Be Excellent To Each Other

Right from the menu screen with the Alien theme playing... oh, man.

(I caved and bought this yesterday via GMG, only to find out a few hours later that Jem, having spotted the exchange between Grim... and I earlier that day, had been out and bought it for me as a surprise. D'oh)

Christ, I nearly bought it for you too.

...and has spent a significant amount of time since contemplating reinvesting in a desktop so I can nick it back off you and play it myself.

Now all I need is some money

If someone was going to purchase this, what versions does the hive mind recommend? The console version, to be played “at arm’s length” on a big TV while lounging on the sofa or “up close and personal” playing on a monitor with headphones (PC obviously)?

I think it's definitely an up close and personal game, not withstanding the fact that apparently the console versions have graphical tearing glitches etc. too.

Just play it on mine, it's half-term soon remember

Not having both versions it's hard to comment. I've got it on PC, because it was cheaper, and I just bought a spangly graphics card.

I'm really enjoying it sat on the sofa in the dark with proper surround sound. PS4 version looks great to me, stunning in fact, the lighting, the smoke effects, beautiful. For some reason some of the cutscenes are a bit choppy but in actual gameplay it's fantastic.

That doesn't help me with all the other times I want to play games and can't.

Certainly looks the part on the PS4. Main issues are a few more jaggies than I'd like, and the cutscenes get pretty damn choppy at times. It's running at 30fps, and it drops frames every so often, but usually when it's loading up new sections. Far from game breaking.

I would get it, just don't have the time.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alien-Isolation ... +isolation

There you go - should only take a minute or two from there.

On the whole "atmosphere" angle, I got actual chills just hearing Sigourney Weaver's final report. I'm not sure why, maybe because I wasn't expecting it, perhaps because it's just completely out of the context I expect to hear it, or what, but it was awesome.

She re-recorded it I think too, and she even managed to make the hatred towards Ash even more obvious this time around, glorious

I got it on PC, cos I dont have the next gen consoles, and I bought a spangly-ish pc
its running ultra and its silky smooth. no jagged cuts , even in the cinematic scenes

I wouldn't expect these sort of problems on a next Gen console. How strange?

Not if it were running PS3-style games, but they keep pushing the envelope with texture sizes and physics and shit.

Also you can get those sort of problems on pretty much anything if the developer hasn't spent enough time eliminating them.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... e-analysis

Not the full face-off but in essence both console versions are 30FPS with fluctuations, looks like a sensible PC can sustain 60FPS without too much trouble.

PS4 is the better of the two console versions, although both are native 1080p, the PS4 holds 30FPS and V-Sync better. Cinematics are juddery as hell on both versions, apparently.

I'll pick this game up in a Steam sale probably.

Is there any good reason for not just pre-rendering the cutscenes when it became apparent that there was an issue on the console versions?

Yeah it does seem odd considering both consoles have a Blu-Ray drive so space shouldn't be an issue

Fairly sure the cutscenes *are* prerendered, which makes the choppy framerate even more bizarre.

The cutscenes are all pretty awful too. Badly directed and written, with weak acting. Worst part of the game.

for the rift lads

http://www.pcgamer.com/alien-isolation- ... p;ns_fee=0

3hours in, it's terrifying.

I never thought I'd see the day when there would be another good Aliens game (after the original AvP).

Full five-way platform face-off now up at Eurogamer - http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... n-face-off

SUMMARY -

PC is the definitive version of game, delivering the highest quality visuals at a steady 60FPS on relatively modest hardware. XBox One/PS4 get very close in terms of image quality but lose out badly on framerate, targeting 30FPS and failing to consistently deliver it.

The PS4's performance in particular is cause for some bemusement, considering its powerful GPU, leading to speculation that the low-powered AMD CPU cores are letting it down.

360/PS3 both have an admirable stab at it but both run at sub-720 resolutions, have dramatically pared back visuals and environments, and crash down badly on a regular basis from their 30FPS target.

The fucked cutscenes are present on all platforms.

I think it's clearly a PC game first and a console game second.

I've not noticed any problems with the cut scenes, though.

