Why yes, that was a micro change in air density you just noticed on your motion tracker. Ten years since the release of horror adaptation Alien Isolation, Creative Assembly have announced that they're making a sequel.
]]>Among the many, Gigery beauties of 2014's Alien: Isolation is that you save using an in-game, wall-mounted Emergency Phone - a maddeningly analog process of slotting a keycard into the machine and waiting for three beeps. Doing this requires you to stand upright in full view, with your back turned upon an entire space station's worth of shiny domed technology and guttural industrial noises. Delightful!
Amongst the players harrowed and compelled by this fixture is Fede Álvarez, director of the 2013 Evil Dead remake, 2016's Don't Breathe and, most recently Alien: Romulus - the seventh and avowedly "back to basics" Alien movie. Isolation is the Alien experience that convinced Álvarez the Alien could still be scary, after decades of milking the creature's dugs for spin-off movies and making it share a screen with the Predator, the Pepsi Max to Alien's Dom Pérignon 1921. In possibly self-defeating homage to Creative Assembly's work, he's filled the movie with Emergency Telephones, turning them into a straightforward-sounding form of foreshadowing.
]]>We've all seen it. The little spinning symbol cautioning players against impatient acts of powering down. "Don't turn off your system when this symbol is displayed," goes the message seen often while booting up a game (or some other version of these words). The implication is clear. The saving process is delicate and if you interrupt this invisible ritual the data that's being written to some folder deep in your PC's innards will become corrupted, wrecked, banjaxed. You will lose all your progress, all your precious swords and accomplishments.
But is this true? How likely are you to really suffer a catastrophic loss of shotgun shells? To find out, I decided to spend a very annoying afternoon of turning my gaming rig off and on again during multiple games. Was this a good idea? I don't know. I'm a gamer, not an ideas man.
]]>A big new update to unofficial mod tools for Alien: Isolation has greatly expanded the range of mods people can make. Modders can now add custom models, materials, textures, and more to Creative Assembly's horror shooter. To quickly demonstrate the new capabilities, the toolmaker has whipped up a small example: importing classic Counter-Strike map de_dust2 into Isolation. You can see the xenomorph stalking Dust2's sandy corridors in a fun little video below. I imagine modders are already planning bigger, more complex, and less silly uses for these new capababilities.
]]>March is fast approaching, which means we’ll need to say goodbye to another batch of Game Pass games very soon. This month’s list of leavers includes a few heavy hitters, like the horrifying Alien Isolation, and a duo of big JRPGs that are likely impossible to binge in just two weeks.
]]>CD Projekt have thrown the doors open on the GOG Summer Sale today, and hiding in plain sight is Creative Assembly’s space survival horror Alien: Isolation. The scary stealth ‘em up is the first of a series of games published by Sega that are going DRM-free on GOG. Two Point Hospital and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Anniversary Edition will be joining the store at an unspecified date too.
]]>Welcome back to the third edition of The RPS Time Capsule, a monthly feature in which the RPS Treehouse puts their hivemind together to pick their favourite, bestest best games from a specific year to be preserved until the end of time. In the spirit of keeping you on your toes, this time we've set our sights on the best games from 2014. Which games will make the cut and ascend to the realms of the PC gaming elite? Find out below.
]]>It may not be Halloween for a while, but there's no reason you can't celebrate horror as a genre all year round. In fact, it's one of our favourite genre of games, so we've put together our list of the 25 best horror games to play on PC right now. It really showcases the breadth of horror on PC right now, from visual novels to shooters to survival to weirdo demon games and text adventures, so it's a real joy to peruse.
]]>In space, no one can hear you scream "THAT'S RAD" when you see Alien: Isolation is the latest free game on the Epic Games Store. As their Christmas celebration of daily giveaways continues, you have until tomorrow to grab the fine first-person horror game that's sorta a sequel to the classic film. It's a good'un, I say despite having given up on it myself because I'm too much of a spacebaby.
]]>May day! May day! It’s May Day, get it? I constructed this list of the 7 best distress calls in videogames so I could make this joke, and I refuse to back down now. Even if the 1st of May is associated with pagan spring festivities, and nothing at all to do with things going badly wrong in space or at sea. Even if the piece of radio lingo “mayday” has more to do with the French term “m’aider” than the one day per annum on which Morris dancers are allowed out of their cages. I refuse to acknowledge the longwindedness of this joke, and invite you to read this list article with a similar bullheaded attitude. You’ll enjoy it more that way.
