Alien isolation

[6826bdd95c8edsketchybmxer]

Hi been a lurker for a while, but I thought id take the time to join as I wanted to hear your thoughts on the new alien game.

Sure its no SS, but from watching videos of it playing on youtube it does appear to do a good job of capturing the feeling of being alone on a derelict spaceship.

Also (I dont know the workings) but does anyone think it could be used as a good base to mod for a fan made SS sequel? 

[6826bdd95cbc3Kolya]

Definitely looking forward to that one.
Of course it's far to early to say what could be done with it. Most likely nothing at all, since there probably will be no editor, as is standard today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xEPl9y1bLA

http://alienisolation.com/

[6826bdd95cf26Marvin]

I am interested (well, not as a potential buyer 'cause Steam) too but from what I heard the game has some AI/difficulty issues which can have a very negative impact on playability and atmosphere. It seems that the alien either seems oblivious to its surroundings and wanders about the rooms like a drunkard with bad eyesight (easy to normal) or catches the player every time he or she makes the slightest mistake (hard). As the game provides almost zero means of defending yourself, i.e. Thief's flashbomb, which was kind of the idea, this can result in trial & error.

I have to admit though that wandering around the Nostromo together with the original cast is very, very tempting, if only for one or two small missions.

[6826bdd95d020Xeon]

You know that this game is going to scare you to hell.

[6826bdd95d10dKolya]

We'll see. I've killed quite a few aliens in my life.

[6826bdd95d76dJDoran]

I bought it yesterday, but haven't played much of it (I was out most of the night - real life stuff), and so far it's not grabbed me at all.

Extremely minor spoilers about the beginning of the game, you'll spoil nothing by reading this:

I played it for maybe an hour and I've not yet seen the alien, just one friendly NPC and briefly met two others. So far it's been (after leaving the starting space craft) just a search through a semi-dead space-station, with no threats or dangers, though story-wise the threat is no doubt just ahead.

Alright, so it's far too early to judge the game, but so far I'm not liking it, as:

1) To me the safe start has gone on for too long. It's much better, story-wise, than just throwing you straight into the action, but it's too long, and also doesn't set the mood too well, I think.

2) It also suffers from some modern gaming syndromes, such as the usual on-screen prompt every time you can do anything "Press X to open", which I don't like, as I like to discover if something can be done or not, not have the game spell it out for me. And of course, you (Ripley) seem to be clairvoyant as you know in advance if a door is locked or not (if it is, the game says "Locked" before you touch the door, otherwise it's "Press X..." as the prompt.

Much worse, the environments are full of items that you can't interact with, and you can only pick up or search a few. This is like in the Deus Ex games, where in the orignal Deus Ex (from 2001), each lab or cupboard looked bare, with only a few contents, but you could at least pick up any of the contents even though they were often useless to you. Whereas in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, from more than a decade later, there were lots and lots of incidental items on the shelves, workspaces, etc, but you couldn't interact with them. I *much* prefer the former situation, as even though the laboritories, for example, looked a bit ridiculous since they were so spares, at least the game felt realistic in that you could pick up anything you saw. To me that's much better than Human Revolution's desks and shelves full of objects that were just graphical details that you couldn't pick up. If you couldn't pick up anything, say if Human Revolution was just a pure first person shooter, then it wouldn't be so bad, but since you could pick up say one specific  item from amongst the two dozen on a workspace, then it just reminded you that it was just a game you were playing.

And sadly Alien: Isolation is just the same. The game world is full of all sorts of items that you can't pick up, you can only pick up very few of them. And you can search some objects, but not others even though the others might well contain things that you need. And this does damage the immersion of the game.

Also, a lot of the game is set in darkness, or near darkness. This is fine, story-wise, since the space station is supposed to be damaged, and parts of it are supposed to have the power turned off (when you turn on the power, there's no skill involved, no mini game sadly, you just press the same controller button three times), but (to me at least) Doom 3 proved that this is not frightening. Darkness in a game is only frightening when it occurs sometimes (usually at important or dangerous times). Doom 1 and 2 had periods of darkness, and they were scary, and emerging into the light felt great. But Doom 3 was almost permanently shrouded in different degrees of darkness, and it just got boring. And it's the same with Alien: Isolation.

