You'll never guess who drags down the gameplay in Alien: Isolation

Games
101

So why has nobody mentioned how creepy the working joes were? Or how badass the core level was, where it looked like it was raining and there were a swarm of joes?

Yea it takes patience, it also requires you to evolve as a gamer. To learn from mistakes. I can see if someone has an issue with taking time and devising alternate routes to take or distractions to create, then this game would just frustrate or annoy the hell out of them, especially knowing you have to start back at save point. But honestly, once you go through a horrible moment after many failures and the three second save wait takes what seems like an eternity while you peer over your shoulder, to get that save and know you are golden for doing so... I have not felt that way about a game in a very LONG time.

102

This is the best review I've read of Alien Isolation. Absolutely fair-minded and spot-on in regard to the Alien itself. Yes, the art design is outstanding ('five-star' indeed), but the Alien itself...? Hmmm, not so much. The Alien is over-used, over-exposed and loses so much of its mystery and dread that it ultimately becomes unintentionally comical - a tromping, noisy teenager moodily rattling and thumping its way around Sevastopol Station's attics and stairwells.

Creative Assembly clearly pay loving homage to the 1979 source material, but they would have been wise to have followed Ridley Scott's mantra that, when it came to the Alien itself, 'less is always more'.

103

There's a fundamental misunderstanding of the xenomorph and the movie Alien that I keep seeing in relation to this game. I don't know if people just haven't seen the movie in a long time, but simply put the alien is the one that spends most of the movie hiding. It isn't an Amnesia style monster that plods around and patrols searching for prey. It knew where the crew was from the chestburster scene onward and was just picking the right times to strike. The alien is designed to be the apex predator, not for a specific ecosystem, but for all ecosystems. The movie pushes this idea to the point where it doesn't even have eyes because it has other senses that would make sight redundant. You aren't supposed to be able to hide from such a creature.

The game is only like the movie in the aesthetic sense because to be true to the movie once the alien shows up you should have to figure away to either lock it away from you or kill it. The only character that should have any stealth mechanics is the alien itself. In this element a stealthy alien game where you play as the human is always going to be a poor alien game.

104

I started playing this game today and an hour in also feel it's not for me. The alien hasn't appeared yet but that's not the problem.

The slow pace of the character and limited sprinting, combined with invisible walls and empty nooks and crannies, forcibly falling down shafts cutting off routes, locked and broken doors and crawling in 3D spaces; it makes getting my bearings impossible and I've wasted a lot of time seeing nothing.

If I don't know where I am in the game, and don't know where I'm going, then I'm not going to be having fun. At least Dead Space gave you a hotkey to tell you where to go next.

I can also see how sparse the checkpoints are (and can't keep track of them with the confusing architecture either). I'm not interested in replaying long sections of this tedium being lost in a maze when I eventually die.

I really hate this game. I wish I had read more negative reviews up front. It's definitely not for me, which is strange, because I liked Dead Space and Dark Souls. The difference to the latter is that despite sprawling areas they were still quite simple when travelling from A to B and bonfires were never that far apart.

105

I think it's safe to say everyone reading the internet and posting comments thinks everyone else reading the Internet and posting comments is an idiot. The truth is, everyone on Earth is always wrong and an idiot except for me. You can't argue with that, because you'd be wrong, not being me and all.

106

Alien:Door simulator really should have been a 1-2 hour long completely open world game where when you die, thats it, you start again. With maybe one or two save points along the way.

You get stranded on a ship and you have to find your way around, you have to figure out what you're going to do. Not a game where the game tells you where you should go next, and then the place you need to go to shows up as a random floating point on a map you don't have yet. and your radar tracker has a little light read out to show you exactly what direction to go at all times. Thats not scary, thats not isolating, thats called thinking the player is dumb and needs to be told what to do.
You're standing by a locked, "hold x to hide", "press x to begin door opening procedure...press rt, tap triangle", "press x to pick up the thing", is it that much to ask of a player to remember what the buttons do? they prompt you EVERY TIME

and i don't even want to know what they were thinking with the one part where there is a knee high shelf fallen over on the floor that you can't climb over! you have to crawl through some ducts and walk around to get past it. Why couldn't they make it a big thing blocking your path that makes sense to have to go around.

