Okay so I finally finished this the other night and phew, is this a long game or what? I was convinced I was about to finish it any minute for 6 hours straight until 2am in the morning when I finally did reach the credits. It was too long for me then, but overall I enjoyed it. Amazing audio on 5.1; incredible visual design, from the interiors to the technology to the alien itself and the synthetics; I loved the appearance of the UIs even if they were a bit finicky to use (terminals and logs particularly); some of the hacking mini-games were kind of nice and unexpected; the stealth was edgy and a little unpredictable which meant you never really felt safe. At its best it felt like a more linear System Shock and was incredibly intense at times.
Someone earlier in the thread, Jazar I think, mentioned the visual vocabulary of the game making it difficult to see what could be interacted with but I noticed on the Torrens right at the beginning that pretty much anything that can be interacted with usually has a green light, whether it’s a control panel, or door, or draw, or cupboard, or switch – it’s subtle but effective once you pick up on it.
So, on to the gripes:
Here be spoilers…
[spoiler]I wasn’t too enamoured by the ending but it wasn’t a bad one, the QTE airlock xeno dream sequence was anti-climactic and the aliens surrounding Ripley on the maintenance rig just felt a bit trite and predictable. Not to mention that entire sequence before you put the EVA suit on when there are multiple aliens was incredibly frustrating. I died so many times trying to get across that room. Towards the end I just felt like CA were wasting my time with more retreading of the same areas, more setbacks (I swear, I’ll be happy if I never have to fucking power something up ever again), inexplicably sealed doors that forced lengthy detours. Ripley getting dragged off to be impregnated was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. Actually, no, it was the generator packing in at the end of that section with the four rooms linked by one long narrow corridor on Mission 17.
Medical was a real pain and didn’t at all make for a good early impression of the alien. In fact, I’d argue it cemented my view of it very early on: there’s too much of it which consequently turns it into a nuisance rather than something to be scared of, like the synthetics. It’s funny, the game takes so many cues from the film, often straight-up lifting things out of it, but the one thing it didn’t take was how little the alien was shown and how much dread that absence instilled. On the run up to medical, I was physically shuddering at the prospect of being hunted by it. After medical it was nothing more than an insta-death hindrance. The flamethrower was a god send! So for me, I think less of the xenomorph would have been more effective; it would have allowed the atmosphere of the Sevastopol to breath more. I mean, when you jettison the lab off into space with the alien in it the Sevastopol is positively serene without that thing running around, but still scary as hell. I wanted to use that opportunity to explore the ship more but I got spooked by the silence and the occasional and inexplicable motion beep so I resumed the main plot.
One thing it lifted which didn’t sit well with me was Ridley’s drone eggs from the Director’s Cut. I was half expecting a Queen alien at some but then when I found myself in vents with eggs I realised that this was based on those weird deleted scenes with Dallas and Brett.[/spoiler]
The tethering on the xeno was just really frustrating and unrealistic when there were humans making a din elsewhere. A few times I waited for it to arrive to deal with them but it only made its appearance when I started moving around, in silence I might add. Really silly. If I’d designed this game, the alien wouldn’t have been this patrolling pain in the arse. It would have hid in places, silent and still and only revealed itself if you were nearby or there were loud noises (as per pretty much all the films) so loud humans would be a liability (so don’t get spotted, or deal with them quietly), and turning the power on in areas, setting off alarms, knocking things over, firing weapons etc. would all be bad. I’d have liked to have seen the numerous security cameras be used in tandem with the rewire stations to be sure you’re actually doing things, as the feedback on them wasn’t too great. The save system was neat but sometimes the save points were too far apart so there were sections where you’d have to repeat a lot of stuff if you died. Also: be gone short life batteries!