Alien: Isolation

[Fragony]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9lkh0-jPfxs

Made by this obscure developer 'creative assembly' which none of us ever heard about.

Too ambitious for it's own good? I really want this to be good, a single enemy that hunts you down the whole game, that can appear at any time, but that also learns from what you do. You are never safe. Sounds terrifying, hell yes. Can they actually make a big budget game where this works the whole time? I have already runned out of ideas if I would have to make it work 30 minutes. This could be the greatest thing ever, or a huge dissapointment.

[Jarmam]

From the very first second of the actual gameplay I was STOKED SENSELESS. This game looks absolutely horrifying if handled properly. The idea presented is perfect. Just... shut up... and take my money... please, daddy...

I don't think I like how the Alien was shown in the video - strolling around, slowly, upright, in full lighting. I realize that by now the Alien is impossible to separate entirely from what everyone knows about it and what it looks like, but one of the genius strokes of Amnesia was how the game (crudely, but functionally) discouraged you from looking at enemies, particularly in light. If this game takes a few notes out of Amnesia's book of "handling death sequences" and "obscuring the enemy" I think I might fall a little bit in love.

Stoked. Completely stoked. As you say, it could be a major flop, but this has the potential to be epic. And while I share your scepticism towards longevity I will say that games like Silent Hill and Amnesia (yes I like that game) has shown that you can keep a horror game solid for long periods of time. A way of doing it would be to let the Alien adapt new tactics as the game progresses, making the single enemy less "singular". Or via settings. I believe!

[Fragony]

Adore Amnesia, scariest game since the first Thief. Never been able to play it, I am an absolute coward and Amnesia was too scary. I kinda doubt that I can handle the Alien game, but I love the idea.

The King Kong game has awesome death-sequences by the way.

[easytarget]

To me, it would quickly get tedious. The new of wandering around the ship catching all the Alien movie ambiance would wear off and I'd be left with an entire game made up of that initial experience. No thanks.

Prediction: Will not escape the creative black hole that surrounds this IP.

[Fragony]

To me, it would quickly get tedious. The new of wandering around the ship catching all the Alien movie ambiance would wear off and I'd be left with an entire game made up of that initial experience.

Hear ya. Imho it all depends on how good the adventure-elements are, if it's a really good adventure-game where you have a nemesis always to be scared about because of what you just did it will be good. If it keeps repeating the same trick and expect us to be surprised it will suck. I wouldn't know how to make all of this work, quite the feat if they can make a good game out of this. Highly sceptical but at least it's original (well not really the Atari had a game with the same concept, scared the crap out of me). But they obviously spend a lot of money on it so they must think they are on to something.

[easytarget]

Did I miss release. is this thing out yet?

[Gregoshi]

October 7 of this year according to Steam.

[Fragony]

is this thing out yet?

No it's out there. Without having actually heard it I am pretty sure I figured out how they can make it a full-length game, what is Alien without an evil coorperation who want to get their hands on it. I bet you will have to start evading human enemies as well at some point, and use the Alien to your advantage, that it will be your nemesis throughout the game, but also the only way you can survive other threats. It would make the encounters where it's just you and the Alien all the more terrifying.

[Jarmam]

No it's out there. Without having actually heard it I am pretty sure I figured out how they can make it a full-length game, what is Alien without an evil coorperation who want to get their hands on it. I bet you will have to start evading human enemies as well at some point, and use the Alien to your advantage, that it will be your nemesis throughout the game, but also the only way you can survive other threats. It would make the encounters where it's just you and the Alien all the more terrifying.

This is a really sweet idea. We know it's gonna be about "the evil humans" eventually, so take a note from this man's book and make it great and not just cliché.

[Fragony]

This is a really sweet idea. We know it's gonna be about "the evil humans" eventually, so take a note from this man's book and make it great and not just cliché.

I couldn't think of anything other than that. I hope they make a version for the WiiU as well because it would be a perfect match, don't have a ps4 yet and it looks like that's going to stay like that for a while. Pretty damn costly.

[Fragony]

This starting to sound better and better. I seriously doubt I will be able to cope with this.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...r-the-solution

[Jarmam]

Great article. The part with the synthetic sounds absolutely horrifying.

