Alien: Isolation - Aliens, Creative Assembly, and Ripley's daughter

Very early on there’s a part where a hallway is divided by a waist high railing. One way was blocked by debris in the middle. I was shocked that instead of just stepping over the railing, you had to go back and crawl through a pipe which brings you over. Really???

Having said that I’m just past the Medical Center and I’m really enjoying the game so far.

Tom’s review is pretty spot on.

I’m enjoying the game to some extent. It looks good (although there seem to be significant frame-rate slowdowns on the PS4) and the atmosphere is good… But there are definitely parts which are just frustrating.

Although, for me at least, the Alien isn’t really the source of the frustration. There have been a few other encounters that seem far worse. One, specifically, with a group of humans was just stupid, and it ended up seeming like the only way to deal with it was to lure them down a hall and then bash all of their brains in with the wrench while they walked up one at a time to inspect the corpses of the guys I had previously bashed.

Other than that one time though, it’s been pretty good.

There is a strange trend that manifests in the gaming community regarding consensus reviews or scoring. A percentage of the community seem to believe that a given game’s scores should all fall within a few points of deviation regardless of source or publication as if the wider market should mostly be in agreement. Outlier scores are then rejected and dismissed as someone “on the take” or someone whom is “bad at the game” or some other nonsense. I don’t quite understand it.

Life would be boring if we all had the same reaction and emotional response to a given piece of content.

on Metacritic (where a 40 generally equals “mechanically broken”)
According to Metacritic a score of 40 simply means Generally Unfavorable Review.

-Todd

I wonder what they could do other than force you to die and reload, in the context of the Alien world. I think a RPG managing multiple marines is the logical next step for the franchise.

As often happens, reality differs from theory. A typical score of 40 on Metacritic means a game is mechanically broken, regardless of what Metacritic’s stated policy is. The frustration is really with scores in general, which is completely reasonable. The thinking is that this site, like Arstechnica and others, should abandon scores or not appear on Metacritic, rather than attempt to upset an established system (where 40 = mechanically broken) and confuse people used to this system. I don’t think that’s too ridiculous a position to have.

It is a ridiculous position to have. It’s an established system entirely in the minds of misguided people. It’s neither Metacritic’s system, nor that of the specific review site in question. If you’re confused by it, it’s entirely your own fault. If you want to know if a game is mechanically broken, read the reviews and find out.

Also, plenty of reviewers do think Alien Isolation is mechanically broken after about the halfway point.

Where is it universally agreed or established that 40 equals “mechanically broken”? I’m guessing that is based on the 7-10 range that most sites employ where anything below 7 is unthinkable…sort of like non-Euclidean geometry.

-Todd

This.

Go actually read 10 reviews of games that score 40. The reasons for the poor reviews are in reality many and varied.

I’m not sure exactly why the 7-10 scale developed (likely it is a holdover from many high school and college grading systems, where a 6 is failing), but that’s sort of beside the point. The system is, for better or worse, established, making outliers inherently confusing. Even in cases where outlier scores are not confusing, it does serve to lessen the value of the overall Metacritic score, which is a time saving device only when reviewers generally use the same scale.

It’s not that people believe all scores should use the same scale – it’s that people think wildly different scales negatively affect the utility of a review aggregator.

Which meant the aggregation of subjective review material is at fault, not the review material itself or whatever scaling system an individual reviewer may choose to employ.

And what’s the difference. Fine, let’s all mandate we stick to the 7-10 scale. Then people just get shitty at a 7 score when the ‘average’ is 8.5 because it is perceived as an outlier (gasp - a 1!) anyway.

Tom’s score system has been stated many times.

Five stars = I love it
Four stars = I really liked it
Three stars = I liked it
Two stars = I didn’t like it
One star = I hated it

That’s it. It’s simple. His two-star review of AI means he didn’t like it. You read the review to find out why. His star ratings don’t have anything to do with some weird weighted formula like “X% off for graphics errors” or “Y for every hour of gameplay”.

