Alien Isolation (PS4/Xbox One)

i agree fully, i just read that it all gets a bit repetitive and thats what went wrong with colonial marines attempt

pretty brave imo - I dont have high hopes for it, but it could be a surprise

Star Lord wrote: »

I was thinking, I'm sure they'll have some kind of set piece in there somewhere, probably near the end, otherwise it's entirely feasible that there's a chance you could have a playthrough where you don't encounter the Alien at all...

Set pieces are pretty much a brute force solution that break the rules though.

Creative Assembly set a pretty high bar for the behaviour of the Alien in their hype:

“In Alien: Isolation, the creature is hunting you. If it hears you, it will track down the source of the noise; if it sees you, it will pursue at speed; tackling it head-on is not for the faint-hearted. It’s ruthless, relentless and unstoppable. Which makes us ask, #howwillyousurvive?“

But it appears that was meant in pretty much the same way the average AI guard will hunt you in an FPS. The Alien will not actually hunt you. There will be encounters, either scripted or triggered by you (noisemaker, gunfire etc) where it will spawn into an area. It will then hunt within that area, and then de-spawn until summoned again. It could still be a very good game, but its a lot less ambitious than the original hype.

So long as you saw/heard some evidence of it being there, or caught occasional glimpses of it, causing you to freeze or hide or alter your planned route, yes. If it was just walking around, seeing/hearing nothing much, then it'd be a different story.

Looks great. My only worry would be the execution of the ai.

It will totally break the immersion if that ai isn't far above the standard of your usual crap ai.

For example the alien looks right at you and doesn't see you or you make noise and he doesn't hear you.

The storyline and puzzle/questing that will force you into encounters with the alien will have to be top notch as well.

Hopefully it turns out to be as good as it looks but I don't think it's going to hit the mark completely.

I'd like to see a game starting like this for the first few hours but gradually advancing to a more challenging action based affair but with very limited ammo so you have to choose your battles wisely like the early resident evils using traps and cunning to defeat what should be a superior foe.

This would allow for a more expanded alien universe as well with facehuggers, eggs, hive, queen etc. Maybe even a twist where you get impregnated by a facehugger and have a time limit to get it out of you.

Star Lord wrote: »

I was thinking, I'm sure they'll have some kind of set piece in there somewhere, probably near the end, otherwise it's entirely feasible that there's a chance you could have a playthrough where you don't encounter the Alien at all...

That would be pretty cool... Your paranoia alone is what caused you to be careful through the whole game. Genius.

anyone know if you pre order from gamestop do you get the ripley mission DLC??

So got 20 minutes hands on with this today at the EGX event.


I really really liked it.


We were playing the survivor mode and it was in two 10 minute sessions on the xbox one version.

Firstly even the xbox one version looks lovely, I've seen videos of the pc version and that looks gorgeous but the xbox one version was no lazy horse in the visuals. Things did seem a bit brighter but I'm putting that down to the tv/gamma settings

The alien model is fantastic, the movement is mesmerizing.

But the important factor.

It is scary as hell and a lot of fun.

Survivor mode does not play like Amnesia or Outlast or any other first person hider, I'd imagine Isolation's single player will play closer to amnesia, but this mode, this is different. It's a constant in your face terror, the alien never goes too far away so it's much less waiting things out and much more on taking small chances for little gains that if they fail It's death but a quick start over.

Everything feels scaled right, it's small enough that getting nipped at the finish line doesnt feel like a complete waste of time, but the level is detailed enough that things didnt fall into a routine.

The alien is never far, some might feel this is a bit cheap but it's what drives the mode, its taking the last 20 minutes of the first alien movie and distilling that into a game. It's sort of like some mad hybrid of Slender man and left 4 dead.

But the alien is the selling point, it's a.i may in the end not turn out to be the greatest, I suspect a lot of what is charming me and others may be more the dressing then the actual mechanics but with such a specific stage and intense focus you'll believe it is genuinely alive and you will hate it. The stories my friends and I were telling coming out showed this. The host laughing his ass off cause I'd swear so much abuse at the alien everytime it got me. It's not a scripted, the alien can be completely random in it's approach, the only thing you know is it will always be near.

