Alien: Isolation

[marks]

this is a hard game

 

I got about halfway through it in one evening, on Hard, while drunk. Just sayin'. I barely even played the game during dev aswell. I think you guys need to man up.

[TheOnlyDoubleF]

I play with my roommates: One guy plays and the two others are hidden behide his back. And we change every 10 minutes. 

[dux]

 

this is a hard game

 

I got about halfway through it in one evening, on Hard, while drunk. Just sayin'. I barely even played the game during dev aswell. I think you guys need to man up.

 

 

No offence mate, but you have glasses. You can't see what's after you.

[dux]

I gave it another chance tonight and I can say now that I'm done, it was very very fun while it was lasted but the game has just turned on its head and become too frustrating. I really really want to like this game and finish it but it keeps slapping me down to the point where I don't want to play anymore 

 

Shall watch the rest of it on the facetubes.

Edited October 20, 2014 by dux

[knj]

You puss !

[marks]

Old joke is old.

[-HP-]

I gave it another chance tonight and I can say now that I'm done, it was very very fun while it was lasted but the game has just turned on its head and become too frustrating. I really really want to like this game and finish it but it keeps slapping me down to the point where I don't want to play anymore 

 

Shall watch the rest of it on the facetubes.

 

[-HP-]

I finished it this weekend, on Hard. It's been a long year, but i'd say with confidence it's my GOTY, hands down. 

 

Seriously, congratulations to everyone at CA, for creating a complete and utter nerve-worker but damn good game. Looking back, I don't think a video game made me feel this scared and tense since the original AvP game, or maybe even Doom3.

It takes balls the size of two Alien eggs to go ahead and make a game like this, to make something so against the mainstream where everyone seems to mimic CoD like action, they forget there's other kinds of experience one can create with a FPS game. CA knows it wouldn't please everyone with this game, they made what they thought it was the right thing to do, and I respect them so much for that.

 

SPOILERS BELLOW

 

I'm not sure about that ending, though. I was hoping for something that tied Amanda's story off a bit better, and when the light shined across Amanda's helmet drifting through space, I felt it was a really cheap hook to make a sequel (or DLC) instead of a honest attempt at a decent closure to the story. That said, I was happy to see pretty much everyone died, and she was the only one that made it. The movies ending are dark, calm but satisfying, there's some false sense of closer and eerie, where's this game just ends in a climax. I know it's all about the journey, and those last two hours were AMAZING... but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth to end like this. 

 

Mission 5 felt like where the game REALLY shines the best, options on paths to take, lots of places to hide, and the constant fear that the Alien might be just around the corner. I felt so terrified I had to constantly remind myself it was just a fucking video game and it's all good. I kept thinking, if this shit were real life, i don't think i'd leave that closet, ever. lol

 

The level design really impressed me. It's the best use of backtracking i've ever seen in a video game, it didn't feel cheap to revisit certain areas, quite the contrary it made an otherwise quite linear game feel like a semi-open world game, it really helped the feeling that the Sevastopol is a gigantic station. I love how you revisit an area but this time around there's new enemies, new objectives and there's new doors and areas to unlock and go to since you constantly make your gadgets more powerful. (Ion torch, hacking tool, etc.) I was also extremely surprised how much this game reminded me of the original Bioshock vibe, you feel you're somewhat stuck in that "city", and it's very convincing.

 

I love the little mini games to unlock terminals with the system access tuner, love the gaminess of them, and how different they are. You feel like you're interacting with the station and you use Amanda's skills as an engineer to go around. The motion tracker and the system access tuner are such awesome gadgets, lovely pieces of chunky 70's tech. Seriously, this retro-sci fi style is so refreshing at this stage.

Something else that I loved was the Save System, so glad there's no auto-save checkpoints. It really makes the game even more scary, but there's enough save points throughout the levels to not make the game too frustrating if you die. And the randomness of the experience with the Alien makes replaying different areas very interesting, due to the really good and random AI.

 

The only major negative points that I can think of, is the pacing of the game. Sometimes it drags a bit too much and some people might argue it overstays it's welcome.