107

The thing I don't like about this game is that the design of the enemies are cheap. They always follow the same pattern and there is nothing else to them. However that isn't what I take issue with.

My issue with this is that the game is cheating. The alien always knows where you are hiding and comes to check. It's like he's far far away in some unknown corner of the map and when I hide somewhere he goes:

"Hey! Remember hat one locker in that one random room in that part of the station? I really really want to go check that now. I just feel like it."

And he comes and sticks his stupid nose to my face while there was no way in hell it would have had been suspicious of me being there in the first place. That's just non sense. Aside from this the atmosphere of the game was great.

I had little patience for the bad enemy design, but an all knowing alien that just knows where you are hiding with gut feeling? Bullshit.

This is the first time I've played this game and I decided to do it on Nightmare difficulty right off the bat. I don't believe I will ever play it again afterwards when it's finished. Cheap deaths are not a challenge they are cheap deaths.

108

Stfu and talk about the game you idiot

109

I know this is an old review—but, if you like actual horror, you should play Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. I can only assume you haven't played them because you didn't include them in your list of good horror games.

... and there's no way in hell you've played them and didn't like them.

I can dig slow games. Like someone posted (way) earlier, "Creeping from save point to save point is a huge victory." I can agree with that. The thing about Alien isn't just that it's slow, but it's repetitive as hell. After playing for a couple of hours, everything feels exactly the same over, and over, and over, and over. There are like 4 fucking enemies in the whole game.

110

I have played Silent Horror 2 and 3. I didn't like them. They're confused puzzle-driven adventure games with borderline incoherent plots. I do, however, have a soft spot for Silent Hill. That was a real revelation in the day. I still have the opening music in my rotating playlist of music I listen to when working.

111

2 Stars is 1 star too fucking many. What a fucking stupid ass game. we managed to travel the stars and

we still carry fucking pistols in space? Do these morons have any idea what a fucking bullet does to a pressurized vaccuum? 200 years and they can't invent some kind of ray gun?

Whoever finalized this turd should be forced to dig up copies of Atari ET with a spoon and a straw, then write a 1000 page essay on how to make an alien game even stupider then the dumbest 'alien/UFO' game in history. So it looks pretty, great, it's video game equivalent of a miss America contestant, great looks, no brains. Wonderful.

Apparently humans have lost the ability to hurdle tiny fucking bricks, much less a piece of baggage. Seriously? My 3 year old does a better job then these clowns, all that time in space must have effectively destroyed our jumping ability in real gravity.

Kiss the dreams of an NBA career goodbye and a office dunk contest better be on the floor. Maybe Ripley sees everyone as a thin person but secretly we've all turned into the people from WallE, basically overly fat and in desperate need of a Biggest Loser fat loss marathon.

What a waste of money. I'd rather buy glue and stick my face to the ceiling, it'd be about the same level of enjoyment and it'd cost me a hell of a lot less money....

112

This is one of the worst games I have played in a long time(I have played quite a few...I have 73k gamerscore) .Not only is the combat god awful but the stealth is boring and drawn out. I am not new to stealth games(dishonored is one of my favorites) as i will play pretty much anything in front of me. The stealth is long and slow(although not hard in the the slightest) combat can be difficult but i feel that's only because they try to force you not to engage(although i did whenever i got the chance) and WTF I cant perform a takedown...if this game wants to be lifelike and if I'm behind someone and hit them with a wrench it should at the very least daze them. But that wasn't even my biggest complaint... that would have to be anything that had to do with you being in a space suit(I felt like you move twice as slow than you would when you're crouching and there is no combat while in the suit). This isn't a exact figure but i would say all those parts together was like a 2 hour affair and like 6 to 8 hours of uninterrupted walking(obviously not at the same time). So you take all that out and you are looking at like a 4 possibly 5 hour game. So when all the game fodder doubles actual gameplay that's just plain sad. Now for all of you saying its about the story I just have to say i believe most people play games for gameplay and the story is a added benefit yet this game is the exact opposite and the story isn't anything special. If story is what you care about I could recommend incredible movies(and way less time invested) as I've seen more than most..But don't saturate the game market by giving this atrocity acclaim. There are plenty of games have great stories that don't sacrifice gameplay.

