Alien: Isolation

[Angthoron]

I did a little retrospective, read abit about the game on other forums - how did I NOT spot the sound bug? When all the sfx are switched out for other sounds. Like suddenly every sound is like Ripley is a sloshing barrel of water, or her footsteps sounds like the Alien is dropping out of the vent. It's happened countless times, but for some retarded reason I never thought to attribute it to a bug.

Just at the beginning, I keep getting clearly Alien-sourced noises right at the bridge. Not sure what sound they replaced, probably some radar beeping, but it was amusing.

 

[cherry blossom]

Can someone with the original .exe (before yesterday's update on Steam) PM me the file, please?

At this point, my biggest beef with the game is the streamlined consolized movement. Amanda is incapable of some of the most basic physical feats to save her ass out of tight spots, like climbing up a fucking ledge without the aid of a one-step stair or stepping over the most insignificant debris put in place to block passage and force you to take the longest detour in the most stupidly arbitrary and unconvincing manner.

Leaning leaves a lot to be desired. Especially if you are familiar with Thief. And not enough environmental interaction beyond, duh, moving.

I also think they got the Nostromo layout wrong judging from the film but as I understand, they simply followed the "official" layout which doesn't really match the scenes in the film, which were rather inconsistent for cinematographic reasons.

 

[cherry blossom]

Is anyone playing the game with a gamepad? I'm wondering if the movement and leaning has more finesse with the analogue stick but the game won't detect my gamepad.

 

[zerotol]

never has been more appropriate.

 

[Sodafish]

I'm wondering if the movement and leaning has more finesse with the analogue stick

I don't see how. Leaning is a binary state.

 

[cherry blossom]

Not for a lot of console ports or games with gamepad support. Eg. in Dark Souls PC, movement is binary with keyboard but has finer controls with a gamepad with analogue stick.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yeah but Dark Souls was designed for a gamepad first and foremost.

 

[Caim]

Dark Souls plays like ass on a keyboard and you should get a controller ASAP.

 

[Konjad]

Fucking console apologists "OH BUT THE GAME SHOULD BE PLAYED WITH A GAMEPAD, BUY A GAMEPAD NOW, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO PLAY ON A KEYBOARD". Go fuck yourselves. If it's on PC it should be perfectly playable with just a keyboard and a mouse. If it is not then it's a shit port and fuck the game and developers.

 

[Lyric Suite]

The game should be played on a gamepad because it was designed for a gamepad. I don't see what the big deal is, gamepads are pretty cheap. Do you play emulators with mouse and keyboard as well?

 

[Zewp]

Dark Souls gets away with it because the only reason it got a PC port is because we petitioned for one. FROM said they would do one if we accept that they're not going to do a lot of work to make it a great port.

Normally I would agree that a port needs to at least support the control system it's being ported to properly, but Dark Souls is a special case.

 

[Mandora]

This game is getting blasted on the indie circuit. Word of mouth is not good. Biggest complaints are about the AI and 'portin' Alien. *Surprise Surprise*

Mankind lost the ability to make a good alien game after the first AvP, just like we lost the ability to make good alien movies.

 

[Creamy Muffin]

This game is getting blasted on the indie circuit. Word of mouth is not good. Biggest complaints are about the AI and 'portin' Alien. *Surprise Surprise*

Mankind lost the ability to make a good alien game after the first AvP, just like we lost the ability to make good alien movies.

The AI is more than adequate for what the game requires of it. And portin alien is explained in game. While the price tag is a bit high, I feel like this is an AAA game that actually feels like a game and is enjoyable instead of being an uninspired, worthless shell of a game.

 

[Lyric Suite]

What's portin?

 

[Kingston]

All in all, the game is good. Enjoy it now, because there won't be another difficult AAA stealth game for a long time. If they make a sequel to this they'll dumb it down because the reviewers can't sit still for over a minute.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

All in all, the game is good. Enjoy it now, because there won't be another difficult AAA stealth game for a long time. If they make a sequel to this they'll dumb it down because the reviewers can't sit still for over a minute.

I'm wondering if they'll finish the story in a DLC or a sequel. I think a DLC is the wiser choice.

I looked at the achivement percentages for the game. In the 3 weeks since the game was released:

45.8% have completed the fourth mission, but only 34.7% have completed the fifth mission.

Less than 13% of players have completed the game, and only 4% have completed the game on Hard difficulty.

More players have completed the dreaded fifth mission without dying (5.3%) than have completed the third mission without being attacked by an android (4.3%)

3% of players have completed the Reactor Maintenance section without dying.

