Alien Isolation (PS4/Xbox One)

humanji

I heard a rumour that an announcement for this would be made today, then forgot all about it and noticed it on Gamespot:

This week, Sega revealed it is working on yet another game based on the Alien film series. The website for the Japanese's publisher's UK-based studio, the Creative Assembly, reveals that the shop is working on a console project based on the sci-fi intellectually property. Besides showing a picture of one of the iconic xenomorph eggs from the four films--Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection--the website also displays the logo for 20th Century Fox, the movie studio behind the series.

Sega is hoping to successfully hatch another Alien game.

The Creative Assembly's website provides no other details on the game, other than over a dozen job listings for the console project. However, gaming blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun was on hand at the studio when the announcement was made, and gleaned some further details. The new game will be based more on the more suspenseful Alien rather than the military-heavy Aliens, but will still be an "action" game. Development will be handled by the same team which made 2008's Viking: Battle for Asgard, with the Creative Assembly's entire headcount bulking up to 200 for the project. It is also reportedly opening a new 10,000-square-foot facility to aid with the staff expansion.



The new Alien project marks the fourth title based on the property since Sega landed the license in December 2006. The publisher first commissioned a role-playing game set in the sci-fi universe from Obsidian Entertainment (Fallout: New Vegas) before canceling the project in mid-2009. The company also hired Gearbox Software (Borderlands) to work on the first-person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines, which is still in development despite having never been shown to the public. In February 2010, Sega released the Rebellion-developed Aliens vs. Predator to lukewarm reviews.

After the unintentional horror of Aliens Vs Predator and the cancellation of the Aliens RPG, I've been hoping for a decent game to come out. I keep getting the sinking feeling Colonial Marines is going to be axed, so at least now there's two chances instead of one.

Also, since they're apparently basing it on Alien, I'm hopeing for something along the lines of Dead Space, but with more atmosphere.

This all gives me a hankering to play the old Spectrum ZX Alien game...

richymcdermott

The creative assembly havent had the greatest start on the console market , they sure do make a awesome rts game but anything can happen, i liked the avp game only letdown was the lag with the online modes was fun

ShadowHearth

They are good, but wtf do they know about horror survival games?

I loved avp 2, was So atmospheric. I loved to play as marine, felt like plaing a medium rare steak with pepper souce in "biggest losser" camp. Was awesome!

Heard new one was rubbish . Let's hope this will be good.

landsleaving

Was Viking any good? I don't remember it getting great reviews. Would be brilliant to see a good new Alien game though, I loved the AVP games about... 10 years ago :eek:

richymcdermott

landsleaving wrote: »

Was Viking any good? I don't remember it getting great reviews. Would be brilliant to see a good new Alien game though, I loved the AVP games about... 10 years ago :eek:

Viking was ok havent gone back to it in bout 2 years

Grumpypants

Make Colonial Marines right now

That is all.

Jonny7

I love the film Aliens, have seen it 30+ times

Alien3, on the megadrive, was the only game to even come close to what a good "Aliens" game should be, they just cannot cannot get it right

I admit, they've come close a few times, but as of yet, nothing

We need a mod for Crysis, or Crysis 2 (even half-life 2 engine) multiplayer, aliens v marines

It could be done with the basic model being Left for Dead, i.e. a handful of marines vs waves of aliens, including and/or controlled by 'player' aliens

Or it could be akin to the amazing mod, Natural Selection - which was basically influenced by film

Either way, I pray they get this new venture right, meh but hopes aren't high

BlitzKrieg

Alien3, on the megadrive, was the only game to even come close to what a good "Aliens" game should be, they just cannot cannot get it right

The two pc avp games are the best alien franchise games.

And Alien Trilogy/Resurrection for the playstation 1 were better then alien 3 on the megadrive (hell alien 3 on the snes was better then the megadrive version and more in tone with the movies)

also the aliens game in the arcade where it was streets of rage with machine guns was pretty cool.


As far as movie franchises go the alien series has faired much better then most others in the video game market.