For instance, after you kill the Alien the game tries to make you believe the Alien is indeed dead, which of course it's extremly predictable and you spend a few hours just killing and stealthily avoiding Synthetics until shit starts getting real again. I know what they were trying to do, it's the calm after the storm, but it drags for way too long. On the other hand, i wish the Alien Hive level were a little bit longer

 

One last thing I want to talk about is the sound of this game! Holy shit is it good, all the way from the cracking radio sounds of the system access tuner to the awesome soundtrack that really adds to the game. Big props to the peeps that worked on the sound of this game, it made the experience 1000 times better.

 

I could bla bla for hour about how much I loved this game. It's not for everybody, it's pretty much love it or hate and the game is all the better for it!

 

 

TL;DR.

Sevastopol is awesome, gameplay is awesome and even inovative, sound is amazing, drags a bit too much here and there. Overall, my GOTY this year.

[dux]

I made this to sum up my current experience.

Edited October 20, 2014 by dux

[PogoP]

Glad you enjoyed it HP. I left CA with kind of a bitter taste in my mouth really, thinking that the game could have been so much better and I gotta say, I was completely wrong. I had a blast playing through the game with fresh eyes (I hadn't seen half the levels). Obviously some things could have been better but then you could say that about any game. For CA's first non RTS game (I never played Viking which was meant to be a shambles), they really pulled it out the bag.

 

Just goes to show that you should be super patient whilst working on games. Quite often, things will pull through in the last few months. And I think you need to take a step back and look at the game you're working on a little more objectively and view it as a final product rather than focusing on the little things. That's a hard thing to do when you're an environment artist and every little detail matters, but there you go. Lesson learned.

[-HP-]

Just goes to show that you should be super patient whilst working on games. Quite often, things will pull through in the last few months. And I think you need to take a step back and look at the game you're working on a little more objectively and view it as a final product rather than focusing on the little things. That's a hard thing to do when you're an environment artist and every little detail matters, but there you go. Lesson learned.

 

Yeap, first thing you learn when you ship a big title.

It's chaos till the last couple months when it all comes together.

[-HP-]

I made this to sum up my current experience.

 

eheh, after a while i learnt that the lockers are pretty useless, they expose you cos you need to get up to hide and when exiting one you need to look around to make sure you're safe. Just crouch behind desks or boxes, and you're pretty much invisible. If the alien or an enemy gets close to you just move to the other side of the cover object.

Whatever you do, stay crouched. Getting up in this game, is asking to die.

[knj]

HP you're my rolemodel - do you ever sleep dude ! ?

[Izuno]

....................................................................................................................................................ok so this hard for me to write but here goes.

 

When I was 6 years old over Thanksgiving we visited my aunt/uncle/cousin in the Midwest (that's in America, you uh, non-Americans who might not know) as we did every year.  It snowed a lot that weekend so the adults rented a stack of movies.  Somehow they dug out the original Alien from the "Horror Classics Old and New" section at the local Blockbuster.  Late Friday night after turkey soup and leftover pie, they put Alien on in the family room after all the kids were supposed to be a sleep.  I heard the TV during what I later figured out was the chestbursting scene so I came upstairs to see what the hubub was about.  I watched a dialogue scene, got bored, went downstairs...couldn't sleep...came back up later during the air vent scene and watched this:

 

 

By Sunday everyone was commenting how it seemed I hadn't slept since Thursday.

 

 

So yeah...been avoiding this game....

[dux]

 

I made this to sum up my current experience.

 

eheh, after a while i learnt that the lockers are pretty useless, they expose you cos you need to get up to hide and when exiting one you need to look around to make sure you're safe. Just crouch behind desks or boxes, and you're pretty much invisible. If the alien or an enemy gets close to you just move to the other side of the cover object.

Whatever you do, stay crouched. Getting up in this game, is asking to die.

 

 

Ok so I gave the game a 3rd chance last night and literally played the whole time crouched. I got past the frustrating section I was in, still died about 4 times but got there in the end thanks to the magical crouch key. I'm just past the big explosion cinematic and the PRESS E LOTS OF TIMES TO IMMERSE YOURSELF INTO CLIMBING THIS LADDER OH WHAT'S THAT DIDN'T YOU PRESS E FAST ENOUGH GUESS YOU'RE GONNA FALL AND DIE NOW BECAUSE LOL GAME DESIGN IS HARD.

 

Had a really cool moment with the noise maker past that section with the explosion where there are like 4 dudes in a wide open lobby. Threw the noise maker into the group of them and the Alien dropped down 10 seconds later and raped all of them haha.

Edited October 21, 2014 by dux