Some of the stories though

my friend hid in a locker, and you can hold your breath while the alien passes, and he did it, but he held it down too long so when he released, ripley let out a big gasp for air and the alien came racing back in and pulled him out.

I tried hacking a door (cool retro minigame in it part deus ex human revolution hacking by rolling the thumbstick around tool part space invader shape indentifcation) and as I fumbled the device the alien started to slowly come around into the doorway, it's head peering over the frame, the long low hisss. Completed it just in time and the door closes blocking him. I take a breath of relief, waited just too long as I hear the alien banging up into air vent. Coming back out at the top of the stairs where I needed to come down and making a dash towards me. Flamethrower out to fire...out of ammo....DEAD

thats what terrifies me. The alien moves so slowly and delibrately most of the time, but once it's got your scent it just moves like lightning and you have no chance.

Outside of that, I found the controls comfortable, the focus effects while using the motion tracker etc was great, the lean function is uncanningly done to feel like someone peaking out in terror.

My friend felt the controls had a a bit of input lag, I found most actions were *heavy* but I think that was deliberate, the action of pulling out a flamethrower or lifting up the motion tracker is so clearly paced to stop twitch responses, meaning a lot of the time when you use the flamethrower it's a decision you've made before the alien has seen you.

Overall I didnt get to play a lot at EGX, but Isolation was by far my favourite, it's the only one I went back for 2nds, but that was also because it was by far the most organised game there. While everyother game was saying we had 2-3 hour queue times, Alien Isolation kept it down to 20 minutes by keeping a very organised turnover and strict 10 minute time limit.

tok9 wrote: »

No... it was on the Sega Megadrive in the Retro area :P

Ahhhhhhh : (

Sad Panda.

Nodferatu wrote: »

Any ideas when the first reviews should be out?

According to The Metro at least, the embargo is up prior to launch so I imagine some day this week?

Yup, embargo has definitely been lifted...

Eurogamer review is up now too.

Polygon seem to have given it the lowest score so far. Their comments on the save system are precisely why I'm looking forward to it though.

This irritation is compounded by Isolation’s save system, which is relegated to emergency stations scattered around the ship. Like most things in the game, it takes multiple seconds to activate them, leaving you helpless and exposed. They’re incredibly risky to use when the alien is around (did I mention the alien is always around?). There is no checkpoint system.

Death scene spoiler: I imagine this is what can happen sometimes.

And the best quote from the reviews so far comes from Kotaku.

To say that Isolation is superior to Colonial Marines is really just to affirm that, no, it is not one of the worst games I've ever played. Good news, though! Even considered without the Alien brand, Isolation is a very good time. It's equal parts Worst-Case Situation Simulator 2014 and "**** Everything!": The Game. It does have some significant flaws, but on the whole, it works.

Robert ninja wrote: »

Ughhhh. Is this supposed to make me want the game? Because all it does is make me want to wait for the eventual "GOTY"/whatever edition that finally has all the restricted content unlocked in one go.

From the Kotaku review...

In addition to the main story, Isolation comes with an included "survival mode," which tasks players with escaping from a level while accomplishing various tasks, all while racing a timer. I found it to be slight and in most ways indistinguishable from the main game, particularly given that the base game comes with only a single map and a single character: Amanda Ripley. Publisher Sega will be releasing more levels and playable characters in the future as paid DLC, but for now, survival mode doesn't have much to it.

Looks like they've basically shipped a demo of the mode to encourage people to get the DLC when it's released rather than just shipping the mode in its entirety as DLC. With a 16-20 hour campaign though there appears to be plenty of content in the base game.

BloodBath wrote: »

The main gripes the poor reviews seem to have is that they died a lot.

Oh noes, a difficult game that doesn't auto save every 30 seconds and doesn't hold your hand throughout.

I'll reserve judgement until I play the game but 5.9 seems to be a joke of a score. If the game was riddled with game breaking bugs and poor mechanics maybe but they showed nothing to justify such a low score.

I agree here, IGN have given it a below par score because it is a difficult game. Dark Souls was a difficult game but it still scored high. Grow up IGN.