Grumpypants

Im just playing dead space extraction with the move and sharp shooter crawling through narrow corridors killing monsters with a machine gun, shotgun and flame thrower and all the time thinking this is basically Aliens, why can't they just make a Aliens game like that its so simple.

BlitzKrieg

and sharp shooter crawling through narrow corridors killing monsters with a machine gun, shotgun and flame thrower and all the time thinking this is basically Aliens, why can't they just make a Aliens game like that its so simple.

they did


twice

alien 3 gun game in arcades by sega

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLSuw3jTPQo

which was pretty good for the time it was made in.

But there is also the awful aliens extermination arcade game that was more recent and is pretty naff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPwbussjHcg

Duggy747

Playing AVP2 on a LAN was fantastic. 4 humans vs 1 Alien or 4 Aliens vs 1 human would be incredible.

Nothing funnier than watching a human marine freak out and start spraying his flamethrower and machine gun in a 360 degree fashion while you watch from the shadows, constantly taunting him with your sounds or leaping in front of him across the room.

Or if you're a marine and your sensor is picking up an enemy but you don't see it anywhere. Creepy stuff when next thing you see a facehugger just fly by your face, narrowly missing you.

Zith

humanji wrote: »

This all gives me a hankering to play the old Spectrum ZX Alien game...

I have the spectrum theme tune on my playlist!

McSasquatch

Finally, some news...

Kotaku are reporting that Alien: Isolation as it's called, will be an FPS with strong stealth and horror elements. The central character is Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen. Hmmmm.

Full story here.

COYVB

Eventually someone will make the game alien deserves. It probably won't be this one though

Andrew76

COYVB wrote: »

Eventually someone will make the game alien deserves. It probably won't be this one though

Alien3 on the Snes was pretty good and the arcade original of Aliens by Konami is excellent (in my biased opinion ).

Sir_Badshot

"you spend most of your time shooting through "clones and soldiers."

Oh God....

degrassinoel

Sir_Badshot wrote: »

"you spend most of your time shooting through "clones and soldiers."

Oh God....

Sounds suspiciously like Alien Ressurection

krudler

McSasquatch wrote: »

Finally, some news...

Kotaku are reporting that Alien: Isolation as it's called, will be an FPS with strong stealth and horror elements. The central character is Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen. Hmmmm.

Full story here.

Dafuq Ripley's daughter is confirmed dead in Aliens of old age, that makes zero sense. Does she go off into space to find her supposedly dead mother or something?

Agricola

I really don't see why they can't just invent a new character with no ties to the films, set it in the Alien universe and away you go. That way they don't have to jump through any narrative hoops connecting it into the films, plus they can just create a story from scratch will far less limitations. This Ripley's daughter thing sounds idiotic.

How has no executive at some point said "Ok, lets just make Dead Space but swap out necromorphs for xenomorphs!" That sounds like a very good starting point at the very least. Every game doesnt need to be a COD clone ffs. The Alien license alone is one for printing money, just marry it to a competent and faithful game.

McSasquatch

As reported by Eurogamer, some screenshots for this appeared on Twitter overnight.









Still incredibly nonplussed by this but I guess deepdown, like most gamers, I long for an excellent Aliens game. So I desperately want this to succeed, but expect it to be a stinky old pile of xenomorph poo.

Tony EH

The Alien franchise has to be one of the most abused lines ever...

Duggy747

AVP2 is the only proper good Aliens game of recent times and that's over a decade ago.

I wonder if we'll expect the actual game to look considerably more shìt than those photos :pac:

Sierra Oscar

Tony EH wrote: »

The Alien franchise has to be one of the most abused lines ever...

Tell me about it! Seems as if there is a new Alien game released every year these days.

pixelburp

Eurogamer wrote:

[...]the game was a first-person shooter that combines stealth and horror to achieve something akin to Dishonored and BioShock[...]

