Fan Reviews

Started by ikarop, Sep 27, 2014, 12:50:11 AM

Author
Fan Reviews (Read 110,614 times)

WinterActual

WinterActual

#15
The pre-load is 25GB.

Xenoscream

Xenoscream

#16
Hey Guys,

I've just spent the last couple of hours playing, I'm lucky enough to have had my preorder copy arrive today.

First impressions:

I'm really enjoying it so far, it is freaking intense. Even after almost 2 hours the Alien hasn't really turned up properly yet and the build-up is feeling great. You do run into other people early on and they feel very threatening and the environment and especially the sound really keep you on edge.

Story wise the intro is a little lacking, but you end up on the station pretty quickly and it's all good from there. The characters I've met so far have been likeable.

I'm on the PS4 and the cut scenes seem a little choppy, the lip sync isn't really out but the mouths move in an unrealistic way. I've also encountered a couple of bugs despite the patch, at one point I go stuck and couldn't move and had to do all sorts of button mashing to free myself. At another point there were 4 survivors talking to each other and suddenly two of them dropped dead on the spot, the conversation continued and just before I restarted the save they jumped back up to life. Nothing too terrible and honestly the environments and sound are so polished it's very forgivable when playing.

I'm playing on hard and I've been killed a couple of times by people, more or less a couple of shots and you are dead and they spot you very easily.

For those that are interested I've also been streaming it on twitch (inbuilt in PS4) I'm just going to grab some food and then will be playing a bit more from 22:00 GMT, I don't normally stream but figured since I got it early people might be interested.

Also no doubt I'll be playing more on Sunday, I'll also switch on the streaming then for anyone who wants to take a look.

You can see me streaming it at http://www.twitch.tv/mrtomski also any PS3/PS4 dudes feel free to add me :mrtomski.

Also if anyone had any questions feel free to ask or PM me for spoilery ones.

BUGZ

BUGZ

#17
Hey!

I was one of the lucky ones that received the game earlier than expected.

It has been a great game so far. Graphics are stunning. It feels just like you are on the Nostromo itself. I've only came across the Alien once. But it looks so good!

Well time to play more.

Speak soon. Lol

darktranq

darktranq

#18
Gotta love retail stores breaking street date.


Skull

Skull

#19
QuoteI'm really enjoying it so far, it is freaking intense. Even after almost 2 hours the Alien hasn't really turned up properly yet and the build-up is feeling great.

Love the fact that it takes a while before you even see
The alien.  Unlike Avp 2010 or ACM it was like in the first
10 min and the thing was in your face with no real buildup.
Only avp 2 did this right in my book with building up the tension
so far. Cant wait till the 7th ;D

Xenoscream

Xenoscream

#20
I played 4-5 hours in total yesterday.

It's still feeling great, the Alien is about now, I have my motion tracker and most of the craftables.

Still minor bugs peppered around, but I've had some great moments. Like finding a Nostromo voice log of Dallas talking about the replacement science officer, I triggered it and suddenly my motion tracker went nuts, I jumped into a locker and no fewer than 3 working joes turned up and started searching the room :-)

All the little voice logs and emails are great and remind me of system shock 2 or dead space, they really add to the atmosphere and I feel they have quantity about right.

The alien has also killed me once, essentially if it sees you that's it you have no hope of escape. It's also always there now, you hear it in the vents nearby and crap yourself every time you have to walk under one of the big vent holes.

With the other enemies it is possible to turn tail and run if they spot you, although now I have the alien around as well I'm not sure if that tactic will still work.

Going to be playing it a lot today on and off, as before I'll have the streaming on.

Darkness

Darkness

#21
My Review

By Darkness

Well, folks, here's my review of Alien Isolation which I got for the PS3. We all know the premise by now. The game is set in 2137, 15 years after the events in Alien. Ripley's daughter, Amanda Ripley, goes in search for the Nostromo flight recorder to find out what happened to her mother. Her journey takes her to Sevestopol station where you go from one objective to the next, going through claustrophobic tunnels, corridors and vents trying to avoid a lone xenomorph. I will say this for Alien Isolation. It is the scariest, most thrilling game I've ever played. It completely outperforms the Alien movies in that department. A lot of Alien Isolation is extremely similar to Dead Space/Dead Space 2 which in itself borrows heavily from the Alien franchise. If you liked those games, you'll love Isolation.

