Ten years on, Alien Isolation’s biggest problem is its runtime
Ten years on, Alien Isolation’s biggest problem is its runtime
Alien Isolation is brilliant a decade on, but Creative Assembly's modern classic could have been twice the game if it were half the length.
I only got to a point shortly after the alien first appears when it would just get into a pattern of walking in circles where I literally could not leave the room I was in without being caught (and it wasn't like a scripted thing; it was a game over). It happened 3 different times I started from a new game so I kinda gave up on it.
Yeah the beginning is a bit rough because apparently the alien is specifically programmed to not leave you alone in the first level or two that it appears. My initial experience was similar but after the first level it got a lot better.
To me the game either works great and you get a legit scary experience or the alien pops out at the wrong time and you have to briskly walk through the rest of the level or die instantly.
Yeah, kinda.
Can't blame them though. The Order 1886 was 5 hours long and people cursed the developer into being bought by Facebook
Not really a fair comparison when The Order 1886 dev had delusions of grandeur about his vision. About 30 fps, 1080p, repeatedly removing player agency, the QTEs everywhere, the letterbox fov that made people ill playing it, the terrible AI. The game being short was just the least of the games problems. As I recall people were done with the game even before 5 hours in.
It was a bit long but I enjoyed myself through the entire experience, I feel some of the systems would fall apart if it was less than 10 hours long. Also the game was segmented into unique areas from what I remember so some of those would have to be cut.
When the game went from 1 alien to many aliens was when it outstayed it's welcome for me.
Most everything else was paced well enough and fun but by then it was too long and the last portion of the game after that was more about having enough flamethrower ammunition to keep the aliens at bay as your sprinted
Such a great game regardless! Romulus took some cues from the game and it definitely shows.
I thought Romulus felt very much like a mix of Alien, Alien Resurrection and Alien Isolation.
Three issues that come to mind from when I played:
The gun... if you ever played right at the beginning with the people you could take down that drop their guns... that you're not allowed to touch because I guess they've got cooties or something, really broke the tension & was the first introduction.
The length made me disconnect with the story, to the point a didn't care at all about anyone, was sad Bout the Scottish guy but by the end I felt I could very easily have dropped the game & been fine, I can't even remember how it ended.
The ai, as others have mentioned, was somewhat prone to breaking. For me it was the opposite issue to others & I guess (in part wanting the game to reach its conclusion) my own fault. I found that when the alien does its intro animation to tell you it's in the area (the music would also join in) you'd be locked in place for a small portion of it but then I guess they freed up your controls to go hide, like some game of alien hide & seek & the alien is counting. Instead force whenever this happened I'd just b-line sprint to whereever I needed to go. So by the time the alien was free from its forces animation I was long gone & the ai didn't really know how to handle that & would scramble to do something.
Overall I liked the game & would love something shorter, maybe based around the new movie or just completely removed from the movies so the game doesn't live in the shadow of any movie.
Also the save feature was super cool!... until you had to do it like 100 times. Liked the Mr handys or whatever they were called a lot though, hope we see more of them!
This game had a lot of good ideas but I feel like it was failed by limitations of the AI. It thoroughly went from scary to frustrating for me. The alien would regularly get into patrols where you had no chance of sneaking by, it would move along with you even if you were being stealthy just so that you weren't fully rewarded for sneaking away, and the number of fake out endings got tiring.