Meh; that sentence reads like an oxymoron: to me, stealth and horror feels incompatible with first-person shooting (if it's referring to the traditional idea of the FPS). Guns in video games are inherently empowering and would surely lessen the power to instill fear or helplessness in a player.
Dishhonoured seems like a poor comparison because even in the shadows the player was still the hunter, an assassin, and thus always had some small advantage over his foes. If all else failed you could still murder your way through the levels. IMO, in a true Alien game the player should be totally at the mercy of the Xenomorphs, effectively powerless & riffing on games such as Amnesia rather than Dead Space or their ilk.

Of course, I'm getting way ahead of myself, sounds like the game is in very early stages, and hey: if nothing else it couldn't be any worse than Colonial Marines.

Kirby

pixelburp wrote: »

stealth and horror feels incompatible with first-person shooting (if it's referring to the traditional idea of the FPS). Guns in video games are inherently empowering and would surely lessen the power to instill fear or helplessness in a player.

Not always. Guns don't do anything without ammo and this is how you instil the "every shot counts" fear in games.

The last of us is full of weapons but if you played your first playthrough on Survivor mode, there is barely any ammo. You would frequently sh*t yourself as you knew that around any corner you could get jumped and had nothing to fight it off. The original Dead space pulled this off too.

In bioshock and dishonoured, enemies were always on the same plane as you You always knew where they would be when you entered a room or arena....and they were human. Aliens can potentially have the fear factor as the enemies are lighting fast, and can climb on walls and ceilings.

Limit the ammo and you can terrify people. The security comes from being stronger than everything else in your environment and that's when a game stops being scary. If they make you fight aliens you can hear but not see.....with nothing but a spoon.....they can make it scary.:P

Banjo

I don't think an "empowering" weapon need necessarily be a bad thing either. You have seen Aliens haven't you? They had a lot of ammo and a lot of big empowering guns, the training, the discipline, the tactics... And they were massacred. Placing you deliberately in a safe position of having the numbers and firepower to deal with the threat, letting you feel secure and ready, then having them come out of the god-damned walls picking off your squad before you can fire off a round, leaving you spinning at shadows and firing at blurs - stripping away all of that safe feeling but leaving you with all of the things you though made you safe, so you don't even have the vain hope of getting a bigger gun or more ammo to sustain you - can be just as effective as giving you a spoon and throwing you to the wolves.

Besides, all the fire-power in the world won't stop you peeing just a little the first time your motion tracker goes from silent to a single Blip.

humanji

pixelburp wrote: »

Meh; that sentence reads like an oxymoron: to me, stealth and horror feels incompatible with first-person shooting (if it's referring to the traditional idea of the FPS). Guns in video games are inherently empowering and would surely lessen the power to instill fear or helplessness in a player.
Dishhonoured seems like a poor comparison because even in the shadows the player was still the hunter, an assassin, and thus always had some small advantage over his foes. If all else failed you could still murder your way through the levels. IMO, in a true Alien game the player should be totally at the mercy of the Xenomorphs, effectively powerless & riffing on games such as Amnesia rather than Dead Space or their ilk.

Of course, I'm getting way ahead of myself, sounds like the game is in very early stages, and hey: if nothing else it couldn't be any worse than Colonial Marines.

Dark Corners Of The Earth pulled off the FPS stealth & horror thing pretty well and so have a few other games, so it's not an impossible combination. If they do it right, it could work out well. "IF" being the operative word, though.

Ross_Mahon

The screenshots look a lot like the first movie. I wonder how they will pull that off.

McSasquatch

humanji wrote: »

Dark Corners Of The Earth pulled off the FPS stealth & horror thing pretty well and so have a few other games, so it's not an impossible combination.

A great game. Would love Bethesda to revisit this, or Lovecraft's world in general.

Tony EH

+1

It's unfortunate that it didn't take off. It was actually made by Headfirst Games, who are sadly defunct. Bethesda were only the publishers, so I doubt that they'll be returning to the Mythos any time soon.

Taylor365

People please, your ideas are far superior to any games development team.

Stop teasing us with these examples of the perfect Aliens game!

Its never going to happen!

Aliens is like a licence to shovel crap. Get the name, create tripe, shove it out, profit.