First and foremost, thanks again for reading this. Let me give you a preview of what you're going to read then;
I got killed 2 times because of a prompt that wasn't being showed to me, and a second time when the game didn't realized that my command was already being executed. That's just incommensurable! I would give this game a zero if I could.
Remember, game's score doesn't matter if you like it. This is just my opinion.
When the core mechanic can pass by all those problems, fear really strikes you. It is short, buggy as hell but the game really manage to inject some small amount of the most primitive and obscure fear from the deepest humans id. Thanks to those cold, macabre musics and fx mostly. It's a shame that most of those times are broken by bad programing or polishing.
Every game has its own bugs, and this really worries me. It's almost like somebody (the publisher) doesn't care if it is going to be annoying, because the mighty Internet will provide the day one patch. This game, like many others, they are a sinister message from them to gaming. - You're a so gentleman of a gamer aren't you? Be comprehensive.
There is a co-relation between Alien Isolation ''success'' and Skyrim back 2011. The propaganda made people love the main character or its antagonist, much like Dark Knight's movie did.
And this is it, we are being indoctrinated to become a bunch of forced beta-testers working for free. We are actually PAYING to test what they should test. Don't worry they got your back with past feedbacks. Should we thank for that? Final update, all bugs remains (actually, there are even MORE bugs after it)
I'm a fan of Alien's franchise, except for Alien Resurrection. And to hell with Prometheus.
So take that review serious if you will. No, I'm not comprehensive... real quality is measured with this. If even Hollywood isn't able to re-do or even to give some sort of continuation for a piece of art such as Alien, don't expect much from games.
But... the game does has his own quality here and there. They're small, humbly given to you, but they're there. Just don't forget your magnifying glasses so you can find them.
You will just have to deal with bugs and glitches on it's most primary functions during your survivalist gantlet. Easy.
A game which has bugs like that shouldn't be made public. From on a useless map, from the unresponsive buggy crouch movement to its event triggering, this game shouldn't, not with a day one patch, not with posterior correction, he should have been delayed and fixed first. I don't know why this is happening so damn much on gaming. Excuses? They got it all. And it gets worse. I did toke a political incorrect version of the game first, to see if this thing was really "fair" as Gamespot says or maybe I just wanted to see if this game was really unfair, and bad, like IGN has told me. I played the game, I got impressed by its complexity, I never saw such a level design with that thing before. Those sites were wrong, they failed to realize the true nature of Alien Isolation.
The game almost had that thing you know? The thing that "we" all want on a real survival game, that thing remains a dream. "We" want our brain less tested than our improvisational instinct. I'll admit it, sometimes Alien Isolation requires you to reverse that thing or to do both simultaneously. Why? The best horror doesn't need a fresh incredible theme, just one Alien is enough if he is there just to drop your blood pressure all the way down on every step. So just hold on, when I say "we" I don't mean the generic group of consumer, they are a easy casual to please, they just need games coming out. Some guys just love anything thrown at them, like in pop-culture they will soon forget about it. I don't mean the fan-boy neither, they got the same case of idol worship.
Acting intelligently and moving randomly is something absolutely different from each other; the Aliens in the game does exactly that. There is not a single sign of intelligence in that thing, but random movements only. Sometimes I can read the possible numbering being sorted inside his so-said incredible thoughts. At least the Alien got some nice animations, differently from the rest. Yeah, expect some outdated human movements in there.
You can see the Alien's polygonal body stuttering, as if the code is fighting with your PC processor, while he decides what's going to be next. Sometimes it looks like the Alien simply don't know what to do or where to go for say, 2 seconds.
Like a little ball shuffling and kicking on some spinning Russian roulette.
1- Attack the player hidden on the closet
2-Pretend to walk by - and to traverse the wall, just to show some nice animation with my tail
3-Teleport myself to the closet #145 and hope that the player will understand
4-Attack the player hidden on - file not found - to show some nice soundings
Please feedback us at our site
5-Jump to the vents and go away
And like on the Russian roulette, the surprise always comes in a blast. Specially when the Alien's head starts a very nasty clipping inside your special closet, you will be blasted all right.
- Action decision: Jump to the vent and roar like an brutal alien, and then go away.
Bad news, sometimes (I've seen two) the Alien will just teleport on the same vent after ''going away'' in about a second. The animation suffers pretty bad when that error happens. Ask them, to the other group refereed, if they know what artificial intelligence really means. You will be shocked.
Both types of gamers are understandable and we can try to respect that, even when they're disrespecting you.
And boy, didn't they did it? Back on some other review, the other group forgot everything about politeness and they went really mad about the scores made in there. Some "gamers" cursed the author's mother ( Ryan Mccafrey ) some of them threated his life, called the guy unprofessional, the situation on the comments during the release date got primitive as hell. Not on Gamespot though, apart from it's low score. They didn't changed it even with a lot of whining. I liked that. If an damn score is so important, more important than the basics of education for example, if a score is more important than the author's mothers name, no wonder why this planet has so much problems worldwide. From economic crisis to warfare, our people cares too much about a score. If you liked it, so go play it and enjoy it, nothing bad about it right?
When a game is really good, you think that a bad review will stop it???
That's why I think that the game didn't really made to the top; good reviews when he didn't deserved, and bad ones lacking good interpretation. It is well know that a good game should rely on a solid structure whose can only be achieved with the time, and it can't rush a single mega byte of it. Later on is up to the masses to recognize it or not. But if some people just want to press the game against you and your opinion instead, so do it and watch the results.
2 millions sold, wow?
