Well, the main difference between Alien the move and this Alien Isolation, is how gamey is at the end, though it’s very faithful at the surface level. What am I talking about? The film was about a crew, they talked, they discussed, they got nervous and stressed, they fight each other, they tried to escape, etc. That was the interesting thing, how they interacted when presented in a extreme situation, the alien. Here? You are alone and your interaction with other people is just receiving orders by radio, usually. So it’s all reduced to the alien vs you, which is basically a hide and seek game. Also, because you can’t kill the alien and he is lethal and superfast, there is no reason for it to go all stalky and predator-like, so the fucking-with-you vibe isn’t very strong.
I like this explanation and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I mean, even when Ellen R. was alone at the end of the flick, she wasn’t: Mother was inexorably counting down her fate. As I read in some book about writing science fiction… it’s the people, stupid, even in sci-fi. Not about alien bugs or lightspeed or space marines or whatever… it always boils down to people. Alien the movie was about people, specifically Ten Little Indians, and the game … well, games still don’t do people very well.
Isolation, like Tomb Raider, does do people well, by letting you experience the growth and emotion of the character without having to see it in a cutscene.
The Metacritic guy in the podcast seemed to say that ‘some graders are naturally harsher than others,’ but that’s not what’s going on here. The scale here is itself much harsher than it is elsewhere, which is a very different concept from having a rough grader using the same scale. I’m not sure they addressed the issue really.
I just listened to it again. He goes into a lot more than what you’ve described. If that’s all you took from it, I think we’re at a dead end.
Yep, I was doing the same self-reflection while I was writing that. It makes you remember how primitive are still video games. Think most fiction like films or series or books are usually about people that interact in some ways, positively or negatively. What was the last book you read about a dude alone where human interaction was limited to sparse encounters of 2 minutes of duration? The most basic plot of 4-5 people in some situation (like traveling together) is super hard to make in a video game. Or you are alone or as much you are with a single companion (think Bioshock Infinite or The Last of Us), to simplify all interaction to more predictable ways: you and the other. In a group you would have to have the option of talking to each one and each npc should also be able to interact with the rest, and let’s remember the path finding problems!
And imo it isn’t even a video game if your solution to the problem is just scripting every line and movement and decision, that’s just a movie done in real-time graphics.
The only example I can think of is party based rpgs, where in some of them there are party banter, they can dislike each other and leave, etc, and that isn’t what I was thinking of, as usually in party based rpgs you are mo in control of the group and the other companions barely have any agency.
Humans are a hard problem.
Maybe… I agree with your analysis, but I’ve always wondered wether humans are a hard problem (that it’s “solved” in other medias tends to point out it’s not) or maybe it’s just that they are a hard problem for our way of making ways. Systemic interactions with a virtual human sounds a lot like hard AI. Maybe games about people need to be more like TWD (narrative experiences that make good use of interactivity for impact and expression, but with hand crafted interactions). Maybe systems based games can just not make people well and we should stop trying.
I don’t know the answer, honestly.
[ol]
[li] “Death to objectivism” has a certain coincidental irony to it. Given the individualism involved in objectivism and this commenter’s desire for Tom’s opinions to match everyone’s elses, he really does kind of wish for death to objectivism.
[/li][li] Everyone of the “reviews should be objective” crowd make me laugh whenever they come up, so this comment was already pre-disposed to at least getting me cheery.
[/li][li] “You gave a low score to a game because you personally didn’t like it” is a stupid thing to say. Should Tom give a game a low score because [/b]I[/b] didn’t like it? Or should he give it a high score because he thinks I might like it? For what possible reason other than “because Tom didn’t like it” should Tom actually give a game a low score?!
[/li][li] The idea that Tom was after instant gratification when playing, rather than avoid tedium. I guess this guy loves watching paint dry, because although that’s tedious there’s no instant gratification there?
[/li][li] The idea that Tom should have a concluding paragraph, which he already does. (+ he has the witty bit inside the score card)
[/li][li] The idea that a scorecard makes someone an absolutist, and that’s a bad thing, but every other site other than the dissenting ones is allowed to be absolutist about this? (and that a conclusion paragraph would somehow make someone not be an absolutist?)
[/li][li] The fact that metacritic already looks at reviews which don’t do scores, and the curator assigns the review a score based on what he thinks the reviewer would have given, often based on things like concluding paragraphs :)
[/li][li] “Not everything has to be to your liking and not everything is bad for that reason.” – SAME GOES FOR YOUR COMMENT. If you don’t like Tom’s reviews, bugger off and don’t read them? And if you don’t like his opinions, perhaps they’re not bad anyway? (Also, as addressed in 1., if Tom doesn’t like something, should he still give it 5 stars etc etc?)
[/li][/ol]
I remember on the podcast that the Metacritic guy said HE included QT3 and was well aware of Tom’s rating scale, rather than Tom asking to be put on QT3. So it’s by Mr Metacritic’s own devices that he’s upsetting his own scoring, and he appeared very happy to be doing so!
Interestingly, such a system does not exist in the schools of the UK, and yet the UK based Amiga Power were joking about 73% being the number of the beast way back in the 90s. They said it was used by other magazines to placate publishers and communicate to them “your very expensive to produce game is terrible but please keep advertising with us”, and that were happy giving something 11% to communicate the same thing.
