Alright, so I finished the game and the DLC.. I loved it. I understand all the complaints. I think knowing that the game is 18 chapters (a little long) and breaking it up over a couple weeks just playing a few hours every other night or so really helped. I actually thought the pacing was great until the last two chapters. The ending was pretty lame and obviously a setup for a sequel.... But I played the DLC after that, and the Lone Survivor chapter as Ripley was my favorite thing in the entire game.
I should also say that I'm a big fan of the first two films.
Also, I found the game fairly easy. The alien killed me probably around 20 times? The key is to keep moving. Be ballsy and follow the alien until it diverts from your path. It almost never looks directly behind itself.
I thought this was a weirdly brutal section to happen so early. After you get the device go up the stairs opposite of the one they come down and try to beeline around in a circle, through the room in the back and straight ahead to a door that opens after they go through it.
I think the ending is a setup for DLC rather then a sequel. Not trying to be a pedantic ass but it makes sense when you think about it. What else could they do for a sequel other then just make Colonial Marines: the good version?
I think the ending is a setup for DLC rather then a sequel. Not trying to be a pedantic ass but it makes sense when you think about it. What else could they do for a sequel other then just make Colonial Marines: the good version?
I finished the game last night and mostly enjoyed it, mostly. Kidding aside I really enjoyed the game save for some parts of frustration.
Felt the end part with dodging the trains and avoiding the facehugers in the vent to be a little bit too much.
Overall I would give it a 8.5. Intense as hell especially when the save station takes a few extra seconds to kick in and you hear that alien drop down. I've never yelled at a game so much out of an intense fear of a creature. They really nailed the atmosphere and survival horror aspect. I didn't feel it was too long. Save for the part I put in tags. It's probably the most immersive game I've ever played.
I think the ending is a setup for DLC rather then a sequel. Not trying to be a pedantic ass but it makes sense when you think about it. What else could they do for a sequel other then just make Colonial Marines: the good version?
I thought I clicked on The Evil Within thread and was extremely confused when I read your post. I still need to finish this game, I stopped shortly after you get the flamethrower.
I thought this was a weirdly brutal section to happen so early. After you get the device go up the stairs opposite of the one they come down and try to beeline around in a circle, through the room in the back and straight ahead to a door that opens after they go through it.
Thanks. So I shouldn't board this shuttle to the engineering decks? As soon as I grabbed the device, I booked it back to the transit lobby and since I needed a power cell, I figured this would be my bet. But, thanks, I'll try what you wrote even though there was a man with a tight patrol up there in the corner last time.
A lot of us would, however, there are plenty of good FPS featuring the Alien (Mostly AVP games but Alien Resurrection on PSX is good and some might enjoy Alien Trilogy but it is really dated, more so then the Jaguar AVP) but we still have yet to experience a good Solo Predator game.
Think of it man: an Arkham-styled game where you sneak around in a city or jungle, using your heat vision and mimicry to trick the A.I. and hunt them down one by one. A good version of Concrete Jungle.
Or just a straight remake of Predator where you lead a squad into a jungle, do some shoot 'em up action movie shit and then the Predator starts hunting you down.
Thanks. So I shouldn't board this shuttle to the engineering decks? As soon as I grabbed the device, I booked it back to the transit lobby and since I needed a power cell, I figured this would be my bet. But, thanks, I'll try what you wrote even though there was a man with a tight patrol up there in the corner last time.
Yeah, you need to go through the door they come in the room through to progress. That guy also got me killed a few times, if you're really quick about it you can make it and hug the side of the room he patrols through and continue on to the door(or melee kill him).
I really don't know how else to do that room, lol. When I backed off they were on the main floor and made it nearly impossible to even get on the stairs, so I also got stuck here for awhile.
Just finished the game after traveling for a week. Ch. 17 got a bit rough since I exhausted some supplies when looking for collectibles, but only died maybe 2-3 times and pushed through (deaths in that mission. Overall I'm sure I bit it quite a bit). Hard mode wasn't too bad outside of missions 5 and 13.
My thoughts:
Loved the overall use of the Alien, though in Ch. 5 and once in 17 I ran into some spawning issues. Outside of those specific instances, the A.I. handling felt fine. The other enemies were used rather well too, though I'll admit that attempting 'Mercy or Prudence?' on a first run on Hard made things more difficult than necessary in some instances. The reveal of
the hive in the reactor
was a pleasant, if not terrifying, surprise.