Aside from that, I can't say a lot about the game. It looks OK, it's atmospheric (but nowhere near as atmospheric, so far at least, as System Shock 2, or the original PC version of Alien vs. Predator (2000), and the interaction so far with the NPCs have been very underwhelming. The first one you speak to, after the introduction cutscenes, is a man (can't remember his name, who works for The Company) who is examining the medical bay (no, System Shock lovers, the first password you find isn't (0)451, sadly!), and he tells you to go and find the lawyer NPC. After that, he won't respond to you or talk to you, not for story reasons, but because the game isn't programmed to. You can push up against him, try to talk to him, etc, and he just acts like you're not there. And in fact he types, or moves his fingers as though he's manipulating something, but his hands are nowhere near a keyboard or anything else. The game's designers might as well as put up a message for you saying "This is just a game. You've got a new objective (travel sixty in-game feet through the linear corridors until you get to the next NPC, the lawyer, and the next NPC speech will be triggered".

When you do speak to someone, you don't get a choice of what to say, your in-game character says her pre-programmed response. I'm not really criticising the game for that, as it's not an RPG, but it would have helped to make the gameworld feel more alive.

In short, so far it's blah. It's poorly judged (the start of the game is taking far too long) and the game world feels dead (not story-wise, story-wise it is supposed to be almost dead, but dead as in you can interact with so little), but it might still prove to be really good, when the survival part of the game kicks in. But I do wish that instead of being a game written in a modern game engine, that it had been a (well written) mod for System Shock, as then the game world would be forced to have less objects but every object could be interactive, and every container could be searched, even if many of them were empty.

To be honest, I'm not looking forward to playing it more when I get home. I'm not exactly dreading it either (if I didn't want to play it then I just wouldn't, but I will, to see if it gets better), but the fact that I'm not looking forward to it says more about the game that I could. Still, it could get much, much better. But even if it does, then the start of the game will always be boring, whenever (if ever) I replay it.

[6826bdd95d8b6Kolya]

Found some nice GIFs. This Rocker-Alien looks like it's wearing a biker jacket.

[6826bdd95dac2voodoo47]

got to play on a friends machine today, not too impressed, felt just like another failing SS2 wannabee. and the alien isn't scary, he is just annoying, mostly because you can't do a damn thing about him. just like Panzer General muddy weather - once it hits, you just sigh and reload to get something less crap. the humans and androids feel dumb and out of place. no real explanation why they are trying to kill the protagonist either. maybe things get better as you progress, but no time to check.

if stealthy space station scavenging sneaker was what they were aiming for, then they didn't quite get it right. too bad Solarix did not get funded, quite possible that it'd have hit the spot.

[6826bdd95e328Ndrake]

and the alien isn't scary, he is just annoying, mostly because you can't do a damn thing about him. just like Panzer General muddy weather - once it hits, you just sigh and reload to get something less crap.

If that's true then what more needs to be said about this game? Since I'm tempted to trust your judgement I probably won't even bother trying this one.
Fail state beyond player death - or probably more precisely fail state before  player death. Either way what it does is killing the immersion before killing the player. And if a game does that I don't think it matters how many light bulbs there are on the space ship.

[6826bdd95ea99Join2]

[No] fail state beyond player death

I don't think that's a strict rule of the Immersive Sim, for example System Shock 1 has the laser you can fire early and lose the game, and System Shock 2 you can be a dumbass and invest your cyber modules in "flower arranging" when you are told to invest it in "bum scratching" instead.
It is a rule I agree with though, but it's difficult to uphold as there can be so many potential plot trees with so many branches each. For example, what if the player could live on after blowing up earth with the laser? The story would have to be significantly different. This is one aspect in which Deus Ex excels, I believe.

