last real fight was kind of a joke, though all the abilities you unlock are all awesome then it also takes its toll on balancing the difficulty, and as a result I didn't die once in the last 1/4 of the game, which is kinda too bad since that's a large part of what makes it so much fun in the early parts of the game (dying and having captains/random uruks rise the ranks). Still absolutely in love with it tho, definitely the best game I've played so far this year. Gonna try and get a 100% completion in it and try out the Trials of War stuff too

Hah yeah, ignorance is bliss, I don't want to see anything in 60fps to realise what I'm missing

Steady 1080p 30fps on PS4, I've only had one case where the framerate dipped slightly below that when there were something like 50 characters on screen.

Yeah, the first few hours were really easy for me too, but once I started getting in situations where there are multiple captains at the same time + a crowd of 20 going for you then it gets pretty damn brutal, especially when the targets are immune to ranged attacks. The hardest bits I've encountered have been situations where there's been so much shit going on that I didn't notice someone going for the alarm, and then sudden you're just swarmed, but every time I've been so close to taking out my targets that I got greedy and then ended up spending all my last chance saves and died :G It's always a better idea to just hide and start picking them off from higher up, but I always get carried away when there's a huge battle going Once the larger guys that constantly counter and the shield wielding assholes start appearing then it also gets a lot harder. Not that they're hard to deal with on their own, but in the situations where you end up with an entire army after you and you have to counter and dodge every second then it starts getting more tricky in close combat. But that's also what's great about the general dynamic and flow of the game, you can often make things a whole lot easier for yourself if you play it really stealthy, but a head on approach also works, and both are so much fun. Anyway, I'm at the second half now, loving how they mix it up at the halfway point. Mechanically and design wise there's just so much stuff to be excited about, and all the progression stuff has just been perfectly balanced so far. I guess my only complaint so far is that it's also incredibly dense when you start out, theres a lot of button modifiers to remember, and they only keep adding to that, but that's also part of what I like about it, it constantly adds new shit to play around with.

Damn this game is addictive, once it's started up I pretty much can't stop playing it, there's always just another thing you wanna take care of. Played it for 7 hours straight today and could easily have gone for more, so fucking good.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/3/6142209/alien-isolation-review-xbox-one-PS4 http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/03/alien-isolation-review Gah, granted this is only 2 reviews, but this is exactly what I was worried about, sounds like it's really overstaying it's welcome. Sounds like something that would've been perfect for a 3-4 hour game, but that doesn't work for tveepal aeh :G Too bad, might still pick it up for the presentation tho, looks gorgeous. EDIT: Well, it looks like it's bit more polarizing than that. Bunch of 9s og and 8s, gonna pick it up anyway yaaaay lols http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/alien-isolation

It still pisses the hell out of me every time I buy a new game this generation and the price in the PSN store (or Xbox store for that matter) is often up to €20 higher than it is buying physical copies on the internet. Having an actual human delivering an actual package with a product that is actually made from actual materials saves me nearly 25%, as opposed to just using internet bandwidth to do it, so fucking ass backwards. From a "carbon footprint" perspective it's kind of appalling TBH.

Arena shooters are the new MOBAs, confirmed.

Hmm, I'm definitely going to watch it, but for some reason then I can't find myself getting especially hyped for it.

Man, watching the Giant Bomb quick look of it is just getting me more and more hyped, looks and sounds super badass~~ http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor/2300-9514/

Niiice, looks cool~~

Well, I'm pretty much only going to be using it for Xbox exclusives anyway, with the PS4 serving as the main console. Though this perhaps isn't a huge problem as such then it just highlights how aimless and misguided they've gone into this generation, there's plenty of small annoying things they've changed into something worse from the 360 and it just paints a sad picture of them not having any clue as to what made the 360 fucking rock (or more accurately, all the people that knew their shit in the previous generation probably left ages ago). It does sound like they've been patching in a lot of old 360 features over the last year, but it's just sad that this is how they've started off. Anyway, TV TV TV

So, the sucker I am then I bought an Xbox One (cuz Forza Horizon 2 fpfpfp), but already 3 clicks into the initial console setup flow then I'm in awe of the complete ineptitude shown from Microsoft; You are simply unable to select say, Denmark as your country, and then use English as a language. The only way to select English as a language is to set England as your country, which apparently makes it impossible to buy stuff with your credit card unless you have an English credit card. This is still a thing even a year after launch, and people have been raging about it on the Xbox forums since day one, with the fix being that you have to set your country to England and then switch back whenever you have to buy anything. I have no idea what kind of drugs they must've been taking to actually go in and change this from the 360, where it worked perfectly, but apparently Microsoft figures that no one that buys an Xbox One might live in for example Germany but not actually speak German, surely that scenario doesn't exist. Fucking amazing.

Spent pretty much this entire day running out time finishing up my map. It's crazy rough in every way, but considering that I did nearly 70% of the work today alone in an engine that I'm not super used to then it's not too bad I guess. Probably gonna keep working on it since I really did run out of time, but at least I have something for this challenge as well, was good fun ~ DM-Hub Anyway, 4-8 player deathmatch, probably works alright for TDM as well. Download links: pak: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15180947/dm_hub.pak umap: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15180947/dm_hub.zip (Not entirely sure if I did the pak/cooking thing right, lalse )

Haha aight, I just got an oversized kitchen vibe from that screenshot

Whoa, looks fantastic, great job~~

Castle: You making a rats map? I haven't really had that much time to work on my map either, if I'm able to get something finished by the 29th then it'll be suuuuper rough (or unfinished). I do have most of Sunday clear to get some proper work done tho, really wanna be able to deliver something as well