0.8% have been killed more than 100 times by the Alien.

0.2% have completed the game without dying once.

Only 0.7% have completed the game without killing any humans.

Only 0.4% and 0.3% have taken the effort to collect all the Nostromo logs and all the ID tags respectively.

 

[Mandora]

What's portin?

Teleporting. The game 'cheats' because the Alien unrealistically appears near the player no matter what aka 'teleporting'. Spawning near players is common in many games, but in this game the cat and mouse tug of war is the main selling point. This is compounded during the game when the alien's position sometimes does not match with the scanner, due to the 'portin' effect.

The game is not only horribly overpriced, it could also have been much better. They had a clear view of what they wanted the game to be, and they even had a believably limited amount of design space with clear limitations supported by the story aka story set on a ship, with narrow corridors and draw distances, and a small area in game to cover. And they still did not deliver anything close to perfection. This is just another attempt to cash in on the franchise name, after the horrible game that preceded it which I will not deign to name, which was sold entirely on the basis of false advertising (and just where are the SJWs who should be calling for the guilty parties in that incident to be charged with false advertisement and lying?)

 

[cherry blossom]

I don't think it teleports at all outside scripted key events or I haven't seen anything yet to indicate that it does. The Alien does move pretty fucking fast, though and it does eventually keep returning to Amanda's general area (confirmed by devs) so it's never too far.

However, I do think that the ventilation "network" is a load of horseshit, such that there's no actual ventilation layout that adheres to the actual environments in the game which the Alien has to navigate. Instead, the Alien seems to move straight between duct exits a lot of the times (except for when it's the ducts accessible by the player) where only direct raw distances between the exits matter. Case in point, early in the game in Systech Spire Lobby (where you find the Access Tuner), I saw the Alien enter a duct exit on the lower lobby deck and within seconds, exit another one on the above deck and I could track its straight movement between the two on Motion Tracker where it should have been a lengthier detour for the Alien, judging from the layout and structural elements of the lobby. Witnessed similar occurrences later on as well but then again, also tracked what seemed like legit navigation in other times.

So I think CA tried to keep the Alien's vent navigation "zones" as vast and uninterrupted as possible except for when it would stick out too much and break all suspension of disbelief, with some oversight.

That the alien is always around the player also sort of makes the game easier and at the same time, more dismal as a game experience. Since you know it is always around, you can basically avoid it by crawling all the time (about halfway in hard difficulty without a single death so far) which is not entertaining at all, especially with the inadequate leaning and seeing the stunning environments from a lowered position in most circumstances. They should have added a sneak button so you could sneak upright. Would also make more sense.

Anyway, I quite like the game. I would have wished it to be completely open-world and emergent with other characters running after their own objectives in real time or phased stages (maybe with occasional event-gates so slow players wouldn't miss everything) or at least a more systemic ability to play with the infrastructure but I'm happy with what we could get from an AAA offering that is this good.

 

[Jick Magger]

There were times I noticed where the motion tracker didn't pick up the alien as 'moving' through the vents, as much as it was kinda 'blipping' through them, as if it was teleporting minor distances in order to get to a vent opening quicker. There was only one situation that I came across (which I wrote about earlier in the thread) where I can say without uncertainty, that the Alien got to a location in such a short span of time with no nearby vents that the only plausible way it could've got there was through teleporting.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This game is getting blasted on the indie circuit. Word of mouth is not good. Biggest complaints are about the AI and 'portin' Alien. *Surprise Surprise*

Mankind lost the ability to make a good alien game after the first AvP, just like we lost the ability to make good alien movies.

What the fuck is the "indie circuit"?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I don't think it teleports at all outside scripted key events or I haven't seen anything yet to indicate that it does. The Alien does move pretty fucking fast, though and it does eventually keep returning to Amanda's general area (confirmed by devs) so it's never too far.

I've seen it teleport several times, but always in the same area: Medical in Mission 5. The worst instance was when I took the long way back and had managed to ditch it in the area where the keycard is, only for it to magically appear IN FRONT OF ME as I was approaching the door to where Ripley talks to Dr. Kuhlman.

The game is not only horribly overpriced, it could also have been much better. They had a clear view of what they wanted the game to be, and they even had a believably limited amount of design space with clear limitations supported by the story aka story set on a ship, with narrow corridors and draw distances, and a small area in game to cover. And they still did not deliver anything close to perfection.

Those are somewhat elevated expectations, especially considering that this is CA doing the coding and the Alien franchise which hasn't seen a decent release of any kind in over 12 years. Perfection was never even on the charts, a good game was the best we could hope for and they couldn't even deliver on that.

