L.G.C. |Reviews| — Alien: Isolation

Your intrepid heroes turn right, play with scrap, and experience inhuman jankyness. Xenomorph X121 faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: Alien Insulation
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214490/
Devel: Creative Assembly / Feral Interactive
Engine: In-House Engine With No Publicly Available Name (it felt good to get out of the rain)
Price: €/$ 49.99 / CDN$ 54.99

Wazzat: Discover the true meaning of fear in Alien: Isolation, a survival horror set in an atmosphere of constant dread and mortal danger.

Mandatory US Disclosure: Feral gave us keys.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Makes with the working

V-

Oh sizzle-snap! Somebody learned how to AMD!
I was hella worried when it launched @ 720P /w YOLOSWAG disabled.
Near 19sec of unskippable intro bullshite.
Yeah, show all the business the first time but let me skip it from then on.
My PC boots in 8 FFS.
I can’t technically ding you a chair for this… but I really wanna.

J-

Those unskippable logos alright.
Maintains 60+ FPS at 4K. An impressive feat, but now all of Feral’s games are going to be held to that standard. Good luck brits

P-

I’ll echo both Jordan and Venn on letting people skip the intro screens.
But not giving people agency to do that, is right along the lines of everything else in this game.
I’ll explain that later.

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Shiny / Sounds

V-

J-

The developers took a page out of the Amnesia book of sound design. This is a good thing
The voice acting is well done
Pre-rendered cutscenes look great, but everyone looks like they’re sweating buckets
In game is what you’d expect from a AAA title from last year
The station seems really huge. It’s kind of neat how you can see the superstructure outside the windows.,

P-

This is a very good looking game.
I feel like they nailed the look on the Xenomorph, like H.R. Giger did on the first movie.
Everything about it, from the floppy tail to the second mouth is as janky as it was then.
But it works, it’s that in-human jankyness that makes it unnerving.
It’s a similar effect to that of the Straight-Jackets in Silent Hill 2.
I did see Amanda clipping halfway into a locked door in one of the cutscenes but since it only happened once, I’mma let that slide.
The background music and sound effects were subtle where they should be, and all over your ear-pussies at just the right time.
The people behind Outlast would benefit from keeping a notepad on hand while playing this game.

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Control

V-

Crouch and run do not make /w the working when using the Xclone controlla.
I wanna blame the controlla but mash all the damn buttons the game Shadow of Hordor works peachy.
Ended up using the keyboard/gerbil and all was good.
Oh, you will peek around corners exactly once. Jordan will elaborate.

J-

Apparently Amanda Ripley and Derek Zoolander are related, because after a certain degree, I can’t turn left.
Some of the the controls, IE Peeking from around corners, remind me of using Emacs. Though I bet I could actually get this game running in emacs
Crouching and running work on the DS4. I tried playing this with the controller for about 20 minutes. Even with the console optimized interface I couldn’t do it. You can’t freaking aim like that
Button prompts are all for the 360, but it does the SDL deal of mapping every controller’s buttons to the equivalent xbox ones

P-

Something about the mouse movement feels… off!
It seems the horizontal and vertical speeds are different. That’s usually how it would work if you were a console peasant trying to play an FPS on your 5 year old laptop.

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FUN

V-

I have weapons, using them will more often than not get me killed to death… but I have them.
Penumbra: Overture got this right. We had a semi-useless pickaxe but IT WAS THERE!
This was the one thing about SOMA that killed the immersion.
This FKN time-vampire.
Yeah, let me give a quick test an…. two hours later.
I really dig how the game is all “oh, BTW, here’s the Alien. Mind it, but you have other shite to tend to”
Did I mention that Mr. Alien Pants will just show the FK up.
Lets just say that keep shite exciting.
I knew I was swimming in immersion-sauce when I quietly whispered “fetch motherfu*ker” while lobbing a flare to distract Mr. Alien Pants.
Aaaaaaand I just hit the hide from the annoying robots section.
These are the old school flip the hell out murdery ones so I was expecting… more?
Then we have space gun.
http://i.imgur.com/wrDAwNh.jpg
and random glitch-sauce
http://i.imgur.com/MunUIj7.jpg

J-

Aside from the fact that this space station is running some form of emacs as it’s control system, it gets the atmosphere down
Good on you game for saving the alien for creepy bits. Though it does kind of fuck with you when the alien leaves
Sometimes it’ll just nope out of the area, but other times it’ll hang around for a bit
The game really likes to hammer in the point that you’re basically fucked. It’s good times. Plus, you know, I don’t hate the protagonist like I did with Outlast.
I like the wrenchymajigger, but you know what works really well? Pointed sticks.

P-

This is a very obtuse game.
Right off the bat, it removes agency away from you the player by not letting you jump.
Then, it pits you against armed human NPCs and even if you kill them, you can’t take their guns!
I killed that second group of unlimited revolver ammo people with just the Maintenance Jack, and even though the gun was right there – I could move it by walking near it – I couldn’t pick it up.
Why? Because you’re only supposed to get the Revolver at a predetermined place for arbitrary reason #47.
Obtuse!
That said, the game captures the retro-futuristic aesthetic and atmosphere of the first and 3rd movies.
The big windows that let you see outside are a constant reminder that you’re in outer space.
And that leads me to the second biggest complaint I have with this game.
You never get the feeling you’re really alone.
The other people are dicks, but they’re still there.
I feel like the game’s atmosphere suffers because of it.
That said, I did like what I played of it very much.
I wanted to play more, but time didn’t allow it this week.

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Final –