A lot of the scare factor is down to the superb music and sound design. It's perhaps the best use of it I've ever seen in a game. Just walking along a dark corridor, you'll hear something scurrying in the vents above you, your motion tracker beeps, the music subtly changes – you're never quite sure what is going to happen. There are a couple of scripted jump moments but the game isn't about that. The alien's behaviour is completely random and you really never know where it will appear. A couple of moments stand out for me. When I was trying to slowly creep my way back into a room, I could hear the alien moving about in a vent behind me. As I got to the door trying to open it, I'm frantically looking around behind me hoping the door will open in time, and guess what happens? The door opens and the alien is standing right there in front of me which I completely never expected.

Another moment is when I was in the vents with a flamethrower in hand – exactly like Dallas in Alien. I could hear the Alien moving about in the room above me. I was thinking I would be safe in the underfloor vents – then I heard the vents moving and a few seconds later the alien was crawling straight towards me in the vents. Moments like that are just priceless. No matter where you hide, the creature will find you. What's great about the unpredictable AI is that everybody's playthrough will be completely different. The design of the xenomorph is based on the creature we saw in Ridley Scott's Alien with the smooth dome. The legs are different and the tail seems to be incredibly long but it works and it moves gracefully along the corridors or in and out of vents. You'll be constantly hiding in vents, lockers, relying on your retro-style motion tracker. I actually moaned about Aliens Colonial Marines not having the tracker on the HUD but in this game, it actually works not having it on there. Even if you don't have it in hand, if there's something moving, you'll hear a beep which means you should look at it.

Let me talk about the story. We start out on the Torrens spacecraft which brings us to the station. Most of the game takes place on Sevestopol station and there's plenty of fan service here. Everything is based on what we've seen in Ridley Scott's Alien. Exactly the same, down to the last detail. The computer terminals and mini games are very retro and match the style of the game.  In a lot of ways, it is a very linear experience. There's always only one specific way to go but generally, there are a lot of rooms to explore along the way with lots of intel to collect. Like I said, it's pretty much following objective after objective. You will need to use your map a lot but the problem is that a lot of the areas tend to have multiple levels and the objective on the map never indicates what floor you're supposed to be on. Expect to get lost some times trying to find where you're supposed to go.

The story is unfortunately pretty weak. You do meet other humans along your journey that either help you or try to kill you, and there frequently seems to be somebody talking to you over the radio so you never feel completely alone. But the narrative is all pretty textbook stuff. Not really many fancy cutscenes. There are two standout moments for me. Major spoilers below:

Spoiler
You do get to explore LV-426 and the Derelict spacecraft (as a different character) which I never expected. It was awesome seeing the Space Jockey again. Midway through the game, you do get rid of the xenomorph that was hounding you but the pacing of the game completely changes. As you know there are no more aliens, the suspense factor completely disappears and all you have to face is androids for ages. The game then borrows a lot from James Cameron's Aliens and you wind up in an Alien Hive with multiple xenomorphs, eggs and facehuggers. Another positive goes to the sounds in the hive. As you move through the hive, you can actually hear the Aliens howling – it's phenomenal stuff... puts you completely on the edge. It's never actually said where the eggs came from – there was no Queen which disappointed me. Though I never expected to see multiple aliens or facehuggers so that was a bonus for me. I sorta thought the hive section would be the end of the game but alas not, the game just keeps going. You have to destroy the hive, then escape in an ambulance shuttle or something, then we have to contend with contacting the Torrens and getting back onto that ship. And the game's ending? It's left on a very sombre note with Amanda floating alone in space. Just seems a bit of a sad, sharp ending after the ordeal she's been through.
[close]

In total, the campaign's eighteen missions took me just over 14 hours to finish – that's with a good amount of exploring and being killed dozens of times. I sorta wished they'd have trimmed down the last few hours of the game and maybe worked on the narrative a bit more.

Amanda Ripley is voiced by an actress called Andrea Deck who does a decent job. You'll hear some dialogue from Sigourney Weaver and other actors from Alien via these Nostromo Logs you find. I only managed to find a couple. There are a lot of places I didn't explore and you can't really go back after you've finished the game to find the rest of the logs. (Unless you go via mission select). It would have been nice if you could explore the ship without being pursued constantly. Trust me, when you encounter the xenomorph, your only worry is getting out of there and reaching the next save point. I also haven't played the DLC missions yet – still not sure where to find them so I'll post further impressions when I play them.