The first post-release DLC is out today, if a big fat patch isn't released alongside it then Sega and CA are in trouble. In its current state the game is playable, but it's not exactly a smooth ride.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

So the DLC downloaded, and I booted it up. Turns out that it's SURVIVOR mode only, which means "only for the masochists" as I believe that it's hardcoded to be only in Hard mode. I start in Ransome's flat, have a look around, gather supplies and do an inventory check. (2 revolver rounds, 1 bolt gun round and a noisemaker I managed to craft).

I steel myself for what's ahead and open the front door. I'm in a corridor with a blockade on the left that I can crawl through, a locker in right in front of me, and a door on the right...and an air vent in between me and the door. Guess who drops in IMMEDIATELY after the door closes behind me?

I crawl under the barricade which causes the Alien "A.I." to jump up into the vents so that it can drop down on the other side to get me, but I double back and hide in the locker. By the time the Alien drops down on the other side I'm already snug and secure in the locker. I sit and wait for a minute until the Alien jumps into the vent again. I wait 15 seconds more before I get out and crawl over to the door.

Alien drops down right behind me as I crawl past the vent. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to drive it back. The end.

...I don't get it. Why are they pushing and adding content to a part of the game that NO ONE is interested in? Seriously, only the PewDiePie video posted earlier even touches on it in this thread, and the Steam forums are pretty much the same.

Also, there's no story except for a paragraph of exposition on the Survivor screen. No new voiceacting, no new art assets that I could see.

First impressions: This DLC isn't just bad, it's a joke.

(Let's see if anyone else fares better, but I'm not touching this shit.)

 

[DragoFireheart]

So the DLC downloaded, and I booted it up. Turns out that it's SURVIVOR mode only, which means "only for the masochists" as I believe that it's hardcoded to be only in Hard mode. I start in Ransome's flat, have a look around, gather supplies and do an inventory check. (2 revolver rounds, 1 bolt gun round and a noisemaker I managed to craft).

I steel myself for what's ahead and open the front door. I'm in a corridor with a blockade on the left that I can crawl through, a locker in right in front of me, and a door on the right...and an air vent in between me and the door. Guess who drops in IMMEDIATELY after the door closes behind me?

I crawl under the barricade which causes the Alien "A.I." to jump up into the vents so that it can drop down on the other side to get me, but I double back and hide in the locker. By the time the Alien drops down on the other side I'm already snug and secure in the locker. I sit and wait for a minute until the Alien jumps into the vent again. I wait 15 seconds more before I get out and crawl over to the door.

Alien drops down right behind me as I crawl past the vent. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no way to drive it back. The end.

...I don't get it. Why are they pushing and adding content to a part of the game that NO ONE is interested in? Seriously, only the PewDiePie video posted earlier even touches on it in this thread, and the Steam forums are pretty much the same.

Also, there's no story except for a paragraph of exposition on the Survivor screen. No new voiceacting, no new art assets that I could see.

First impressions: This DLC isn't just bad, it's a joke.

(Let's see if anyone else fares better, but I'm not touching this shit.)

Sorta reminds me of those VR simulator missions from Metal Gear Solid: a gamey-game that's obnoxious and has zero story with an arbitrary time limit.

I don't like time limits in my horror games and I don't like gimmicky obstacle course style horror like the Alien Survivor mode. Pile of shit indeed.

 

[chestburster]

...I don't get it. Why are they pushing and adding content to a part of the game that NO ONE is interested in?

It's the only way the game can add in some form of multiplayer and quick cash grabs DLC maps .

I'd actually play it but I just don't like this hide-and-seek gameplay loop. I imagine if one is an addict for stealth game, he'd love these maps.

 

[chestburster]

I'm wondering if they'll finish the story in a DLC or a sequel.

Because I have a time machine, I can tell you this is the how the story ends:

Spoiler

On a related note, I don't give a flying facehugger's ass about Amanda's fage. I wanna know what happened to Jonesey. Can never forgive SEGA for not putting him in the Crew Expendable dlc.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Because CA (the coders) can't code their way out of a wet paper bag. A cat would be too much effort.

Consider the character models already in the game. Their state never changes. You bash in a human's skull? Blood flies everywhere and blood is splattered on the character model, but the model remains intact, the head isn't even folded at the point of impact. Same if you throw a pipebomb at a human. For some bizarre reason no limbs are blown clean off, no gaping torso wounds are produced.

Creating and coding a cat model, even though it's just a brown furbag in a pet carrier that goes "meow" on occasion, is too much for them.