113

I played the game to completion, and in hindsight, I think two stars is harsh, but three would be accurate.

I simply can’t understand those fans who claim the game is “the best horror game they’ve ever played”, or praise the “unbearable tension”.

What I experienced wasn’t tension which was created by a brilliant atmosphere, or a product of incredible game design. It was tension driven by a sense of “oh god I hope I don’t have to do this entire damn section all over again”, or “I have work in the morning, shall I continue and risk making no progress or having to hide under a table for five minutes while the Alien plods around, and have to quit after twenty minutes as I really need to go to bed”.

This is my kind of game. All the way. I LOVE stealth games, and I have the patience of a saint.
But in truth, the save system killed the experience for me. I hear a lot of comments along the lines of “there are save points every X minutes”, and so on, but that was not my experience at all – so much time was spent hiding in lockers or static in order to avoid being killed and having to replay something all over again, the lack of a save anywhere function killed it.

The most unsettling aspect of the game for me was the Working Joes. They were perfectly judged. In all honesty, I would have preferred the game with no Alien at all – it would have still been fantastic. But this archaic save system seems to have succeeded into fooling the hardcore fanboys into thinking it’s a super tense, masterful horror experience, and woe betide it’s detractors (“lack of skill blah blah” – usual comments, it’s not a hard game and some people just found it dull, deal with it) when in fact it’s simply makes you feel little more than a sense of how little bloody free time you have in your life.

Such a shame. I would give so many aspects of the game 9/10, but the save system ruins it. The Alien with a save anywhere system would have been great, no Alien with the current save system would have been great.

Just didn’t work for me I’m afraid.

114

"The ending, in particular, is satisfying. By which I mean a lot of
people will hate it. I figure it’s always a good sign when a videogame
story ends in a way that will make a lot of videogamers hate it."

Ha! Sadist.

115

I want to start by saying I am an alien fanboy. I loved alien isolation and there’s some things I wanted to say. Some complaints make sense and I understand where they come from, for example, the game can feel repetitive. Some however, seem dumb. One that I find strange is the save system complaint. I understand this not being your preferred method, but it’s not bad. The lack of saves does increase that feeling of stress, even if it’s just that you don’t want to do it again, and I think having a save anytime feature would make the game not at all scary. The alien killed me but don’t worry, I save every five minutes so I’m fine. It doesn’t seem as fun, though I do agree that the spacing can be a bit wonky at times. Another complaint was that the weapons don’t do anything and in the second movie they did, Aliens takes place 200-300 years after the first and the weapons are military grade with explosive rounds. Isolation takes place around 15 years after the first so the tech won’t be as good, and the weapons are simple self defense implements. The last thing is small, no acid blood. In alien isolation you can’t pierce the Xenomorphs skin, other than maybe a mall spirt from a gun shot put in for affect, so it’s not going to bleed on you really ever, I know it never bled on me. Those are the things that where bothering me and all other complaints are sound and could be argued on personal preference, you don’t need to like the game, but those ones I just disagree with and wanted to argue my side. Also, tomb raider is not a horror game, and bioshock and alien isolation don’t play the same, and Alien was not a sci fi fantasy. Those where just some dumb mistakes in the official review. If you read this, thanks and if you disagree, feel free to argue your point as well, id be interested in them and it’s only fair because I argued mine. Alien Isolation gets an 8 out of 10 from me.

116

Liar.

117
118

Thanks for commenting on the review, Mr. Wick.

I’ve been tempted to revisit this, lo, these many years later. Mainly to revisit Sevastopol Station. Now I’m imagining Prey’s gameplay in Sevastopol Station’s setting… Mmmmmm.

-Tom

119

I often found the game frustrating to play but my memory of it looms large and I often want to revisit it. The setting and atmosphere have seldom been topped in videogames, and it’s by far my favorite Alien text barring the first two movies.

120

Ripley with psychic powers?
No thanks :/