Tom’s podcast with Metacritic founder Marc Doyle is worth a listen since it goes into great detail about the Metacritic aggregate system as well as Tom’s and Marc’s perspective regarding reviews, the utility of an aggregate, and consumer perceptions. On paper the description sounds dry, but I really enjoyed this discussion and it directly addresses the topic of the last 2 pages in this thread.

Listen here.

-Todd

I’m not sure what you are responding to? The question is not which arbitrary formula is better, it’s just which is more accepted and more importantly whether it is a good thing to have an outlier score system included in a score aggregator).

Thanks for the link to the podcast, I will check that out.

Listen to the podcast. It really does clear a lot of things up regarding Tom’s scoring and why Metacritic does what it does.

I wasn’t really replying to anyone. It’s just that these discussions always go around in circles, and a lot of people get so hung up on the “60% = an F” thing that they seem to forget that Tom doesn’t actually use that scale.

It’s funny, with most reviews I look at the score first, and then read the review, because most reviews are totally generic plot summarizations with wishy washy formulaic takes on gameplay, etc., so it can be useful to parse the score before reading the text.

With Tom’s, I read the review first, and wish I could avoid the score entirely. Having read Tom for years and years I can pretty much figure out the score anyway, without looking at it. Personally, I wish everyone (especially Tom) would give up scoring games, but I understand it’s a good short hand or whatever, and that they’ll never go away completely. Also, metacritic.

I think AI in particular seems to be troublesome regarding scores. It seems like a totally worthwhile, even unique, experience in some ways, totally worth playing, but also, has some major issues that may/may not ruin the game for some folks. Tom has said that the atmosphere of the game is incredible, and the ending is totally worth getting to, but then, according to the score system he uses, he “didn’t like it.”

Just going by that measure, it would be a game to avoid, but reading the text of the review, and his comments on the boards and elsewhere, it’s something I want to experience. Anyways, I guess I don’t have much of a point besides stating the obvious: scoring games is a tricky business.

Funnily enough, IGN just published this: The Rating Game: How Reviews Impact Those Who Create - IGN

But negative reviews do serve a purpose. “I think most of the time they help point out what you did wrong, so that you can figure out how to do it better next time,” Holmes said. “That’s how you learn. Sometimes you have to learn what works by doing the thing that doesn’t work. If you’re lucky, it happens during production and you can course correct. Most of the time it doesn’t, and your audience kills you for it. But that’s just the process and you’ve gotta learn to have a thick skin and do better the next time.”

You can thank Sierra Online.

I don’t see what all of the bitching is about. Creative Assembly simply followed in Ridley Scott’s footsteps, where the set design and world building is the deepest, best character in the production.

But seriously, I’m disappointed. I’ve played games for over three decades now, and have even made a few of my own, but I don’t consider myself a true game designer. With that in mind, I wracked my brains trying to come up with a way to make the alien something more exciting than a text-adventure Grue that chases you through a maze. I couldn’t do it; but hey: not a game designer. So it’s sad to see that a studio full of paid professionals couldn’t come up with a better Alien game-play design, either. I mean, hiding in lockers? What was CA’s inspiration there: the little girl from Jurassic Park? There has to be a better way to play out the cat & mouse, fucking-with-you Alien hunt than crawling under a bed – something that challenges observation, perception, and intuition.

But then again, that’s a pretty tall order for any game, I guess. Oh well.

At the very least it’s worth a sale buy just to roam the gorgeous environment. For the only time I can remember I’m planning to lower the difficulty if I get annoyed later because I don’t want to kill my exploration buzz.

I think it’s a fascinating discussion and I think they did as well a job as could be expected given that they are making an Alien game. If you can pewpew stuff out of the way it becomes every other game in existence. Here they’ve captured the dread of being hunted by the alien at every turn. It may not work on repetition but when you hear a loud thud behind you and you have split seconds to decide on how to run & hide that’s great gameplay IMO. Perhaps A:I’s biggest crime is that it overstays its welcome.

I’m not done yet but I would easily recommend the game to anyone who has enjoyed the movie. It nails the feeling in more ways then one.

In mission 13 (damn this is long), the game is still good, apart from some quirks.