Now, for the difficulty rant. This is an incredibly hard game. I was killed more times in this game than anything else I've ever played. First of all, there's no checkpoint system and you have to search for manual save points which are scattered all over the station. In the xenomorph segments, you can literally spend a good 30-45 minutes just trying to get from one area to the next and when you are killed over and over again, it f**king grinds on you. It does feel like no matter what you do, it ends in the same result and the whole thing becomes less scary each time you do it. To be fair, when you reload you will play at a lot quicker pace than before so you don't really lose that much time. The deaths are extremely cheap though and until you get the flamethrower after around 5 hours you can't defend yourself against the xenomorph. When it finds you, it's an instant kill and you'll have to reload your save again. I'm in two minds of about the manual save points. On the one hand, they do add a lot to the tension and it is a relief when you actually find one but at the same time, you'll be tearing your hair out when you're killed a few feet away from the next one.

You've also got annoying androids that seem to attack you on sight which you can kill with the shotgun or pistol but you really don't have a lot of ammo. You can run past them if you're quick enough – just don't let them come near you. It's not an instant kill but you need to just keep your distance. Again, you will suffer cheap deaths at the hands of the androids. In the later stages of the game, you'll come across these even tougher androids that you'll have to kill. The Bolt gun is crucial here which took me ages to figure out how to even use it.

There's a retro-style crafting system in place where you can create various weapons and you can also find blueprints to upgrade certain things. Smokebombs, flashbangs and Molotovs are useful for getting you out of jam with humans but it's fairly easy to sneak by them and leave them to it. You will have to use noisemakers to distract the xenomorph to clear a path. EMP, guns and the Stun Baton is useful for androids. You will be constantly scouting for supplies. I did as much exploring as possible on my playthrough and never really ran out of stuff to use. Though towards the end of the game, the flamethrower is absolutely crucial and you'll definitely run out of ammo for it.

There are some technical issues on the PS3 version. The framerate drops a lot... even during the cutscenes. If there is a lot happening on screen – especially if something's on fire, the game will slow to a crawl. There are also some graphical glitches and some textures not loading correctly. While the environment graphics are really nicely done, the facial graphics are pretty poor and lack a lot of detail. I don't really want to fail the game on the technical issues as these things may not be an issue on the PS4 or PC versions. The graphics are definitely better than Colonial Marines though.

So where do I stand with the game? There were a lot of times I wanted to give this game 9/10 – Creative Assembly did what I thought was impossible. They made the xenomorph truly terrifying and not just cannon-fodder like in previous titles. The fan service, atmosphere, music, sound is absolutely top notch. But the high difficulty and cheap kills will destroy you and the campaign does drag on for too long. Saying that, it may be the best game to come out of the franchises. There is so much that Creative Assembly nailed perfectly. I highly recommend any Alien fan to pick this up. My advice is not to rush through it – thoroughly take your time.

Positives

+The scariest game I've ever played.
+The xenomorph is truly frightening.
+Completely random alien behaviour.
+Incredible creepy atmosphere.
+Amazing music and sound effects.
+Plenty of fan service.
+Graphics/gameplay perfectly match Ridley Scott's Alien.

Negatives

-High difficulty with cheap kills.
-Story could be better and does drag on for too long.
-Map objectives could be better displayed.
-Framerate issues on PS3.

Final Score

8/10

Seegson

Seegson

#22
WoW nice review!
Anyway i have a question for you people, are you playing without the patch? CA said it will be launched on 7 oct

Darkness

Darkness

#23
The patch is already live for the PS3.

RayneStorm82

RayneStorm82

#24
The patch is live on PS4 as well. Got my copy a couple of days ago.
The game so far is quite brilliant but it is very stressful. Like The Darkness said you don't have much of a chance to defend yourself from the alien without the flamethrower. I put a couple of bullets from the pistol in it, acid sprayed across the ceiling, the alien turned, looked at me then ate my face. The opening couple of hours are truly awe inspiring. The design of the Svastepol is incredible and the sound is brilliantly done. The alien is a true menace and you really have to pay attention to your surroundings. My issues are the same as others have stated, lip movements are very off and there is some frame rate issues. I haven't encountered any glitches like getting stuck or npc's dropping to the ground though lol.

Overall it's an 8/10 from me and I'm only a couple of hours in.
Now back to it!

Xenoscream

Xenoscream

#25
Played a fair bit this weekend, I think Darkness has a very good point about taking your time.