[Beskar]

Great article. The part with the synthetic sounds absolutely horrifying.

I had a mental image of it playing cards with the alien.
David:"When do you think she comes out of the closet?"
Alien: "Rawwhhrrr-hisssssss" *plays a full-house*
David: "Using your tail to swipe a card is unbecoming of your species."

[Jarmam]

Not quite the mental image I had - I got PSTD-flashbacks to System Shock 2's cyborgs mixed with the feeling I had for months after having watched Alien 1 for the first time. I was 7. It was quite traumatic.

I think that's why I have such a hard time taking Aliens seriously. The bloody critters are like Zerglings, lining up for the shredder in the dumbest 4 pool opener in history. There is much cognitive dissonance. This game promises to deliver much needed nostalgia :p

The only thing we have in common is the "hiding-in-the-closet"-bit, but the image of the Alien and the Synth just kinda bumping into eachother for how much they don't care about one another's presence is quite funny.

[Fragony]

Aliens only looks bad because it formula has been copied so much, at the time it was totally original. It will never make you forget the first Alien-movie, but it was and is a terrific movie. The first half before the action starts is incrediblbly suspensefull, Alien and Aliens are both incredibly awesome, just different. Aliens is obviously the better choice for a game, that is why I am so intrigued by this game, it's sounds so terrifying.

[Jarmam]

To me, it feels like two movies squished together. The excellent one with Ripley, and the other one which is a Terran vs Zerg. The only Aliens that felt truly threatening were the facehuggers in the lab and the Queen. But I guess it does come down to the formula being worn long before I watched Aliens.

Ironically, I have kind of the same feeling about Alien 4, except here it was Ripley's movie squished together with Joss Whedon's pilot mental image of Firefly. Now that was quite a feat. I will never forget the first time I saw Ripley lighting up the clone room and storming out, ending a perfect scene, until Ron Perlman peeks into the room and says some dumb two-liner to the effect of "must be a chick thing... effin waste of ammo". What a class A way of ruining your own excellence! It's actually impressive. But to be fair to mr. Whedon, he has grown as a writer and Cabin in the Woods (also a self-reflecting horror parody) is great. I recommend watching it right after Alien 4 for maximum mindblow.

Getting back to gaming: Aliens vs Predator 2 was actually awesome. I never played Colonial Marines, but assuming that everyone in the universe is correct that it's terrible it is nice to reminiscence on the greater parts of the game-genre. High hopes for Isolation!

[Jarmam]

The game is now pre-orderable on Steam. Crossed fingers for a swath of Youtube-videos of people playing it come October!

[easytarget]

Circling back to happily say it looks like I was wrong about this one.

I respect reviews on RPS, and this reviewer is a big fan of the movie, if he gives this a thumbs up, I suspect it's legit:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014...ion-review-pc/

[HopAlongBunny]

A not very encouraging take on the game from Ars:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/1...-unforgivable/

[Fragony]

Sounds like it isn't for everyone. If RPS mentions System Shock 2 I am sold personally.

[easytarget]

And yes, I'm sure this one is going to get reviews that bounce all over the place, that's why you should choose carefully who you pay attention to.

And in this case doubly so I suspect because this is a game with design mechanics I'm pretty sure some are not going to like. Take me for example, this is not one I'd ever even consider. I detest stealth games.

But if I was in the market to branch out and play something new, a couple of the places personally I consistently look to for reviews is RPS (because I tend to agree with their reviews on genres I do like and know something about and because they focus on the PC) and the site Quarter to Three, again because I agree with most of what Tom Chick has to say most of the time and he's the only reviewer in the industry who doesn't grade inflate (gaming industry media on the whole is so captive as to be utterly meaningless in most cases).

[easytarget]

A not very encouraging take on the game from Ars:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/1...-unforgivable/

Interesting, but I got to say, I don't consider Ars for game reviews. One glance at their home page tells you pretty much all you need to know about them, which is they appear to do a scattergun coverage of tech. Possibility article authors there are subject matter experts on what they write about: zero.

