This one is good, boys.
Only played it on Hard and I enjoy how the game doesn't f**k around. If the Alien sees you, you die, which is how God intended it to be. The Alien doesn't give a f**k, except maybe about fire. The title deserves points just for being a game in which you really do want to hide from the Alien, unlike other games where the Aliens should be the ones hiding from you.
I have experience with horror games, and although I don't think the game makes you shit your pants in sheer terror, this game delivers fun in spades. It makes you not want to move forward and makes you dread the Alien's appearance. When you know the Alien is running around nearby in vents you crouch walk all day like a baby and you pray that when you turn a corner you won't find anything casually spotting you in its path, otherwise Big Daddy might know about it and deliver a rektening.
The vast majority of recent "horror" games are anything but horror games. Dead Space was an action/survival game with ketchup splattered on walls and faulty lighting. RE5-6 are just action games. Other titles are just endless scripted events, where you can easily tell when you are completely safe and when you aren't. Even Amnesia, as much as I liked it, has plenty of scripted monster appearances, and for the most part it is also easy to know that a large portion of the time you actually aren't under any danger. Slender was one of the few games that I think nailed the idea of how make a player uncomfortable. There is no safety. The monster is always there, forever following you, and any and every mistake is swiftly punished by death. This game has learned that lesson. Yes, there are segments in the game where you can be reasonably sure you are safe, but whenever the Alien is around, you aren't safe. Even in areas where I thought I would be protected by plot and cutscene, I wasn't. The Alien is an eternal shadow that you can't shake. Its presence dominates every area where it's in, because you know it is always listening. It does whatever the hell it wants, it can be anywhere it wants to be at any moment, at anytime. Fool! Doctor Doom does as he pleases!
Crawl into a vent to move around the corridor unnoticed? Cool. Watch as the Alien randomly decides to run into the same vent for shits and giggles. Run into a locker, wait for the Alien to leave and vanish from the sensor. Walk out. Crouch into corridor. Alien forgets its purse and runs back at 150 mph. Dead. Save points aren't safe, reading computers isn't safe, going into an elevator just about to push the button to reach the next loading screen isn't safe, nothing is. Which is good. The scary monster dominates the player's mind and the entire experience, which is how it should be. A game isn't scary if you don't dread each and every encounter with the monster, something that so many recent games fail to understand. I still roll my eyes at the thought that there was a Silent Hill game where you kung fu fight the monsters. I exaggerate, I think you had a knife. You knife-fu'd them.
There are other positives to the game, the game world is designed intelligently, with upgrades letting you explore previously closed off areas, and despite being all corridors the maps still look much more advanced than what has become an epidemic of games where you just walk in a straight line forever and pop moles (like A:CM). It might not be System Shock 2 but it is more than acceptable, although it is a pretty linear experience. The atmosphere is very well done, it looks and feels like a game that takes place in the universe of Alien. Sounds like it too. Except a few of the Alien growls, which are AvP space dog noises. Strangely enough, as much as the Alien and its interactions with the player are well done and really cement the game as one where you should be scared of it, it feels more like the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park than anything else I could describe as Alien. It is strange. Doesn't matter, Space Velociraptor is better than being a boring nonthreat that isn't even fun to shoot, as in the previous outings.
The game isn't perfect. There's a long stint at one point where there is no Alien, which sucks, because the Alien is the best enemy in the game. Androids and humans are stupid, blind and deaf. The Alien is just blind, not deaf. This is par for the course in most stealth based games, but it still has to mentioned. You can hide under tables despite the fact that your feet would be clearly and obviously visible. This is stealth like how Shia Lebouf "sneaked" into that one building in the third Transformers movie. There is literally no way anybody would be fooled by like half the shit you do in this game, let alone an Alien, whose supposed to be an apex predator but is less aware of his environment than a house hold cat. For real. Have you ever managed to hide from your cat? I haven't. Those guys can f**king find mice. My cat kills mice all the time, despite the fact that I've literally never laid eyes on one running around my home. Wtf.
The Aliens in other games can see through walls but fold like paper when hit by an elbow, the Alien in this game has a crippling lack of eyes but is bullet proof. A good trade, I guess. They could have made it so the Alien walked on walls and ceilings instead of always velociraptoring around but it's all good.
Also there are some segments where all you do is walk forward and listen to people talking and you can't seem to skip this shit. f**k.
Even on Hard, I found that I had way too much shit and way too much ammo. Your mileage may vary, I guess. Once you get the flamethrower the Alien loses a bit too much potency, I think.
The ending is shit. "plz buy dlc thx"
The game doesn't look like it will have much replay value, as much fun as being chased by an Alien is, I don't think it can keep the game going for too long. That said, the game actually has a fair greater amount of content than the now typical 9 hour shit show in most games.
TL;DR
10/10 GOTY i crie everitiem Goes great with Doritos and Dew, which Sega forgot to send to IGN along with the review copy.
Anita loved the game and recommended it to everyone, saying: "A beautiful story where a liberated feminist overcomes the literal phallus seeking to oppress her with his unchecked privilege, narrowly avoiding being raped by the endless hordes of mysogeekneenerds that hide in their cocoons, deep within their mother's basement."
I think this is the best Alien game to date. In fact, I go so far as to say that this easily outclasses most recent horror games. I would say it combines elements from several successful horror titles to create something greater than the sum of its parts. I actually enjoyed this more than I did Amnesia. Sure, it isn't perfect and it is far from it, but it is legit good. The people who made this game didn't only have an understanding of how to make a survival/horror game, but they also had an understanding of how to make something Alien. They had something, something that Gearbox clearly didn't f**king have, and that Rebellion lost somewhere along the way. They saw Alien. Not just the movie, although I think Gearbox might have not seen it, but they really saw it. They breathed Alien. They saw that there were things at play that make something feel Alien and they put a good deal of it in the game. Maybe not all, this is true, but much, much more than I think almost every other effort has up to this point.