Crafting and those tools were overall a big plus, but quite a few things I hardly saw use for such as smoke bombs and flares. Liked that guns weren't that effective against certain enemies, though I felt the aim for the
Shotgun
was a bit weird (reminded me a bit of Alien Ressurection [PSX])
Some parts felt like filler, but mission design as a whole worked well. Wasn't too much of a fan of
the space walks though
as they felt far too slow and boring with no real tension.
Wasn't a big fan of the ending, but it's a bit hard to come into this without expecting an unsatisfying ending.
The map was terrible, as was any general navigation when seeking out hidden goods.
Never had an issue with save points, outside of that they sometimes took longer to 'cool down' than what I would have wanted them to. Game seemed to use both those and checkpoint loads rather appropriately.
CA nailed Alien across the board in their design of the game.
Thus far, it's my personal GOTY.
I'm a bit confused on one point that may or may not be answered in game in an archive I missed or glossed over:
How are there so many eggs and a Hive built into the reactor? It's still the egg>facehugger>Alien cycle, but there's nothing to indicate where the additional eggs have come from. The theory of cocooned humans turning into eggs via the Directors Cut of 'Alien' can be thrown out since they are being used as hosts for the parasites. There doesn't seem to be any indicator of there being a Queen via Cameron's 'Aliens' either.
Depends on what you consider scary. Alien is pretty familiar that it may not scare certain people, but at the same time the claustrophobic areas paired with not knowing exactly where Muncher is and what she's doing can get to a person. As things progress and you're given more tools, it gets even worse in some ways if you start running low in certain supplies.
Depends on what you consider scary. Alien is pretty familiar that it may not scare certain people, but at the same time the claustrophobic areas paired with not knowing exactly where Muncher is and what she's doing can get to a person. As things progress and you're given more tools, it gets even worse in some ways if you start running low in certain supplies.
Yup, tense, not so much scary. Sometimes when I'd die, I'd actually feel relieved! I finally beat the game and
my God, the last few chapters were really starting to wear on me. Every room I went into, the alien decided to drop down. Nowhere to hide, so I'd have to flame him. I was constantly running low on fuel.
Ch. 17 was a bit too overbearing to the point where I had one useful item left for the situation. It was getting to the point of frustration almost ahead of Ch. 5.
The Alien was just too on point and zeroed in as if I was in a wall locker. I couldn't imagine going through that part without any fuel or molotovs.
Ch. 17 was a bit too overbearing to the point where I had one useful item left for the situation. It was getting to the point of frustration almost ahead of Ch. 5.
I think I used it as a distraction twice in a situation where I felt I could get away with it, rather than waste a noisemaker. Only real use I could tell, since there aren't many opportunities before the flashlight to where it would be useful as a light source, not to mention the attention it draws.
Also didn't see much use with the smoke grenades. Pipe bombs were good for
hazmat synthetics
, flash bangs good for when hostile survivors would
pop up in the transit hubs
, and noisemakers/molotovs were pretty useful all around.
Yeah, you need to go through the door they come in the room through to progress. That guy also got me killed a few times, if you're really quick about it you can make it and hug the side of the room he patrols through and continue on to the door(or melee kill him).
I really don't know how else to do that room, lol. When I backed off they were on the main floor and made it nearly impossible to even get on the stairs, so I also got stuck here for awhile.
I saved after backing out. Thankfully this game has the use previous save option. I got through after meleeing a couple guys which I didn't want to do.
I'm thinking of lowering the difficulty to normal so I can experience the story and tension without the constant restarts until I get to know the game. It's also not fun for people watching =/.
I don't understand the stun baton. It says I have 2 batteries for it and when I pull the thing out it doesn't spark up. I've tried "reloading" it but doesn't do anything.
I don't understand the stun baton. It says I have 2 batteries for it and when I pull the thing out it doesn't spark up. I've tried "reloading" it but doesn't do anything.
I'm finally out of the fucking Hospital.
Wooooohooooo!!!!
I'm so proud of myself after dying so many times. I'm playing it on Hard and I lost count of how many times I rage quit the game with my heart rate going through the roof.
Damn, this game is good. Very good.
Until now this was the hardest part of the game for me, especially the parts where
you have to avoid the Alien, like in the beginning of this area, but the fucker is on your tail ALL the time. Took me a while to figure out a plan, after dying a lot of course.
Going to play The Evil Within the next few days (with Destiny mixed in), but I'll run through the game again soon on Easy to finish up most of the remaining 24% of trophies.
How does Easy mode compare to Hard? Is it just detection windows that are affected, or is are enemy health
Not really scary IMO, but the tension gets to me pretty quickly. So much butt clenching as you hide in a locker desperately hoping the Alien walks away before you have to breath.