This game can be very frustrating at times, and I think that it should be played in 2-3 hour doses, not more.

I'm just starting chapter 10 so I guess around half way through the game. Sometimes the game seems to get the balance just right and I really enjoyed sneaking around, I must say I find the more traditional enemies like working joes and humans more fun to sneak around, the Alien is just so brutal, I've been pulled out of lockers a whole bunch of times and also experienced a few cheap kills when upon opening a door I was dead within 5 seconds.

One or two areas where it is you and the Alien only seem to be the hardest, there were a couple of very short segments which I found myself repeating 10 times or more and increasingly trying to rush through.

My current review score is 8.5/10, it looses points for HL2 level character models and some crappy lines. I think it will end up dropping to an 8, the key thing which is missing at the moment is emotional investment, I just want to survive and couldn't give two hoots about one of the injured characters you are trying to help.

Overall it's an amazing game and shouldn't be missed. For a fan it's pure gold. Also thanks to those who watched me stream it made me enjoy it even more :-)

WinterActual

WinterActual

#26
The game so far is amazing. I've felt enormous relief when I decided to take a break now. The game gave me feelings like when I played DooM 3 or STALKER SoC for first time.

There are so many sounds. I don't think I've heard the same noise twice. And they are all so scary and frightening. I've always had the feeling that something or someone is coming for me. That something is rushing in great urge to get me. And the lightnings playing with my imagination and eyes. I've could swear someone or something was watching me all the time. Literally I had to check my back and do 360 turns every 15-20 steps.

The game is so dark. Its something like DooM 3 dark but this darkness is so heavy and... sticky. It covers you like mud and you can't get it off, its always around you. You can see the dust flying in the air messed with the darkness and you feel how combination this is choking you.

On top of that you are human. The first thing that you realize is how slow you are. You realize how trivial your human body is. You can run but I noticed something that terrified me. The environment sounds are very loud and they are there all the time but the most scary sound of them all were my own footsteps. I thought they were the loudest, the most distinctive noise of them all, and its just screaming out loud hey you, come, come and get me, I am begging for it. Your human body also struggles for every action you have to make. Every operation is slow and it takes time. Enough time for anything to kill you without you even noticing. Unlocking a door or cutting through something is like small achievement every time. Every successful action is considered a small win in this hostile environment. It doesn't matter how insignificant that action was, you know you are one step ahead, you are one step closer than before and it feels great that you moved even an inch to your ... escape(?)

The station so far is nicely made for what it is. You feel that you are not supposed to be there. You really have that feeling that the place is death and you have no work there. In most of the games these days you can see how the levels are made "as they are", but here you can think that the place was good once, that it was full of file and something bad happened, you can feel that it wasn't like that all the time. Thats really nice touch.

I can only with to see ACM game in this environment. It would be amazing.

Those are my views from 1 hour of gameplay. The game is really good so far and I have not even met the alien yet.

thecaffeinatedone

thecaffeinatedone

#27
There's a part in the beginning of the game where you wait for a slow tram while the music gets more and more intense and you can hear noises. So then I think "Oh, it's like Amnesia...they're just messing with me to build the suspense". So I went back....and uh, yeah. They're not playing around.  :'(

newbeing

newbeing

#28
Quote from: thecaffeinatedone on Oct 07, 2014, 12:31:47 AM
There's a part in the beginning of the game where you wait for a slow tram while the music gets more and more intense and you can hear noises. So then I think "Oh, it's like Amnesia...they're just messing with me to build the suspense". So I went back....and uh, yeah. They're not playing around.  :'(

I hid like a baby and never saw anything.

So far the game is really great. Not sure if I can say it's what I expected. Certainly it's one of the more intense games I've played. I often find that after taking a break my teeth are gnashed together, and must be during my playthrough. Was really surprised how long it took them to get to the Alien bit. Good on them for holding it off for as long as they did.

SpeedyMaxx

SpeedyMaxx

#29
Quote from: thecaffeinatedone on Oct 07, 2014, 12:31:47 AM
There's a part in the beginning of the game where you wait for a slow tram while the music gets more and more intense and you can hear noises. So then I think "Oh, it's like Amnesia...they're just messing with me to build the suspense". So I went back....and uh, yeah. They're not playing around.  :'(

That is fantastic. I was so sure that was one of the game's only scripted moments, for the intro.

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