OK, I played some more, and it did grow on me a bit. I’d say the opening is the weakest part of the game so far. Like, you start the game in a big area full of confusing hallways and water temple style state-changing puzzles. After you slog through that, there’s a lot of more low-key linear exploration that’s much more enjoyably paced. While everything continues to be all Giger all the time, there’s a wider visual variety to the areas than I expected and some of them look really cool.
I think the whole “torture a homunculus to open a door” thing was a sort of statement of purpose, an extreme moment right at the front to upset the player and say “hey, anything can happen”. I still think it was a bit much (trying way too hard to be shocking). Since then, the game has continued to be pretty oppressive, but in a more atmospheric, less in your face way. At its best, the game almost feels like a really grimy and sinister Metroid Prime.
Although… I still don’t have a dang gun!!! Well, I have like a weird little short range melee poker gun that I’ve been able to poke a couple of monsters with so far, in combat that has big survival horror energy, like if Silent Hill 2 had first person POV. I kind of like that approach!
So yeah, tentative recommendation from me so far, especially if you have game pass.
Think I’m like an hour or a little more into it now and progressing smoothly. I am surprised by how quiet and puzzley this game ended up being, that’s actually the exact opposite I thought it would be given the kinds of games being made when this thing was just announced. On the other hand it’s meeting my expectations in that I’m battling boredom and finding it pretty decadent like so many prestige-y indie games. It looks great is about all I can really say.
I FINALLY FOUND A GUN. But you get really limited ammo, so the combat is still largely in the survival horror mode rather than FPS mode. It actually feels a lot like Resident Evil 7/8 combat to me, but more sparse and spartan.
I guess what I’ve been gradually realizing is that this game is squarely in the survival horror genre and it definitely knows it. Wandering around creepy environments doing incongruous, stupid logic puzzles, very occasional monsters, awkward and dangerous fighting with ineffective weapons, extremely limited ammo and healing, incentive to run by enemies… It’s all there.
I was surprised, I kind of thought the marketing for this game was really selling it as more of a straight-up FPS. But this is OK too. Some of the, like, make-a-circuit-to-light-up-the-lightbulbs brain teasers take me out of the atmosphere, especially when they’re occasionally tuned to a much higher difficulty than they really should be. That’s my main complaint at this point.
I’ve got into some of the combat and, yeah, it does feel survival horror-y. I’ve had to retreat down halls and lure enemies because I’m low on health items in just the same way as I’ve done in Resident Evil.
i’m really excited for the next gigerthon* a videogame iterates on, this one seems no less static than the reference material and that’s a missed opportunity
*we’re well past the realm of cliche and comfortably into the nook of Tradition at this point re: this guy and this medium, can no more resent it than i resent idk rockerbilly
Alien Isolation was one of the best games of the 2010s I think. Aside from indie offerings like Receiver and a few other examples, it was one of the few actual survival horror games we ever got that entire decade.
It’s kind of interesting, throughout the game I felt like the player character had an understanding of the setting that I didn’t. I got the sense that he knew what he was trying to do more than I did, even though I was the one controlling him. The level design and choice of interactable objects led me through the intended path even though I had no real clue what was going on most of the time. So I’m doing these abstract logic puzzles to, like, extract organ tissue from homunculi to feed into a rube goldberg claw device, not knowing what the outcome would be until much later on. But my guy, he totally knew. He clearly had a plan from the start. The experience of this game is so deeply alienating, you’re even alienated from your own character.
I’ve been playing this, too. I like the gross environments and the puzzles are decent if generic. But I sometimes find myself simply wandering around in search of something I can interact with. It took me quite a while to find what I was supposed to do with the arm, for example. There was precedent for the required interaction but I simply didn’t see the device despite passing it multiple times. At least there’s a run button, though it took me a little while to discover that.
I might resort to using a guide if other parts take me as long as the first area. Not for the puzzles themselves but just for where to go next. Though I guess that kind of counts as a puzzle.
Yeah, there were definitely a few areas I had a really difficult time finding my way around. Luckily I was playing with my navigationally gifted gf, but a few spots were so labyrinthine that even she had trouble with them. Thinking specifically of the area (probably later than where you’re at) where there’s the big jowly guy you keep blowing holes through to get around)
Fighting in this game is a huge pain. When I finally got a projectile weapon, I soon learned that the larger enemies take too many hits for that to even be a viable option. Especially given that each ammo station seems to work only once.
if you walk away from an enemy, it will crawl down a hole.
Also, had I bothered to look at the pause screen earlier I would have learned that you can heal. That might have prevented a few deaths when I was actually trying to fight all the enemies.
Yeah the private epiphany I had when you see the second large monster that I should just book it instead of wasting ammo was a moment where this game made sense to me as survival horror. Moments like that kept happening as I progressed, and it became an active strategy of mine. But it was also cool because the game forced me to fight on occasion, I couldn’t just hide or sneak past everything. Reading the situation in that tension was where I really found the movement/combat/inventory management heart of games like RE that I really love.
Talking with a coworker who is also playing this, I learned that he did things a little bit differently than I did. In the part where you push the creature in the shopping cart, my coworker freed the creature and it followed him around for a while.
I guess I unwittingly chose the evil path because I dumped the creature down a garbage chute and ripped the arm from the remaining half of its remains.
I did the same thing, and on accident too. It just depends on what track you send the century egg man down when you’re laying tracks with the machine in the main room.
Took the opportunity this gloomy Halloween to sleep in, ignore any responsibilities, and play some Scorn. It’s very good at making me uncomfortable. The organ squishiness of everything and the squelching is pretty gnarly to look at/interact with, but I’m enjoying my time with it so far. I really wanna put my fingers in those lift machines. Looks like they’d feel like a buncha chinese finger traps.
Pretty sure the opening bit that was supposed to let me know that I’m a Piece of Shit by doing something terrible to the homonculus got messed up bc after i sawed him out of the egg thing he followed me around like a sad pup before falling in front of this machine where the animation glitched out and i oddly picked him up but made a motion like i was yanking his arm off at the same time? idk, but my partner told me he had to torture someone pretty early in the game. honestly very glad i didn’t have to do that; that dude was pretty nice and obv going through some shit. but i guess i also left him to die in that big entryway and the dicks exploded and wiped everything/one out, so i guess its just a lesson of futility
uhh speaking of- lotsa wieners in this game, eh? I think it’s pretty funny that my gun just punches (and/or pops a boner very aggressively?!) at shit. The small chicken things and fleshy big worm boys keep fucking me up bc of how dumb and ineffective I am with the gun. Survival horror is sick!!
