Alien: Isolation - The First Alien Film Meets System Shock 2?

catbarf on 20/1/2015 at 19:32

Quote Posted by van HellSing

Asfar as the alien not attacking synths goes, I found myself actually giving thought to it. Could it be, that the alien just doesn't see them as either a host or a potential threat?

I think there's a fair bit of precedent in the franchise for aliens ignoring synthetics, presumably because, being machines, they're not food or hosts, and are usually unarmed. Ash's objective being to bring the alien back implies that he doesn't see it as a threat, although I suppose Company orders could supercede his self-preservation. Bishop doesn't seem worried about being attacked, deliberately leaving the pistol behind, although his interactions with Ripley suggest that he's more a pacifist in general. Then there's what's-her-name in Alien Resurrection suddenly showing back up unscathed, but, well, that's Alien Resurrection...

The alien ignoring anything that isn't a threat or a host is very fitting, I think. It's not a monster that kills because it can, it's a single-minded creature that blurs the lines between animal and machine.

Quote Posted by van HellSing

This fits with my theory (a friend also had the same idea) as to why the alien on the Torrens seems reluctant to go after Amanda. She's wearing a space suit. The alien might not even be sure if you're a living creature.

That didn't save Kane, though, and presumably the adult is at least as good at sensing living hosts as the egg.

Volitions Advocate on 4/3/2015 at 06:31

At it again. Final DLC came out this week.
A little disappointed that the cliffhanger ending of the campaign wasn't really addressed by any of the DLC like I figured it would be.
I guess that means creative assembly is planning on making a sequel? Fox and Sega okay with that? Who knows?

I know that a sequel can't be the same game over again. A new game will have to involve some new features. Keep the stealth and the core mechanics of the gameplay intact, but add other things like the ability to kill the alien with the right firepower (and enough ammo) since there would obviously have to be more than a single one. Of course without turning it into a shooter. I Guess we'll see.

But I was playing, and while I've seen the alien glitch out, I managed to get it really confused on the last stage of the Trigger DLC.
Description from the youtube video pasted below.

[video=youtube;QcBtsI-jpbg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcBtsI-jpbg[/video]

Quote:

Playing the final stage of the Trigger DLC. Using Amanda. I was just screwing around trying to get the lay of the land and figure out my objectives so I could do a full points run.

In this room I was running away from the Alien, it followed me into the duct it was standing next to. That's where I came out ran around the table before it got out and blasted it with the flamethrower. I guess when it's in its "run away" state it doesn't actually leave that state unless it finds a vent to jump into, or encounters (bumps into) the player.

I found this interesting because it didnt matter how far away I went, the alien didn't "reset." I could run around the whole level making all the noise I wanted, and it never came after me.

This type of glitch isn't entirely rare in this game, but I had to record it because generally the AI in A:I is quite good.

Yes. I was cheating, I also died on purpose so my score wouldn't go on the leaderboards, deal with it.

henke on 5/4/2015 at 12:53

I tried out the VR mode, using an Oculus Rift DK2, briefly after work on Thursday, but got nauseous after a mere 5-10 minutes. I tried it again yesterday and today and had a better time with it. I originally figured a gamepad would be better fit for it, letting me sit some way back from the desk and move around more freely, taking advantage of the positional tracking to lean around corners and lean in to look closely at objects, but I've found that using M+KB is actually a more nausea-free experience. This is not to say there's no VR sickness. Just like every other on-foot, first person game I've played using the Oculus Rift DK1 & 2, there is a creeping queasiness that keeps mounting, limiting my play sessions to maybe an hour at most. Games where you're sitting in a car, or giant mech, or spaceship have so far been completely free of this, but first person games aren't quite there yet.

All that aside, how is Alien Isolation's VR mode?

It's a bit rough around the edges, but it's got it's moments.

Crawling through vents, hiding behind furniture while peeking out at enemies, or peering through a small window into a locked room all feel great, and markedly enhances the experience of the vanilla game. But this VR mode certainly isn't ready for prime-time and I can see why they didn't feel confident enough to make it a proper feature of the game. Listed are some of the issues with it:

-viewing orientation is often changed during your character's animations, forcing you to reset the orientation manually afterwards by looking straight ahead and pressing LB+RB (no keyboard command for this afaik).
-you're often too close to things. The cutscenes are played out on a huge screen in front of you, as if you're sitting in a cinema seeing it on the big screen. But it's a cinema where you're forced to sit in the first row, so the screen is so big you have to keep panning your view around to see everything that's going on. Same thing when you use computer terminals, the view pulls you in super-close, and pulling your head back does nothing to get you further from the screen. You're so close in fact that it's hard to focus on the on-screen text without going cross eyed.
-positional tracking works, sometimes. Sometimes it stops working. And then starts working again a few minutes later.
-getting into the VR mode to start with is a bit of a trick, as you need to edit ini files at first. And every time you start it you have to jump through some minor hoops as well.

Seemingly no improvements to the VR mode have been made by devs nor fans since it's release half a year ago so I doubt these issues will ever be fixed. But nonetheless, in spite or all this, Alien Isolation VR is occasionally a really cool, atmospheric experience. I'm still quite early in the game, just past the part where Axel dies. Will play a bit further and post more impressions once I've had more time with it.

henke on 27/6/2015 at 20:39

Played a few more hours of A:I with the DK2 today and yesterday. Mostly my feelings about it are unchanged since last time, except perhaps I'm enjoying it a bit more the second time around. Also the positional tracking has worked fine now. The other issues are still there though. Start up hassles, having to reset the view, interface troubles, the camera pulling in too close on everything you interact with, the camera often cutting to black during first person cutscenes, etc. Still, I could deal with all that. If those were the only problems I wouldn't hesitate to play through the entirety of A:I using a DK2, but the nausea just makes it too much to put up with. It's not the worst I've felt in a VR game by far, but after 30-45min I'm definitely feeling it, and it's a feeling that often sticks around for the rest of the day.

A:I is close though. It's almost there. It makes me feel like, by this time next year, between some combination of Vive, the Rift, and games with proper native support, we'll have first person VR games that actually really work. Painlessly. It's close.

A couple segments of gameplay...
[video=youtube;kP4ObqBnoCY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP4ObqBnoCY[/video]

Fallen+Keeper on 27/6/2015 at 22:17

I'm getting nausea just by looking at this video... Which frankly is rather pointless since it doesn't convey the feeling of immersion while in a VR.

icemann on 22/2/2018 at 09:53

RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE *chants*.

[video=youtube;EXSDAupbasw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXSDAupbasw[/video]

An excellent review of the game with opinions based off present day standards. If you've yet to play the game, then be sure to have a watch. The reviewer Mike Matei along with James Rolfe are big fans of more older movies, so your getting a bit of that angle here, considering that the original Alien movie (which Isolation is HEAVILY based off) is certainly more on the older scale.

Thirith on 24/2/2018 at 10:44

I have to say I find this "opinions based off present day standards" thing kinda weird. How old is Alien Isolation? Three years? That's still pretty current, as far as I'm concerned. We're still in the same console generation (though the game came out on the previous generation as well), and it's not like there have been major advances in terms of CPUs and GPUs during that time.