[Mongoose]

The ars review complains about "broken stealth mechanics." In my experience, when reviewers say stealth is broken, it's pretty often that they simply never got the mechanics right. Take the complaints about "Metro: 2033," for instance. Lots of reviewers hated it because they thought the stealth was too hard, when in reality it just operated on the simple rule of "if they can see, they can see you," - being in someone's peripheral didn't make you invisible to them, unlike in, say Skyrim (which reviewers loved). Also, if you fired a bunch of gun shots, they figured out where you were ... because they can hear.

So the the complaints in the ars review about "OMG how did alien find me, I was totally hidden" may reflect a failure to learn the game.

[HopAlongBunny]

So the the complaints in the ars review about "OMG how did alien find me, I was totally hidden" may reflect a failure to learn the game.

Agreed
It may reflect the learning curve present in the game rather than a real game flaw. Doesn't sound like a game you unpack and blow through in an afternoon.

[Jarmam]

The game is absolutely fantastic so far. Ab-solutely fantastic. It is the first thing to reach the atmospheric heights of Alien since Alien came out. It is slow, painful, exhausting and completely terrifying.

I realize that you have to take apologetic review-reviews from the Steam game page with a grain of salt, but A. The Steam pages also link to reviews that crush the game, and B. This article is really good so I recommend it:
http://www.pcgamer.com/addressing-cr...0&ns_fee=0

He mentions the major complaint points from other reviewers and I can agree with the logic behind why they might have been given. I just find them hopeless and flat out incorrect as well. Yes, the game has balls of steel, designwise, difficultywise and pacing-wise. That's amazing. It is so incredible to me that I refused to accept it as a possibility at all until I got my hands on the game. Heck, there are three difficulties; easy, normal, hard, and the game tells you that you are "supposed" to experience the game on hard. Respect.

This game is to me what Avengers was for superhero team movies: The bumblebee that couldn't possibly fly but did - against all expectation. Yes, the plot is probably going to be exactly what I think it is for now, but that's not the point. I know the guy who "needed less sleep than the rest" in the hypersleep scene is an android. I don't care. The game isn't about the story, because there is only 1 Alien-story. It's about recapturing the things that made it work in the first place.

Is it flawless? No. I've never experienced flawless in my life. But it's damn, damn, damn good. Damn good. And it has no right to be. I am hopelessly in love.

[Jarmam]

No it's out there. Without having actually heard it I am pretty sure I figured out how they can make it a full-length game, what is Alien without an evil coorperation who want to get their hands on it. I bet you will have to start evading human enemies as well at some point, and use the Alien to your advantage, that it will be your nemesis throughout the game, but also the only way you can survive other threats. It would make the encounters where it's just you and the Alien all the more terrifying.

By the way they did exactly this (the human antagonists in general, anyway) and it works perfectly. The only risk is that you start liking the Alien a bit for how effectively it can clear out a bad situation for you. But then again once it runs out of other people to hunt, it will remember you.

[Vuk]

Wow, this actually sounds like a new game I may really be interested in. What a miracle! (esp considering it comes from CA) I love old school stealth games, and if this is anything like them, I just may buy it. (Gotta wait till I know I got a new job though, as I just lost my old one)

[Beskar]

I heard some bad things about it. It is apparently quite linear, with the AI either being too dumb (looking at you and doesn't notice you) or has some sort of super vision which sees through walls.

So definitely one which needs some player reviews like from Jarman.

[Jarmam]

If it sees you through walls it's because you're giving away your position or are playing too singlemindedly. If you use the Motion Tracker and enemies are near you, they can hear the beeping sound. So put that thing away. That's not seeing through walls, that's the fact that the Alien is not deaf. And it will indeed start picking up on your standard tactics, like the enemies in Arkham City blowing away the gargoyles if you constantly swing around on them. Again I don't consider this glitchy, but smart.

As for dumb AI, I will say that the human enemies are sometimes bewildering. Maybe my gamma is too high, but there are situations where I should have been spotted but wasn't. I can't really tell if the AI is supposed to not notice you in the shadows, or if concealment does indeed come from holey things I can clearly see through like the tutorial indicates, but it is not entirely intuitive.

[Fragony]

Update please! I am not asking. PS3 controller is broken, would be all over it if the damn thing didn't decide to die.

Why oh why is there no WiiU version, the WiiU makes perfect sense for this game. It can match Xbone and ps4 for the moment at least, and having the motion tracker and map on the controller must be the best idea ever. So ffs.