Alien Isolation

[Skyblade]

I haven't really gotten far enough in to tell if I'm going to like it or not.

But I have found a way to consistently crash the game by running at a particular door when you first get on the station. Not a good start.

Fortunately, I found my way into the vent system, so hopefully I won't return to that area.

[Vyk]

I have heard of a couple graphical anomalies but haven't heard of people's games crashing too frequently. It crashed once while Markiplier was playing it that I'm aware of, but other than that. Though I did hear it was pretty buggy on launch, but a patch was out within a couple days. I'm playing it on 360 and there was an update ready when I popped it in, and I haven't hit any glitches at all, and I'm probably a good 15 hours in, which is probably more like 8 - 10 hours of actual gametime. I die a lot, and take things very slow

But yeah, this is nothing like Colonial Marines. I completely passed on that game

IGN and GameSpot are the only outlets that didn't like the game, and they've been called out for giving the game to reviewers who are either known for being overly critical of survival horror, or just plain not interested in survival horror and slow challenging games. Everyone else is raving about it. But more importantly, it's all over YouTube. You can watch pretty much any favored Lets Player and get a taste to see if you'll like it or not. I've watched Best Friends, Markiplier, Dashie, DSP, and Angry Joe, who all seem to favor it just as much, at least for what it's offering

I will say, even a couple more reliable outlets have complained about the game being "too long". Which most commentators scoff at because they want longer games for their $60. And a lot of the comments I've read on reviews and videos were from people who also finished the game (however long it may be) and still adored it. So yeah. I think it's that potential Dark Souls crowd. That don't mind a challenge. Don't want hand holding. Don't mind erratic, random, and unstoppable badguys. And don't mind long sessions of high stress situations

I got tired of how cheap I felt Dark Souls was. You're generally required to die to figure things out. They constantly throw curve balls at you to keep you from feeling too comfortable or over confident on your first playthrough. With this game you will probably also die a LOT. But it's also completely possible to make it vast stretches based purely on ingenuity and luck. Which is awesome. Like I said the dying doesn't bother me so much. And it really feels immensely gratifying to get past a long and stressful stretch of hide-and-seek with the alien

I should also note however, that I have a major hard-on for 80's sci-fi schlock. This game, Dead Space, and the first Mass Effect could tide over my fetish for a long time. So I imagine subconsciously the game also gets bonus points from me for nailing the 80s sci-fi, nailing the Alien franchise itself, and nailing the fear factor, which I haven't felt in a long time. So even without considering game mechanics I'm in love. And that's honestly not very objective. So if you come at this from a different place, just be aware of what it is and if any of that interests you /rant (Jeeze, I might as well have just done a review on the game lol Sorry for the long post. Just that this game actually surprised me for once. Hurray for Sega and Creative Assembly)

[Elite Lord Sigma]

I made two attempts at the demo at NYCC this past weekend. Both times the Alien wrecked me, but I never felt like it was anybody's fault other than my own for not running away or finding a better hiding spot. The Alien feels genuinely threatening; dealing with it was a situation I struggled to even imagine coming out of alive. On that alone, I'm planning to pick it up at some point.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Did the cutscenes stutter or whatever for you, Vyk? It supposedly happens on all versions, but maybe they fixed it up since launch since I only really played the day it came out or the day after.I loved the atmosphere and what I experienced of the game, but I decided I'd wait a bit to see if they fixed that up as it just really pulled me out of the experience a lot more than it should have.

I'm also curious if anyone's tried out the preorder dlc stuff yet. I actually debated going through the stuff in order of chronology, but ended up deciding that it was probably better to play the main game first so I could figure out how to play.

[Skyblade]

Did the cutscenes stutter or whatever for you, Vyk? It supposedly happens on all versions, but maybe they fixed it up since launch since I only really played the day it came out or the day after.I loved the atmosphere and what I experienced of the game, but I decided I'd wait a bit to see if they fixed that up as it just really pulled me out of the experience a lot more than it should have.

I'm also curious if anyone's tried out the preorder dlc stuff yet. I actually debated going through the stuff in order of chronology, but ended up deciding that it was probably better to play the main game first so I could figure out how to play.

Same here. I figured I'd need the game's tutorial to figure out how to play before taking on DLC.

But, yeah, I did get consistent crashes to Windows while exiting one of the first hallways on the station while holding Shift to run. Really annoying, especially since it took me a little while to figure out how to get past the flame valve, and I ran through that section a couple times.

Still, I'm looking forward to it overall.

[Perducci]

I rented this from work and played a couple of hours. Pretty impressed - sound, graphics and gameplay were all good. I think I may have to pick it up again at some point and play it through. Way better than the most recent AvP game and Colonial Marines, so that's nice.

[Vyk]

Did the cutscenes stutter or whatever for you, Vyk? It supposedly happens on all versions, but maybe they fixed it up since launch since I only really played the day it came out or the day after.I loved the atmosphere and what I experienced of the game, but I decided I'd wait a bit to see if they fixed that up as it just really pulled me out of the experience a lot more than it should have.

I'm also curious if anyone's tried out the preorder dlc stuff yet. I actually debated going through the stuff in order of chronology, but ended up deciding that it was probably better to play the main game first so I could figure out how to play.

All I can say is that if there was any stuttering, it was miniscule to the point of me not noticing it. I will say they look a little low res. But for a two-disc 360 game, I just chalked that up to them needing to compress it a tad. Nobody wants a 3 or 4 disc 20-hour game (not to dissuade anyone from trying it for the 360, the first disc simply installs the game, and then you spend the whole time playing from disc 2. Something probably a lot of double-disc 360 games should have done)

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Unless the stuttering is less on the 360 in general, it is extremely noticeable on the ps4 version when I played. When i get a chance I'll have to play to see if there was a new patch that fixed it.