I want to give this a go but I'm not feeling rich enough to drop £40 on a game I'll be too scared to play more than once

Even my PC appears to be up to running this in 1080p, to my surprise. No idea what the framerate is though it looks smooth enough.

The studio has made nothing but Total War games for the last decade or two; this is their first console game ever, I think. So perhaps not surprising. (Although apparently they have a lot of former Crytek staff on board, which must have brought some useful expertise.)

My DK2 arrived at lunch time. Based on the pant-wetting fear I experienced yesterday, and that was *before* the Alien proper showed up, I'm really not sure I want to put myself through an Isolation VR sesh.

Aah, who am I kidding.

If I start driving now, I should be there by about 8pm!

Hahaha.

What a snub to Spartan: Total Warrior.

Mate, think you might be doing 'PC gaming' wrong.

Although getting gaming right.

I actually got given a free copy of this by someone at work yesterday. I've been given the very unofficial task of getting it running on one of our Oculus workstations - via my Steam account.

"Work"

Oh lawd. It makes me feel a little ill from the first person movement without-actually-moving, but being stalked by the Alien (and inevitably killed by it) is a whole other kind of terrifying with the DK2.

It's possible to be interested in framerates and be a passionate gamer as well, y'know.

FUCK OFF YOU BIG BASTARD

YEAH YOU BETTER WALK AWAY PAL

/whimper

Started with the Crew Expendable DLC on the DK2.

Ran into the Alien almost immediately.

Involuntarily, my entire body froze and I couldn't move either in game or in the real world.

Died. Fortunately, just in the game.

(then, after retrying a few times, started to feel motion sick)

I dont even dare boot the game

Not very far in yet as I find I want to play something else for some light relief after an hour or so. I'm not sure I actually enjoy how it makes me feel, I mean sections of a game like that yeah, but the whole thing? It all seems a bit too uniform in pace so far. But on the other hand the game's one trick is done pretty well and the whole thing looks gorgeous.

This is what's making me think twice about this game, even when it turns up in the inevitable Steam sale - is it something I'd actually want to play as a game, for fun?

It reminds me a bit of Spec Ops: The Line, which looks like a pretty generic third person shooter but is actually a somewhat brutal commentary on the evils and futility of war.

I got about two thirds of the way through it before it clicked with me that I really wasn't enjoying it on any level whatsoever, I mean seriously, that game is fucking harrowing. (And like, war is bad, mmm'kay, I know that already.)

I'm wondering if Alien Isolation will work on a similar sort of level, you know, a sustained sense of being scared, hunted, and vulnerable for several hours might not be such a laugh.

Spec Ops is amazing and so is this. I treasure games to make me feel things that aren't powerful or joyous, because they are so rare.

To a point I think Doc. (Well, for me at least ) For example I did non-lethal playthroughs of Dishonored and all the DLCs, (as well as high chaos rampage playthroughs), that's 100% of the game without killing anyone. So of course it was all down to stealth, patience, exploration and ingenuity. So there was never any great sense of power, if I ever faced more than one enemy at once I was basically dead (or at least had to try the encounter again for the non-lethal), and indeed I never wanted any enemy to even know I was there.

That's a massively different vibe to something like Borderlands 2, but it was always enjoyable as a game.

Spec Ops: The Line, for my money, would have worked better as a film. Ultimately I just found it gruelling, there's only so much torture, and scenes of civilian massacre, and violent hallucination that one needs to experience to get the point. On top of that the generic gunplay seemed strangely at odds with the overarching theme of the game, I'd honestly have been happy to just experience it through the cinematics and see the story unfold.

TBH if I want something that challenges me in that sort of way, I'll watch a film, (a film only lasts a couple of hours, whereas there's seven or eight hours to get through in Spec Ops: The Line), I want my games to be fun at least on some level. From what I've read in this thread Alien Isolation might fail the fun test, albeit for different reasons than Spec Ops: The Line did.

(Max Payne 3 springs to mind as a game that had a pretty fucking bleak story arc, but the gameplay was always fun, the gunplay was epic, in a way that Spec Ops: The Line wasn't for me. It's like, Max was doing what he had to do and I could get on board with that, but the protagonists in Spec Ops failed that test for me.)

Ahem, derail, sorry.