Going to play The Evil Within the next few days (with Destiny mixed in), but I'll run through the game again soon on Easy to finish up most of the remaining 24% of trophies.
How does Easy mode compare to Hard? Is it just detection windows that are affected, or is are enemy health
The number of crafting items scattered about in the environment and enemies seem to be the same between the difficulties as far as I can tell. You'll take much less damage and the Alien should be able to wander much further away, offering bigger windows to escape.
It's not gonna be a in-your-face type of scary. The horror really comes from the tension in close encounters and walking around the creepily empty space station, so it's more of a lingering in-the-moment feeling than anything that will keep you up at night.. Closest thing to terrifying horror would be androids, who look and act legit scary lol
edit: Sorry for double post. This thread should move faster!
Still at the start just beat chapter 5 and still finding it pretty difficult, going by some posts here it's going to get harder quickly in the next chapter. I haven't used any supplies yet though other than a med kit or two because I'm scared of wasting them, the game nails that feeling of dread!
There's a lot of jankyness in general I've seen mouths not moving when speaking, androids that my melee went right through and when I first loaded it all the walls of the ship were invisible but I think that's because it wasn't fully installed yet.
Can I just say upon finishing this game, I'm so fucking happy it was made.
Waited a long time for pretty much exactly this game.
The atmosphere and Alien world were fucking nailed 100% perfect. It built tension like no other game I have played to the point where I was pretty much unable to play in the first 3rd of the game before medical fucked my ass and told me be a man or go home.
My only complaints are the length drags about, maybe because of the repitition and the story seemed to suffer a little at the end also.
Worth a mention, I had no issues at all with the save points, not even one, and I play this game slow as shit. Steam said I've spent over 40 hours somehow, although I think it's actually around 30.
EDIT: I hope Sega gives them another bite at the cherry, can't wait to see what the could create with a Round 2.
Thinking I've missed the blueprints for the noise maker, might need to backtrack. Shit. What a wonderfully tense game - the surround sound is insane and many times I've been holding my breath. So immersive!
Scary scary? Its Alien, if the Alien scares you then I suppose its scary but lets face it, you likely grew up seeing it in pictures, movies, comics, games etc etc. so I wouldnt say its 'scary.' There are very few sections where something made me jump, I can probly only mention 2 or 3 times something made a noise or something happen that caused me to be scared.
The main thing is tension. Which is different. Its sort of a crap I know I am being hunted, wtf is it and when should I go? That is what gets to you, sort of holding your breathe while your trying to hack a door or use a computer and you can hear the Alien around you and your thinking come on come on dont let that bastard see me.
In saying that, I dont scare easily, which for some reason is the opposite of when I was a child and I was scared of everything including my own shadow.
So yeh my take? its not scary, tense? Incredibly, but not really scary due to source material.
I don't understand the stun baton. It says I have 2 batteries for it and when I pull the thing out it doesn't spark up. I've tried "reloading" it but doesn't do anything.
Its a little off putting that stun baton, it doesnt give you really great feedback as to whether its done its job or not aurally, you just tell by the androids twitching. You reload it like a gun, left trigger to bring it up and just give it one prod with the right trigger. I wasted batteries for the thing earlier in the game because I wasnt sure if it had done the job or not, it seemed like it didnt arc or anything like that so I wasted another blow or two with it.
On walking vs crouching. Did anyone find you actually dont really need to crouch that much? When I got the flamethrower I stopped doing the crouch thing, I pretty much only moved by crouching to that point. But then when I did stop crouching, I found walking didnt really attract the Alien anymore than just walking; unless something was really close, then I was crouching, but I found you could at least move about more quickly walking without really drawing a lot of attention to yourself.
I got to a part, I think it's mission 14, and now the difficulty has really ramped up. I didn't even feel the medical bay was that bad but this is making me pull my hair out.
I'm dealing with multiple aliens and face huggers now. :/
Alien jumped down from the vent right in front of me and I got nowhere to hide, even though I was crouch walking all the time! Now I have to do the whole thing again!
When you first get the baton it has blue sparks/arcs on it to show it is working. When I pull it out to use it looks dead even though there are batteries in the thing.
I got to a part, I think it's mission 14, and now the difficulty has really ramped up. I didn't even feel the medical bay was that bad but this is making me pull my hair out.
It wouldn't be that bad if you could tell where you need to go in there. Kept getting turned around through going in the wrong vent/branch that are rather obscure.