[6826bdd95fa51Ndrake]

For me "Immsim" is an interesting concept, so I don't think there are any strict rules (or any games that are true Immsims for that matter). I didn't want to imply that they wanted to create an Immsim. I merely thought that particular point helps explaining why the thing voodoo described kills immersion.
Most devs would probably avoid a thing like the laser nowadays - maybe sometimes because of immersion but more often because they are afraid of frustrating the player (i.e. making the game challenging)
Hmm I don't know about the modules... There is the research implant and the ice breaker to substitute plot relevant skills... Maybe if you spend all your nanites and can't afford the sympathetic resonator, that would be a true fail state.
Of course a challenging game needs to have "fail states" in the sense that you are probably going to die if you keep acting stupid and spend all your ammunition on monkeys. But with this variety at least the player won't be sure he failed until he is dead.

[6826bdd9609e8voodoo47]

was actually talking about this to a game developer (browser rpgs, mostly), he also sees the concept of a completely invincible monster as a failed mechanics. to make it work, the player needs to have at least a few options, for example;

-hide and hope the monster will not see you. cheap on resources, but will only get you "rid" of the monster for a short while.
-fight the monster. lose quite a lot of resources, but after "wounding" the monster enough, it will retreat for a notably longer period of time. maybe give the player an extra reward for taking the chance.
-use the environment/homemade traps to wound/trap the monster. will disable the monster for a variable period of time, while consuming some of the player resources.

or similar. you need something like that to make exploration/resource hunting viable - without this, it's basically just "take the shortest route to the end of the level and hope the game won't spawn the monster right into your face". a pretty good example of a working invincible monster is resident evil: nemesis.

[6826bdd960bf8Ndrake]

Yahtzee reviews Alien Isolation and - surprise surprise - System Shock 2 is mentioned.

While the alien is having one of his lengthy coffee brakes in the green room your main obstacle is rogue androids - also know as "we won't bring up the protocol droids from System Shock 2 if you don't!"

[6826bdd960d54Kolya]

Jajaja, but do you get to fight the Alien in underwear?

[6826bdd96117eRocketMan]

I always thought of Sogourny Weaver as pretty butch looking but even this scene kinda got a rise out of me.  Does that mean I'm gay?

[6826bdd9612abJoin2]

Something to add to your bucket list, RocketMan 

 

^Needs another smiley doing this one from behind.

Annd I cannot stop laughing at my own joke.

[6826bdd96155fOmegaDEATH]

Jajaja, but do you get to fight the Alien in underwear?

I doubt it but the game is legendary, really would love to see ss2 and ss2 infinite on a similar engine.

[6826bdd961950Drone-Dragon]

I think the thing I hate the most is that the developers see the tech/architecture of the original Alien movie as needing to be 'recaptured', rather than just that way because of the real-world time period.

That being said, before I generally lost interest in Alien/Predator stuff, I tended toward AvP stuff more so, though not those horrible crappy movies...*blargh*.

The two PC AvP games and a lot of Dark Horse comics were a part of my love affair with anything AvP or either lone series. As well as the Capcom AvP game that was about the ONLY game I hardly ever played at Frankie's Fun Park...aside from this one game that had sci-fi tank arena combat...or something.

I don't agree with some people's opinions...namely Isolation's developer's seemingly shared opinion...that AvP, or even Aliens, ruined the Xenomorph as an apex 'predator'(no relation ). If anything Isolation and the original movie show how a lone Xeno would be methodical, but I think they take it a wee bit too far from what I've seen and make the Alien seem a little...clunky and slow. That actually was one of my only few gripes about the AvP 2 PC game, that the Alien was significantly slowed down from what it was in the first AvP PC game...well that and the overall uselessness of most of the different grenades for the grenade launcher. I don't know about the Xenomorphs in that third game made by Rebellion(they made the first game too, but not the second).

Honestly, instead of going the route the developers of Isolation did, they should have just made this a survival horror RPG like SS2. There could have been some great moments with just narrowly frying a Xeno with a makeshift flamethrower...but NOOO.

I always thought of Sogourny Weaver as pretty butch looking but even this scene kinda got a rise out of me.  Does that mean I'm gay?

Actually aside from her not having much of a butt in the old days, I thought she was pretty hot.

