VideoGame Everyone Will Hear You Scream
Honestly guys, I was pretty impressed. As a long time fan of genuinely scary survival-horror games (Silent Hills, Dead Space, etc.) as well as the classic Alien franchise, I followed the game's marketing campaign and was ecstatic that Alien: Isolation delivered on its hype.
It was, in one line, everything that I have always wanted in an Alien game. Congratulations are in order, Creative Assembly.
Taken further, it was everything that ought to have been in an Alien game years ago. That it took this long is frankly rather embarrassing. I can just see all of the Alien developers of yester-year scratching their head going, "Damn, why didn't we come up with that? What the hell were we smoking?"
In brief, Isolation eschews the all-pervasive influence of James Cameron in favor of the spirit of franchise creator Ridley Scott. Anyone (ie, everyone reading this) who has ever seen Alien and Aliens can compare and contrast the two and draw the appropriate conclusions without my help.
What does this mean for the player? If you like first-person shooters like COD and Halo and find the best solution to any problem as a player is to smash the trigger button; then put this game down and find something else. If you like epic sci-fi/fantasy adventure games like Skyrim and Mass Effect where you get to be the ultimate badass; this game will crush your ego, again and again and again.
You are not a hero, you are not a badass.
You are an ordinary, blue-collar Rosey the Riveter working 9-5, five days a week just trying to get by in life.
And then shit happens and you are suddenly against the mother-of-all-nightmares with nothing to confront it with. Good Luck!
I won't say this is a thinking man's game because its not a puzzle solver. Isolation does, however, reward any strategy that involves non-linear, counterintuitive thinking. Instead of thinking, 'the bad guys are right in front of me, how am I going to go through them', try 'how am I going to get passed them without being detected?'
Smart players will realize that the passive-aggressive approach is the best way to beating the game. The more disturbances you cause in the immediate environment, the greater the likelihood you will draw unwanted attention. On the other hand, linger too long in one area and something will eventually find you.
In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.
VideoGame The ultimate Alien game (with a few shortcomings)
Boy oh boy has SEGA had a run with the Aliens license. Up until this point their Aliens games have either been kind-of good (See AVP 2010) or fucking awful (Aliens: Colonial Marines). But along came The Creative Assembly, with a truly fresh idea for the next installment in SEGA's polarizing licensed franchise: to follow in the steps of Ridley Scott rather than James Cameron.
I only have 330 words now to I'll skip the plot summary. However, I will mention that the thing that made me pre-order this game was the fact that you get to play as Ellen Ripley's daughter Amanda. I was very excited to see what this game would do with her character. Unfortunately, the game fell flat in this department. Amanda Ripley may be unique as a female protagonist in a first-person survival horror/stealth game, but she has all the personality of a brick. You never get to see her grow as a character, like say Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (2013), who was also thrown into similar do-or-die survival circumstances. All of the other characters, with the exception of a synthetic named Samuels, didn't pique my interest as well. A shame since, as I said, you're working with someone from the goddamn Ripley family.
Now let's talk about what this game does right, because there's a whole lot of right in this game.
Gameplay. Playing this game is not like playing the original Ridley Scott movie, it is being in the original film. Everything from the sound design, to the retro-futuristic aesthetics, to the truly terrifying nature of Alien itself is spot on in its delivery. The Alien cannot be defeated, merely hidden from. Later on in the game you get a flamethrower to make it bugger off for a few seconds, but it still doesn't make any less vulnerable. I appreciate how this game treated the Alien with respect in these terms. Too many (read: all) Alien games thus far have treated the Aliens as cool looking monsters to shoot at, not the unholy creatures of unstoppable terror that they were designed as, even in the more action-packed Aliens.
Biggest issue: campaign length. This is a damn long game, and you feel it after about level 15 or so. The Alien just becomes annoying, you don't remember why you're pushing buttons, it just falls flat.
Overall though, this is the best Aliens game so far.
VideoGame Overall an incredibly good game. some minor faults.
This was overallone of the best survival horror games I have ever played.
First off, the game looks absolutely stunning. It has incredible graphics and, unlike a lot of other games, puts them to good use to make an immersive experience, which in turn really increases the horror factor. Crawling through Sevastopol feels like walking through the sets of the first movie, though at the same time adds its own unique touches and world building that I feel this franchise has lacked for a while.
This game does the survival horror genre justice. Unlike a few other games, it really understood both the survival and horror aspects well. For starters, none of the weapons in the game can actually hurt the alien, only the flame thrower can drive it off, and that will only buy you enough time to find another hiding spot at best. All of the ranged weapons in the game (used to fight of other humans and androids) all have extremely limited ammo, you will always be wanting to use your weapons sparingly for this reason. The grenade like weapons and diversions have almost the opposite problem. They are crafted from various components you find around the station, and you will often find your inventory overflowing with one type of component or the other, but you never have can find enough of some other component. This makes these weapons even more tactical, as using them too infrequently can make the game to difficult for you as much as using them as a crutch can, and it hurts to leave components behind.
This game is absolutely terrifying. You keep thinking that the xenomorph won't be scary, particularly if you're a fan of the franchise and have seen it a million times. Yet every time it you hear it stomping around or see it wander past your hiding place you become absolutely terrified. There is also only no way to outrun it and absolutely no safe places where you can go and it can not (on levels where it appears anyway).
One of the problems some gamers may have with the game is the astounding length of the campaign. While in many ways I was glad that the game kept going, and that this wasn't a short waste of money, the campaign is truly a marathon, don't expect to finish it in one sitting.
Overall I felt the game was worth the hype surrounding it, and would definitely recommend anyone to try it out.
VideoGame It made me jump
I'm not usually a big fan of the 'horror' genre. At the risk of sounding stupidly macho, I don't scare easily. Horror films such as It, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th I generally regard as comedies.
So playing this game, and I'm enjoying it. The stealth aspects are amazingly well done, and I love the "you're playing the first Alien movie" design of it. I'm having fun dodging the alien, blowing away survivors and beating the crap out of the androids.
Then the game makes me jump the most I've ever jumped in my life. I was sat there a good ten minutes trying to get my heart under control.
It wasn't the humans. It wasn't the androids. It wasn't even the xenomorph.
It was that sodding train.
Anyways, I got this game for christmas, and couldn't put it down. Fantastic. 9/10.