In what feels like The Games Story Of The Year, during the Steam summer sale the much reviled Gearbox title Aliens: Colonial Marines was marked down to a stupidly low three dollars. A modder happened to notice that in the INI file for the game, there is a single typo that is -- get this -- responsible for many of the awful AI choices that the xenomorphs make in the game... like running directly at you on their hind legs instead of crawling on the walls and using ducts to surprise you. A once horribly broken game is now... functioning? Thanks to a single letter? Sure. That's about at 2018 as a games industry story can get.
]]>A new Alien game is skulking in the dark, early stages of development, according to the videogames division of Fox. Details about the xenomorph’s next appearance are still hidden in the vents but if we give the flamethrower of journalism a little puff of the trigger here… Ah yes, it’s a shooter. A little more juice maybe… Aha, it’s being made by the relatively young development house Cold Iron Studios, and will "explore areas of the universe that fans haven't got to experience." Cool. All right, just a bit more on the gas… oh no that’s too much you’d better stop. I said TOO MUCH JOURNALISM. ABORT. ABORT.
]]>I can't wait to tell you, fellow human person, about this game which I have learned about. It is an asymmetrical science fiction multiplayer murder mystery with absolutely no aliens in it at all. You might think from these screenshots and this trailer, starring Terrible Voice Man, that it is an FPS inspired by The Thing and Alien and that there are clearly monstrous fleshy alien lifeforms in it. But you are wrong. There are certainly no aliens here and I am certainly not one of them. What a pity. How about some regular human long-jump instead? That is a popular game in our society.
]]>After nine months in the womb of early access, Duskers has finally been born. Out it comes, snarling and writhing like the science fiction nightmare it is, covered in slime and engine oil. Congratulations, game developers! It's beautiful. No, really, it is. And here's Brendan to tell you why.
]]>This article was originally published as part of, and thanks to, the RPS Supporter program.
Raised By Screens is probably the closest I’ll ever get to a memoir – glancing back at the games I played as a child in the order in which I remember playing them, and focusing on how I remember them rather than what they truly were. There will be errors and there will be interpretations that are simply wrong, because that’s how memory works.
"So can the cat be the android?" "Yeah, definitely."
]]>Are you playing Alien tonight? Now that Isolation has been unleashed, I want to talk about something that I brushed over in my review. It's an important thing but it's something that I didn't feel the need to dwell on because I wanted to leave a small window for everyone to have their own first encounter before I unpacked my own mental baggage. Previously, I've written a great deal about the Sevastopol, the setting, and the adaptation of stylistic and thematic delicacies from Ridley Scott's film - it's time to talk about the Xenomorph.
]]>Alien: Isolation is Creative Assembly's first-person survival horror take on Ridley Scott's Alien. No predators, no marines, no swarms of xenomorphs. This time it's not war. Instead, we have one space station, one creature and one Amanda Ripley, locked in an apparent cycle of terror. I was hoping for something that captured the intelligence of the original film's design rather than simply being Amnesia in space, and Isolation is certainly that thing. Take a deep breath. Relax. We're in safe hands, and there's so much to talk about.
]]>Edit: Oculus Rift support confirmed for maximum trouser-spoiling.
Cat's out of the bag (sorry Jones) - there are synthetic and human enemies in Alien: Isolation! We knew but we hadn't seen them until now. That Sega and Creative Assembly would finally show this to be the case was one of Alice's hopes/predictions for E3 so she's currently gloating in the chatroom. It'll all come to pass soon though, world-eating Gabe and the rest. Much as I like the idea of fleeing and hiding from a single monster, the tension might be difficult to sustain over anything longer than an hour or so. That's why Isolation has (apparently randomly placed) humans and synths. The latter, pleasingly, won't scrap with the alien, querying its actions politely, while humans can be used as bait/distractions if the right tools are in place to attract ol' xeno.
]]>You weren't a game developer, so posting here about your unexpected death is tangential. But I guess you've always been there, accidentally informing the boyhood horror and action games which led to what I enjoy and write about to this day.
]]>We have all been burned by past Alien games and I would like us to maintain a healthy scepticism about Creative Assembly’s recently unveiled Alien: Isolation, which I went to see and play just before the turn of the year. With this in mind, I believe it an obligation, before we begin discussing this new threat, to observe a moment of silence in which we can all remember the brave souls we lost to the Colonial Marines disaster.
*an eerie hush envelopes the world as billions of people solemnly mute Spotify*
Thank you.
The good news is that, despite keeping that scepticism intact, my recent hands-on with Isolation has given me cause for hope. With luck (and no small amount of effort from the development team) we are a little closer to having an Alien game that actually captures the feel of the original movie.
]]>After Colonial Marines, Sega must have been briefly tempted to nuke the Alien license from on high. Hope remains, however, that the publisher hadn't placed every grotesque Giger-egg in the same basket. Back in May 2011, Alec was visiting the total warriors of Creative Assembly when the studio's work on the Alien (not plural) license was announced. "I’m told they’re adamant they’ll take their time over it", he said, little realising that two years and more would pass before we mentioned the game again. Yesterday, Sega trademarked the name Alien: Isolation and Kotaku shared apparent details about the game that they received from 'a person familiar with goings-on at Sega'. Follow me into the land of convincing rumours.
]]>What if your computer wanted to kill you? Imagine entire worlds that contain nothing more important than a terrifying machine intelligence that absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Through the filter of aliens, robots and an Atari 2600, here are some thoughts on why it's good to run, to hide and to die.
]]>What? What! WHAT. Given the annoucement that the Creative Assembly is working on an Alien game for SEGA and that Gearbox seemed so busy with Duke Nukem Forever and doubtless something Borderlandsy, we'd begun to presume that Randy Pitchford's lot had quietly shelved Aliens: Colonial Marines. IT IS NOT SO. The little-seen team/co-op-based shooter has come out of the God-damned walls at last, promising a 2012 release date and an appearance at E3 later this month. Words and pictures and videos and stuff and things about it are below...
]]>Perhaps a little off RPS' beaten track, but thought I'd link you to my interview with SEGA and Creative Assembly top brass for GamesIndustry.biz. For you, sir/madam/entity, its main point of interest is a few more implications as to what to expect from the newly-announced Alien game: "What we're doing with that property takes us a little bit into a more interesting place, so we're not knocking out a bog-standard space marine shooter"). Also of happy note, however, is how SEGA US and Europe boss Mike Hayes acknowledges that its two PC-centric studios, The Creative Assembly and Football Manager stalwarts Sports Interactive, now comprise "the jewel in the crown of SEGA."
]]>So, a few more details on that Alien game now there’s a moment to breathe. I was visiting Creative Assembly when they made the announcement, which ended up getting revealed earlier by UK government culture secretary Ed Vaizey before us hacks could get there.
]]>Surprising news from the wilds of Horsham, West Sussex, England. The chaps at the Creative Assembly - best known for the splendid Total War games and some other stuff they'd probably rather forget - have just had their next game announced by, er, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey. In a bit of a major switch-around for these strategy gurus, they're taking a swing at the Alien franchise. Yep, that's Alien singular rather than plural. Great (Ridley) Scott!
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