To me it has nothing on missions 5, 13, or 17 as far as difficulty spikes are concerned.
Just encountered the gamebreaking bug where the game doesn't load chapter 16 correctly. PS4 version. When the chapter started I was at the Transit Station with no objectives.
Alien jumped down from the vent right in front of me and I got nowhere to hide, even though I was crouch walking all the time! Now I have to do the whole thing again!
Can I just say upon finishing this game, I'm so fucking happy it was made.
Waited a long time for pretty much exactly this game.
The atmosphere and Alien world were fucking nailed 100% perfect. It built tension like no other game I have played to the point where I was pretty much unable to play in the first 3rd of the game before medical fucked my ass and told me be a man or go home.
My only complaints are the length drags about, maybe because of the repitition and the story seemed to suffer a little at the end also.
Worth a mention, I had no issues at all with the save points, not even one, and I play this game slow as shit. Steam said I've spent over 40 hours somehow, although I think it's actually around 30.
EDIT: I hope Sega gives them another bite at the cherry, can't wait to see what the could create with a Round 2.
Alien itself - presence, proximity and sound of the creature inducing anxiety like I hadn't felt since watching the first film for the first time. No pulse rifles, no xenomorph cannon fodder. Scarce resources with which to distract and possibly repel the creature. Lack of predictable and therefore exploitable patrol patterns really helped sell the Alien as a lethal predatory entity as opposed to a predicable video game enemy. Restores the Alien to it's proper place in the scheme of things.
Sevastopol Station - Just. Gorgeous. Took that killer production design of the first film, 70s anachronistic technology and all and built an environment rivalled only by Rapture. Add in some of the most atmospheric lighting I've seen in a game. Will have to get the Art of Alien: Isolation book to immerse myself once again in such a brilliantly realised, considered environment. The dynamic music and ambient sound of the station just reinforced the idea that Sevastopol exists in the same universe as the Nostromo etc.
Working Joes - Creepy as hell. Rather than going with the indistinguishable from human androids a la Ash & Bishop, the rubberised visage and placid yet sinister modes of speech never failed to give me the proverbial wiggins. A brilliantly conceived poor mans equivalent of the high end Weyland Yutani android.
Story - Whilst arguably a clothes line on which the gameplay can be hung, a lack of decent story precludes immersion (cf Destiny). The story worked for me, necessarily dealing with similar themes as the first film as well as folding in contemporary world events. Between Amanda's story and the terminals & tape recorders, I think Dan Abnett & co have done a sterling job.
As for the comments earlier with regards to
the space walks
whilst they may not have had much by way of gameplay, relatively speaking, the did serve to showcase the extraordinary production design of
the exterior of Sevastopol and of the planet (LV426?) and the derelict. Pure eye candy.
Given the unqualified success of Alien: Isolation as both a stealth game and a licensed vide game of the Alien film, I sincerely hope this is the financial success for Sega & CA that it so richly deserves to be.
More so on completing the game than when I'd just started it, I simply don't recognise the game IGN & Gamespot reviewed. Should CA opt to produce a further game based in the Alien world, I'll be in on day 1.
I think yesterday Nvidia driver (344.48) update broke my game.
The game now freezes in loading screens, game stop working, all started happening after the update.
I'm downloading the previous drivers to see if it solves the problem.
Is Last Survivor the same length? Got Crew Expendable with Nostromo Editon, toying with getting Last Survivor for a couple of £ on PSN.
If it's a worthwhile 10 mins then I'll plump for the latter, otherwise I'll just play Crew Expendable through.
Already wondering what might fill the Isolation shaped hole in my life now? Is Evil Within worthy as a replacement, or even Thief? Not that I think any game that can induce dread & anxiety in such a wonderful manner might come along any time soon.
Already wondering what might fill the Isolation shaped hole in my life now? Is Evil Within worthy as a replacement, or even Thief? Not that I think any game that can induce dread & anxiety in such a wonderful manner might come along any time soon.
I was in the same boat, I just double dipped and started playing through it again. It is even better the second time because you can actually plan ahead and it makes using items fun since you know exactly when you're gonna need what.
Is Last Survivor the same length? Got Crew Expendable with Nostromo Editon, toying with getting Last Survivor for a couple of £ on PSN.
If it's a worthwhile 10 mins then I'll plump for the latter, otherwise I'll just play Crew Expendable through.
Already wondering what might fill the Isolation shaped hole in my life now? Is Evil Within worthy as a replacement, or even Thief? Not that I think any game that can induce dread & anxiety in such a wonderful manner might come along any time soon.