Amiga Power - Everything2.com (I would link to the AP2 article about it, but Stu appears to have stopped paying the hosting bill… :/)
UK mags in general were/are more likely to use a broad scale, it seems. There are/were plenty of 15% scores in PC Gamer and PC Zone and 3/10s in Edge (though not many 1s or 2s). Eurogamer seems to follow the website trend more.
I’ve only just read that link I linked to:
Also of note is the time that an executive of a leading software company of the day (it may have been the aforementioned Team 17, come to think of it) phoned Jonathan Nash (then-editor) and accused him and his “evil” magazine of single-handedly wanting to destroy the Amiga. The exec’s argument? AP gave bad games low scores, so people wouldn’t buy them. Fault his logic, I dare you
Has parallels to Tom is killing games/metacritic?
And, in-case anyone cares, the thoroughly unreadable AP2 has moved to a new domain. But at least I can now link to the 73% thing.
Interestingly AP boasted its own pseudo-metacritic and was PROUD of it’s low scores.
After the reactor level
So there were several aliens, ohh!
It’s funny, there was a moment when the “single” alien followed you around and even between levels and I was complaining about it that I thought “I don’t know why they have forced it so much with only 1 alien, if would they could have 3 aliens in the station it would be less silly changing scenario after taking an elevator and still have an alien around you, as it could be explained as this one is another alien. I understand they didn’t want to make another Aliens experience where they are simple bugs of a hive, but with a pair more it would be less unnatural”. And baam, that was the explanation all this time.
I still haven’t seen any queen, I wonder if, given the game is a love letter to the first film, they are going to use the original cycle where eggs are just morphed lifeforms captured by the alien.
Oh, and of course the company we love to hate, Weyland-Yutani, was behind everything! They took control of Apollo.
I just finished that mission too (mission 14). I feel like I need to take a break to calm my nerves down now!
Still loving the game just as much.
The Apollo level was also very cool, though fuck those Synthetics. First you
a challenge
steal my weapons and then their magic raincoats they have gives them EMP and baton stun immunity! Though it was a pleasure to fry them when I discovered how to do it. The previous level where you find several of them deactivated in a dark room and you aren’t sure which ones are real was also nail-biting.
I am such a big fat wimp for this game. I’m just a little ways in and it’s giving me real stress to continue going. Like Amnesia did, but that felt a little more stylized, a little more heightened in a way that felt a bit less real. Funny I’m describing a game about hiding from aliens and robots as more “real”, but it’s about the reaction it evokes in me. I had an android sneak up behind me and choke me, and I nearly dropped the controller. I may need a drink or two before I play again.
I haven’t felt this much tension and fear in a game since the cathedral missions in Thief and so far I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Alien up until mission and 6. Now the honeymoon is over.
sigh
Mission 5 was a a hairy game of cat and mouse but mission 6 where you have to get the trauma kit can go fuck itself. There’s just no damn wiggle room between hiding in closets and crouch walking down the hall to reach the offices and other compartments as slime face appears to have an aggressive patrol pattern on this mission. I turned the difficulty down to easy but it’s had no discernible effect on the difficulty from what I can tell. The alien hardly spends anytime in the airshafts which makes it a royal pain to get anywhere. The alien went from something to be feared to huge kill joy that’s anchored to you no matter what you try to do to distract it. I tossed a flashbang down the airway shaft thinking it would keep him preoccupied while I snooped around upstairs but it had no effect at all.
This is very frustrating and so not in my contract.
I haven’t played Amnesia but playing Evil Within drove me to the same conclusion - AW is scary as hell, as were Dead Space 1 and System Shock 2 the first time I played them. Evil Within on the other hand is not scary at all, neither were any of the other classic horror games I’ve tried over the years. I honestly don’t know why, I guess my brain just outright dismisses the possibility of such scenarios unfolding in real life while sci-fi themes maintain some level of plausibility.
I finished it tonight. It was a good game :). The end is… the game doesn’t have a good ins-crescendo and then knows to end in the climax, but it continues a pair of hours more than it should, having a weird pace. And then of course, it’s the end itself, which is a bit uh??. So it isn’t a perfect experience.
Medical lab was in the end, the “worst” level, or at least the level where the alien was the most annoying. Most of the following levels aren’t that frustrating so if you are stuck around that part, persevere a bit more. In a way I appreciate it, as it made me more paranoid of the alien in the next levels.
Remember to use all your tools and weapons, the game gives you a steady amount of components to manufacture more, and I finished it with surplus ammo. You can even allow yourself you say “fuck stealth” and go in a violent rampage in a level or two. Hell, it’s even liberating.
Use flares.
And noise makers. I don’t think flashbangs work on the alien.
That was really the only mission in the game that I’ve experienced any frustration in so far. The alien seems scripted to stay out of the vents and keep close to you for much of it, but I didn’t really have problems until the final part of it.
Do the flashbangs work on the androids? I think the description says it stuns them, but it’s unclear whether it’ll be as effective as zapping them with the cattle prod… If you stun them with the flashbang, can you then beat them down with the wrench?
I tend to just try and avoid them, since in many cases they don’t even attack you if they see you. But it’s never totally clear whether you’re in a place that is gonna piss them off or not, so I hide from them always.
Good to know. That’s where I’m at now and I’ve found it pretty frustrating.