I've seen indie games doing better than this. Man... Even Stanley's Parable got his working theme better, from such an small group. Even a old game like Enemy Zero did hundred times better than Alien Isolation... but okay... Creative Assembly had to try, to go for that thing, remember? The thing that "we" want from a survival game. But what they have done with that opportunity?
"I challenge you to beat some Alien and bugs with random A.I. shuffle and finish the game with it. We recommend you to play in the hardest level first." Again this is just my opinion though, you don't need to take me on that. If you want, do it, we're all adults here it is part of the business... I didn't liked how it ended up neither.
Don't you think I wanted to have an incredible experience with that game? I wanted to give a 10 here. I'm not a professional, I'm just a survivalist gamer. Forget about the radial menu, it's confusing and moves constantly from sides and positions without notice. (Actually, you don't know how to do many things that you actually can, such as smashing this spider-like infecter with a tool.)
Forget it, it never truly works for the first person animation isn't even close to be smooth, but quite the contrary. The screen moves roughly after each 1st person animation or even before it, it doesn't feel natural nor game-like but they're pretty abrupt, canned, outdated... feels rushed. The camera never returns to it's position after it in a smooth way, after some animations, believe on me. Sometimes you can see this even when riding an elevator, it's almost like the character's model or camera is being ejected away from a zone, while the elevator is moving, to the another zone. You can even see the transition between the planes momentarily. I7 with GTX 970 people, I don't need the potato's joke.
Well, I never saw a great game based on a movie anyway, even as a parallel story. Yeah, there are the newcomers to Aliens whose many of them just can't realize that this is a parallel story following the first Scott's movie. (Minor spoiler ahead - for it is an obvious spot) Of course the Space Jockey is in the game, some ship went there after the Nostromo. Can you believe that some users on Youtube are shouting happily "Look, there is a connection between Prometheus and Alien Isolation!" My God... What audience is this thing targeting at? At some old fan? Probably not. The game's plot is pretty confusing and the objectives are so obvious sometimes, and immature and sometimes they're not (that's why A.I. almost got hit by that thing.) (End of the obvious spoiler)
Alien Isolation relies very much on a group's acceptance to understand that the game has problems instead. And a good taste gamer can't stand up for that. As for the other group, it doesn't matter. Maybe they just want to play the game and that's fine. Example? I've played Land of the Dead knowing that the game was profoundly BAD and I didn't cared about it. I did laugh though, a lot.
I brought Alien Isolation before I could see the same mistake, or before I did, I couldn't be so gentle to understand the game's problems if you prefer that way. 49,99 dollars seems easy for an American, but I just brought it for 89,99 reals, my country's currency which is quite the expensive one. Later on I came to know how pathetic the reality of this game was, it wasn't worthy most of the time. I did beat the game 2 times though, trying to convince me that the game wasn't that bad, but every time I did I just got it confirmed.
And I'm tired of those DLCs going on about games. Shouldn't the companies be working and worrying about the quality control instead of extra content, that should have been given for you by right?
When you're almost believing on the game, you find a buggy spot or some crazy event - like trying to crawl on a ventilation shaft without the game prompting you the command - it requires you to obey it, and then dying. And these are the moments when you kiss the admiration goodbye. There was this time I was inside a closet trying to hide from the alien, and the game didn't knew I was already leaning Amanda's back away from the door. Her breath was on a hold already, and the body perfectly leaned, but a prompting bug didn't accepted it. Or at least I think it was one, for these events are too canned and not even remotely organic or logical, and she got killed. I laughed hard.
I got killed 2 times because of a prompt that wasn't being showed to me, and a second time when the game didn't realized that my command was already being executed. That's just incommensurable! I would give this game a zero if I could. And again, people will curse me (the bad side of democracy lol), those sites, blaming that if the game isn't Call of Duty, it doesn't deserve a higher score. Don't do that please...
The rage got so tense back some months ago that I came up with a conclusion... There might be agents from some companies trying to infiltrate on the media, to boost their own promotion. Politicians does that, rival companies does that too. It's a new kind of advertising, not with annoying ads but commentaries, with ghostly likes and questionable common sense commonly used by a bot, or a controvert, bad intentioned human.
The good side of this game is, you can have fun with some ultra gorgeous level design. That's all. Creative Assembly criticized Dead Space 1 for being too violent instead of horrific, but I won't even bother in trying to argue with that. The first Dead Space was almost done with that thing, you know? Almost, but not quite. They got it done way better than Creative's does so what should I say?
Well they just tried to hit, but they failed. That's okay. But when they try to force it through you by criticizing your score, well, I just fight back with the same smart technique. Anyway I've sold sold the game to somebody who really likes it, and all right we're fine.
Even if Alien Isolation could have been better for me, it would probably be bad after some years. Dead Space 3 had the bad luck to have E.A. as a publisher and many gamers do know what happens with all games soon or later, specially with those crappy publishers. Well. as A.I. did badly so did D.S.3, it wasn't good enough even to a sequel.
BUT! As this is the first in the series... Maybe a supposed Alien Isolation 2 can learn from his own mistakes and do it good on the next game? The ending was just as duh as any other generic horror game I ever played. It feels so unsatisfying as buying this thing.
Just please, stop listening to your fans on those feedbacks and start doing your own tests too. Yeah, time is like that relentless evil aunt we all have, and so is the final product if it isn't done right.
So you came reading that far, I will present you with at least one positive war story I've had with that game. When the core mechanic can pass by all those problems, fear really strikes you. It is short, buggy as hell but the game really manage to inject some small amount of the most primitive and obscure fear from the deepest humans id. Thanks to those macabre musics and sound effects mostly. It's a shame that most of those times were broken by bad programing or bad polishing. I had a few sinister moments with that game that I will probably never have again. Who knows... maybe one day. Oh, that thing.