Alien: Isolation

[chand]

Finally went back to this and completed it, and properly got into it this time. There are a lot of flaws, but I came out of feeling like I'd played something worthwhile. I did get a bit hacked off with some of the "go here, do this, oh no you can't you've now gotta do this" stuff, but it's a pretty inevitable consequence of the genre. It has to lock off parts of the world and force you to backtrack, or the alternative would just be me walking back to my ship and getting the fuck out. I was mostly okay with it, except for one moment mentioned upthread:

Spoiler alert

during the escape from Sevastopol towards the end, I saw a generator that I couldn't interact with and a caption popped up saying the generator is fine, leave it alone. At that moment I knew I'd have to fucking come back for some reason, and sure enough, five minutes later having traversed the corridors in the area a couple of times already, a door conks out on me and I get a message telling me to backtrack to the fucking generator. My one true "Oh, FUCK OFF" moment of the game

[close]

.

I quite liked the lack of handholding in terms of the actual mechanics of the game, you're told where to go but you don't get any proper training so you're kind of left to figure out the difference between, say, types of android and how you can defeat them yourself. It did get slightly annoying at times; the game never tells you about how the bolt gun works and I had to search the internet to see if I was experiencing some kind of glitch as I was pressing the trigger and it was making a noise but nothing was happening. Finally I learned that you have to charge the shots. Then I learned the hard way that you have to manually reload after each shot. It also never taught me that you have to hold down the reload button to fully load the revolver and shotgun; if you have four bullets in the revolver and press square to reload it actually empties the chamber entirely and pops one bullet in there. Oh, and the difference between looters and civilians occasionally became clear only after I'd shot an innocent person.

I noticed that sometimes it actually pays to just not give a fuck about the alien. After dying a couple of times spending ten minutes creeping from locker to desk to hiding under a gurney, I'd occasionally try just nonchalantly strolling straight to my objective without stopping or checking the motion tracker, just hoping that the alien wouldn't turn up, and sometimes it's actually the best way.

Anyway, yeah, ultimately I have a lot of gripes, but as an Alien game it's outstanding and about as close to the feel and tension of the original film as it's possible to get in a game, and I'm very glad I played it.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Anyway, yeah, ultimately I have a lot of gripes, but as an Alien game it's outstanding and about as close to the feel and tension of the original film as it's possible to get in a game, and I'm very glad I played it.

Should give the Oculus Rift version a go....if you're brave enough!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbAoz-qy49Q

[The Roofdog]

I've got bored of this before I've even properly got to the alien. I'm at the 'external comms' bit where I've got to return through a big room of Working Joes I came through before but there's one that just stands in the entrance corridor, not moving, so eventually I have to run past him and that attracts all the others. Don't think I have the patience for this game.

[Replies From View]

I've got bored of this before I've even properly got to the alien. I'm at the 'external comms' bit where I've got to return through a big room of Working Joes I came through before but there's one that just stands in the entrance corridor, not moving, so eventually I have to run past him and that attracts all the others. Don't think I have the patience for this game.

You have to use the dragon's rectum on them.

[madhair60]

Almost two hours into this.  No Alien.  Where the fuck's the Alien?  Piss take.  Found a scotsman, but no alien.  "Nae alien", as he would say.  Naelien.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It's Awaylien.

I finally played through this last week. I love the first film and the the art design in this is so spot on that I can't truly dislike it, but I have a strong suspicion that it's not a particularly good game. It really does take the piss with the running time. About half an hour after the alien turns up, I ceased to be in any way frightened A few hours or so after that, I wasn't even adrenalised by it, I was just going through the motions, bloody mindedly getting to the end.

[Paaaaul]

It's just walking around and pressing buttons, in a nice-looking, but boring, environment.

[wooders1978]

The alien was also too bloody hard - I had to give up on my game as I was out of distractions and there was a bit where it's virtually a cut scene that the alien burst into the room where I was, you guessed it, switching on a generator.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I played the game on normal difficulty and never once used a noisemaker or suchlike. I found the alien easy to avoid for the most part and, on the rare occasions that it did find me, a quick dose of fire sent it packing.

It feels wrong to say, but there were times during this when I wished I was playing Dead Space instead.

[madhair60]

ok fine there's an alien.

[Blue Jam]

Finally gave this another go and got to (I think) the final mission where I have extended the walkway and have to get back to the airlock with the spacesuits, but there are now TWO xenomorphs trying to kill me and I only have one Molotov* and a tiny bit of flamethrower fuel. The pipe bombs do nothing. Playing on Medium difficulty as well. Am I fucked here or just stupid? Don't really want to get this far into the game just to end up quitting again.

I wish there was a remake or a sequel in the pipeline. For a 2014 game it looks surprisingly great but I wish the Alien itself was used more sparingly to keep things suspenseful. Perhaps a few more Working Joes and hostile humans to mix things up a bit might not go amiss.

^{* Shoot the Man United fan twice etc}

[bgmnts]

I barely remember the ending because it became a slog but can't you use the pipe bomb/molotov as a distraction and slowly leg it to your goal?

Push comes to shove just back away pointing the flamer at them and spurt out a tiny bit to keep them backed off.

[Blue Jam]

What I don't understand is how the xenomorphs are supposed to be scared of fire and yet there they are, strutting around a burning space station like the dog in the This Is Fine meme.

Will try a couple of little blasts from flamethrower, cheers. Still not quite mastered the thing, mainly been throwing out flares and watching them mesmerised by the pretty flames like the dumb beasts they really are.

[bgmnts]

Well with the one xeno, if you just point the flamer at them it'll back up a bit and slowly follow you, chancing its arm after a while. With two xenos, I have no clue, the ai might be too clever for that.


I suppose the logic is sound, as a human I'd beore comfortable standing with fire aroun than in front of someone threatening to shoot flames at my face.