Skip to main content

AdSense

Revisiting Alien Isolation in 2024

 Many years ago my girlfriend at the time surprised me with a gift copy of Alien Isolation for the Playstation 4. We ended up playing it together (meaning I played it and she watched) and I remember liking the experience and feeling very immersed into the world that Alien Isolation created. It was almost as if we were smack dab in the world that Ridley Scott had created with his film Alien back from 1979. The retro-futuristic steam punk style with checkerboard patterns, clean white hallways decked out with pipes, valves, wiring panels and industrial food coolers etc. really lend to Alien Isolation becoming a truly immersive video game that I would argue rivals many video games today. 


 Now if you remember for those of you out there that did read or watch IGN reviews you know or heard that IGN found the game frustrating, some of course disregarded those statements as ridiculous but after having playing a few hours these last couple of days to be in the spook season mood, I can understand why they would have called it frustrating. 


The problem is not that the game is a buggy mess, not having a stable framework in order for players to work with or a OP enemy that cannot be overcome or too many game breaking bugs. The graphics even by today's standards are very good and on my current gaming PC rig that does have some outdated components it still holds up very well today. If you told someone this game launched yesterday they would believe you just in the graphical quality alone. 


The problem is not the stability of the game but the problem is what the game asks of you in order to survive in the game. The Xenmorph as a Mr.X like stalker in the game is a brilliant choice and it  offers many a chilling moment when you hear it's hiss as it starts to walk the corridors of the Sevastapol Spacestation. It's footsteps thumping down the hall as you quickly hide away in a locker, under a desk or behind some cargo crates is chilling. 


But that's where the problem lies. Having to constantly stop and hide, stop and hide or often using a flamethrower or molotov to scare off the Xenomorph (or as my girlfriend at the time called it, Billy Bo Jangles). As I am writing this I am playing the game and just now I hid from Billy to only then surprisingly find him in a hallway despite the fact that not a minute before I heard Billy jump into the ventilation system because he could not find me. Scared him away with the flamethrower and then immediately he came back down a vent ahead of where I needed to go to scare him off once more. Now it is a small issue but the fact I have to do it almost consistently is annoying and it really ruins the flow of the experience. 


Now I understand that many would argue with this kind of enemy in this kind of game that is par for the course and that is the whole point of having to face as something as iconic as the Xenomorph but after awhile it just drags the experience down. 

Resident Evil did not have this problem as you could run or juke your Mr.X, Nemesis or Lady Dimitrescu, this is not the case with Billy Bo Jangles. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Weapon Guide:M-TAR Assault Rifle

Hello everyone, time for my first weapon guide of Black Ops 2. Today we're looking at the starting assault rifle, the M-TAR. History The Micro-Tar is a micro version of the TAR-21 rifle. It's designed to take advantage of a shorter barrel which means decreased recoil but increased accuracy. Designed for special fores units, it is capable of converting to different ammo variants such as the NATO standard 5.56 cartridge and the 9mm submachine gun round. It is also designed to be capable of attaching a Suppressor, as of 2009 a grenade launcher was being designed to attach to the M-TAR, the M-TAR can attach the M203PI grenade launcher. If you're a FPS veteran then you saw this weapon first in Battlefield 3 as part of the Close Quarters DLC, for COD veterans we saw this weapon's bigger brother, the TAR-21 in Modern Warfare 2. I'm warning you now, the M-TAR is not the TAR-21 we saw in Modern Warfare 2. Multiplayer Stats, Attachments and Performance In gam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Retro Gazette Reviews:Batman Returns SNES Review

Hello everyone. Welcome to another one of my Retro Reviews. Today we're going to be looking at a personal favorite of mine from the Super Nintendo era. Batman Returns. Story Music If you can't tell all ready from the intro video above, the music to Batman Returns for the SNES sounds great and does a good job of recreating some of the songs we heard in the film. My personal favorite stage music is from Stage 7 when you enter Arctic World, The Liberation of Gotham track sounds amazing in 16 bit audio. It's strange to review the music in a video game but the audio stands out so much and does an amazing job, again of recreating the films' soundtrack. Presentation The graphics and detail of Batman Returns is very good and ironically is much more colorful than the Tim Burton film. Gotham City, although currently suffering from a clown riot looks fantastic and Konami yet again does a good job of recreating scenes from the film, you see all these backgro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Call of Duty Black Ops 2 Weapon Guides: Ballista Bolt-Action Sniper Rifle Guide

Hello everyone and welcome to another one of my Black Ops 2 weapon guides. Today we're going over the community favorite sniper rifle. The Ballista. Weapon Profile The Ballista is known as the FN Ballista, a rifle designed by FN Herstal in Belgium, the rifle was designed to meet the reuirments of the Precision Sniper Rifle program for the US Army. The PSR program by the United States Special Operations Command to replace all current bolt-action sniper rifles in use by US special operations to instead have rifles chambered for .338 Magnum calibers, Lapua magnum and Norma magnum calibers. The Ballista met these requirements but was not adopted by the US military, the Ballista was compared to the Remington MSR, the Armalite AR-30 and the Accuracy International AWM rifle from the United Kingdom.  The MSR is the rifle that won the PSR  contract and now the MSR has been put into service this year used by the USSOCOM . Weapon Performance In game, the Ballista i...
Post a Comment
Read more