[6826bdd961b54Kolya]

Interesting, I have a completely different perspective, ie the fact that they recaptured the original tech/architecture makes it interesting for me, because just like 2001 I don't see it as a result of the ending 70s (really?) but as an artistic statement. It was the first film to show a dirty gritty future and the functional design still works very well for me. Much more so than more snazzy futuristic designs that scream "THIS IS THE FUTURE" all the time.
But that's the thing with the original Alien, that it meant different things to different people, which is why we got 3 sequels, each with a completely different approach. I like every one of them for different reasons. And we got many Alien (inspired) games, including SS2, which did their own takes on the subject. And that's just witness to the fact that regardless which approach you like the best, the Alien in itself was a hugely successful and influential idea. (It would be interesting to explore why this is so, but I'm sure some have done so already.)
If anything I think filmmakers should have stopped using Ripley as an anchor of the series at some point and begun telling different unrelated stories, featuring the alien(s). As much as I like Ripley, the idea of her waking up and being surrounded by Aliens once more, did get old after a while. She became the Alien mama in more than one sense and that wasn't so good for the series.

[6826bdd961facNdrake]

the Alien in itself was a hugely successful and influential idea. (It would be interesting to explore why this is so, but I'm sure some have done so already.)

I recommend Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek for a start. I know what some may think, but he's actually a real philosopher and wrote serious books on Hegel for example. Although admittedly he's better known for his theories about films. Anyway a philosophical theory about the Alien seems to be a pet project of his and anyone who loves the film should check it out some time. I won't even try to summarize.
Personally I love the first film among other things because it shows that "gritty future". The mere idea that there's smoking on a space ship amazes me every time. (If anyone knows a prior example of this please let me know!) Also its probably the first time we have seen the "working class" in space.
As far as games and sequels are concerned I see two problems:
1. The  alien itself is only a part of the original concept (remember the dead alien pilot for example?) Sequels and games tend to focus on the grown xenomorph - and even the best character design tends to weaken with too much spotlight.
2. Maybe being scared was never the point - but  shouldn't it be in survival horror games? And are we really supposed to be scared of a pop culture icon? I remember growing up the H.R. Giger art book was one of my favorite items in my fathers library. Yes it's still fascinating - maybe even disturbing. But scary?

[6826bdd962140Join2]

I still think Alien Trilogy was the best Alien game. Music, atmosphere, sprites beating early 3D models at least...gameplay doesn't really hold up too well, but I just love that soundtrack and have fond memories of the heavy atmosphere.
Saying that though I haven't played all the Alien games, but all those I have has been a disappointment.

2. Maybe being scared was never the point - but  shouldn't it be in survival horror games? And are we really supposed to be scared of a pop culture icon?

Yes, It was half the point if not more. Yes and yes to your next points also. I still find some depictions of "Grays" to be scary, and they can easily be considered a pop culture icon. Whether Creative Ass. succeeded in making the Alien scary in the new game I don't know. It's all about the execution.

[6826bdd962406Drone-Dragon]

As much as I like Ripley, the idea of her waking up and being surrounded by Aliens once more, did get old after a while. She became the Alien mama in more than one sense and that wasn't so good for the series.

To be honest, Alien Res was just the basis for Firefly .

[6826bdd9625acKolya]

Might be, I only saw 1-2 episodes of Firefly. Didn't jive with me.
To me Alien Resurrection always seems like fan fiction or a comic. It has great new ideas and a few crowning moments of awesomeness ("FATHER is dead, asshole!"), but lots of it is overdone, the characters are a bunch of walking clichés that serve only to spit out cool or risqué lines. Ripley's story is incoherent and for all its dramatic highpoints (killing of 1-7, abortion of her offspring) remains underdeveloped. The saving grace of this film are it's nice visuals and Winona Ryder as "Call" playing the only relatable character with some depth. In short, turning Alien into a "Dark Comedy" was a bad idea. But once you get past that it's still a highly entertaining film.

[6826bdd9627e5System Shocked]

.  .  .  Does that mean I'm gay?

You seem to be happy enough.