by OL » Sat Dec 27, 2014 1:05 am
So Alien Isolation starts out a bit boring...
You begin all excited because you know it's supposed to be really good, but then you find yourself wandering around for two or three hours, sneaking to stay away from some generally uninteresting android enemies. Felt disappointed at first because of that.
But then the xenomorph finally makes its entrance into the gameplay, stalking around, just generally being intimidating as fuck... and suddenly the game turns from being a bit "eh" to being "holy shit it just dragged me out of a vent!"
Y'know, in an awesome way.
Funny how quick it turned things around and made me freaking love it. You can watch gameplay videos, but it's one of those cases where it doesn't do justice to the experience of actually playing it. Just a really, really cool sneak-em-up, tense as hell and genuinely scary once the alien comes along. Great to see legitimate horror gaming making such a comeback.
Only real problem: I'm playing the PS3 version, and holy shit, the load times long as hell. Good god. It's like a full minute any time you travel from one area of the space station to another, and only slightly less to reload when you die. At the very least it makes you really not want to fail, but damn. And this is coming from a guy who just played a long, long string of Assassin's Creed games, which all have some pretty lengthy loads of their own. This is much worse.
I'm almost thinking I should have kept the game in its wrapping and exchanged it for the PS4 version (I finally have the money to get a new console, so I'll be heading there in the next week). I'm not so much concerned about the graphics, because it looks great anyway, but it'd be nice to see it on a stronger machine just for those loads. Also, the cinematics get choppy for some reason, even though they're pre-recorded for this version. Weird.
But hey, it was a gift from my brother, and I'd feel a bit weird about exchanging a gift (even if it's just for a different version). Somehow I feel better about keeping the copy I was given, because an item's status as a gift actually matters to me.
Anyway, dat xenomorph. Crazy shit, and I'm loving the game despite whatever shortcomings it has.
OL has received a thanks from: Axm