[Vyk]

I had to take the game back tonight. Super sad. Pretty sure I'm past the halfway point. And if IGN thought that would have been a good place to end it, they are ridiculous. Also it very much suffers from a Dead Space syndrome. Now I'm curious what IGN and GameSpot thought of that game. The Murphy's Law objective scenarios where you have to go do something and either everything goes wrong along the way and you get side-tracked, or accomplishing the objective doesn't actually accomplish what you thought it would and you have to go do something else. I really didn't mind it in Dead Space and I really don't mind it here. Not sure how else you'd make a game like this. If everything went according to plan, it wouldn't make for a very good adaptation of sci-fi/horror/survival-horror themes and it would only be a 4 hour game

I had one good cut-scene tonight, and even under scrutiny I can't say it was that bad. Other than not being highest resolution, I guess they must have been fixed. At least for this console. And probably for the PC, since most of the LPs I watched were playing the PC version and I didn't notice anything fishy when they were watching the cut-scenes

[Skyblade]

I'm getting seriously annoyed by this game. Apparently my system can't handle it or something, because I can't play more than half an hour without it crashing me back to Windows. I don't know what to do. I want to enjoy it, but it's really hard to get invested in the atmosphere when it keeps dumping you out of it so frequently. Especially when you have to sit through two minutes of unskippable "this is the graphics engine we're using" intros.

[Vyk]

That's really unfortunate. I'd hate to see a potential fan turned away due to technical issues. I'm probably preaching to the choir as I have no doubt you probably know what you're doing but two heads are better than one sometimes. First things I'd check is steam and reddit to see if anyone has found work arounds or make sure you've gotten the latest patches. Even their own forums may have info. Outside of that it's possible they optimized it for a different version of Windows. If you have eight maybe try a compatibility mode. Or run as administrator. Maybe tone down the graphics options either in game or in your cards software and if that works then slowly start cranking things back up until a culprit is found. Hopefully it's simple. Sorry you're having so much trouble. I know it's infuriating to buy something and not be able to enjoy it :/

[Slothy]

That's really unfortunate. I'd hate to see a potential fan turned away due to technical issues. I'm probably preaching to the choir as I have no doubt you probably know what you're doing but two heads are better than one sometimes. First things I'd check is steam and reddit to see if anyone has found work arounds or make sure you've gotten the latest patches. Even their own forums may have info. Outside of that it's possible they optimized it for a different version of Windows. If you have eight maybe try a compatibility mode. Or run as administrator. Maybe tone down the graphics options either in game or in your cards software and if that works then slowly start cranking things back up until a culprit is found. Hopefully it's simple. Sorry you're having so much trouble. I know it's infuriating to buy something and not be able to enjoy it :/

The smurfed up part about trouble shooting games is that sometimes, rarely mind you but sometimes, the stupidest smurfing thing will fix it. Things that shouldn't work in a million years but do. When I was still running Vista when Bioshock Infinite came out the thing chugged like I didn't even believe possible without crashing. Even the menu's bordered on unusable, and changing every setting and trying every fix in the book didn't work. Spent a month off and on with their tech support trying to figure that trout out. Eventually, in my thousandth google search or so I stumbled on a solution hidden away in one thread on a forum somewhere addressing the problem that only seemed to be affecting me and two other people. Ran it in Windowed mode pretty much on max settings and it was smooth as butter.

It was the only time troubleshooting, and eventually getting a game to work made me want to throw my whole computer out the window and never touch an electronic device again. So basically, try everything you can think of even if it makes no sense. Sometimes you'll be surprised.

As for the "unskippable" intros, I haven't looked into it since I don't have the game, but rare is the time that I've seen a game where you couldn't edit a variable one of the installation files in notepad to make it stop playing that stuff. If it's possible, it should come up in a quick Google search because I can guarantee someone else already did it.

[Vyk]

Yeah, my girlfriend runs into those kinds of problems all the time >.> She has to run Wasteland 2 in windowed mode or it will overheat her computer. There was this co-op horror game called Obscure that she got off Steam for us to play that bugged out almost immediately stopped working the second time we played it. Took forever to figure it out. Like you it was part of one person's conversation tree separate from the main thread on a random Reddit conversation (hence my mention of it) where a guy pointed out that it's not a normal graphics card or resolution thing, it's the PAL/NTSC thing. If you can force your graphics card to switch the output, or find a TV/monitor that isn't bothered by either output, all of a sudden it worked fine. Which is so weird. We always think about that with console games, but never would have thought about it being an issue with a PC game

[Ayen]

The technical issues sound like a real butt. I wonder how bad it is on the PS3 since that's the most likely platform I'd get the game on.

My brother is afraid to even watch a Let's Play of the game. Awesome.

[Vyk]

I haven't seen or heard any PS3-specific tech reviews on it, so I suppose it's possibly up to par with the rest of the consoles. Though from what I gather if issues were anywhere they probably should have been on PS3 since it was the least like a basic computer out of the options. I know what's why Skyrim had such trouble getting up and running on itAs for the scare factor, I totally agree. I got a bit addicted and was watching Lets Plays whenever I wasn't playing. And even that was tense. I haven't felt this unnerved since Dead Space with the lights out and surround sound up. Which is how I play this game. But it kinda cranks it up a few notches. My girlfriend, however, does not play it that way, and even with the lights on, it's still pretty terrifying sometimes. And I love it for that