(Warning: some spoilers for the games mentioned.)
]]>Alien Day was actually yesterday—chosen as April 26th because in our backwards American date system 4/26 lines up with the designation for the moon LV-426 where the xenomorphs were discovered in yon olde 70s horror movie. As a tasty treat with oh so many teeth, Alien: Isolation is still on big discount today. You can snag it for just £1.50/$2 until 6pm BST tomorrow, April 28th.
]]>I have spent the winter holidays making a list, checking it twice, trying to find who is naughty on ice. But unlike the popular red-clad demon of the north, my list is reserved for terrors, demons and critters larger than 4 feet tall. I’m talking about cold monsters. They’re very chic this week. You see, while Nic has been battering majestic species of endangered giganto-moose in our Monster Hunter World: Iceborne review, I have been working hard to catalogue the frostiest freaks this side of video gaming. Here you go, the 8 coldest monsters in PC games.
]]>The nicest thing I can say about Terminator: Resistance is that if a Terminator were sent back in time to wipe out its code, the timeline of gaming in general would almost certainly proceed unchanged. Confused by the apparent failure, Skynet would keep on sending Arnies back to delete it, unaware that the job was already done, and that its agents were just piling up awkwardly in the offices of developer Teyon. The killer AI would squander all its resources on needlessly ferrying metal strongmen into the past, spiral into logistical collapse, and leave humanity to be declared the winners by default. Hooray - Terminator: Resistance saved us all.
That's about it, however. Although I started out with a mind to write a Wot I Think about it, the truth is there’s barely any Wot to Think about in Resistance. Everything it does has existed in games since the advent of the mouse, and its particular format was perfected 15 years ago with Half-Life 2. They're remarkably similar in a lot of ways, but where Half-Life 2 offers everything with pace and precision, Terminator: Resistance is about as lively as that eye-ball Arnie scrapes out of his head in the first movie. As such, this isn't so much Wot I Think, but Wot Might Have Been: a glimpse into the alternate timelines where Terminator: Resistance was something fresh and fascinating.
]]>Those of you chained to the churning wheel of the internet might have seen this facial recognition algorithm thingo doing the rounds. It's called ImageNet Roulette, and it's basically a website where you feed in a photo of your human face and see what the cybergods of our terrible future make of you. But it's probably not safe to show the neurohive your real face. So we showed it 13 pictures of videogame characters instead, to see if the machine lords of the net realm can tell who they are and what they are all about. The short answer: not really, but sometimes. The neural net, it turns out, is a dangerous idiot.
]]>It’s International Cat Day! You know, one of those days reportedly invented by a charity, spread by the internet without question, and propagated by the scoundrel media because quite simply we are desperate to post pictures of cats, big cats, fluffy cats, kitten cats, any cat, any excuse for any cat, please, just let me have this day, please, I don't care if it's a fake day, please, I need this.
Here are some good videogame cats for International Cat Day.
]]>This is the shipping forecast; the synopsis at 5pm. Solid Snake just west of cloak room, expected to move towards Sam Fisher on dance floor before midnight. Wrecking Ball from Overwatch, mild at 1am, becoming rabid with lust at 3am. Agent 47 from Hitman: confused, occasional peeping, becoming horny later. Red Prince: cyclonic, mainly drinking alone, peering at Steve from Minecraft with questionable motives, occasionally licking lips.
(Yes. We did a podcast about romantically matchmaking game characters.)
]]>Andy Kelly, the fella from cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer who's behind pleasant 'look at pretty video game locations' video series Other Places, has kicked off a new subseries focused on the sounds of virtuaplaces. Which is a splendid idea. Video game sound is easily overlooked because 1) you can't actually look at it 2) you're trained to appreciate ambient images more than ambient sounds 3) it's hard to hear when you--you reading this--are looping Drowning Pool's smash hit Bodies on Winamp. Which is a shame. A soundscape can be beautiful, bringing what we see to life and becoming a location to enjoy in itself. So Kelly is tromping into video games to make field recordings, starting with Alien: Isolation.
]]>Life is hard and so are videogames. So when you do a tough thing, take pride. It doesn’t matter if it seems like a small step for other people, if it’s a big step for you, go ahead and puff your chest out. But do it quickly, for heaven’s sake. We’ve only got an hour. This is the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, and we are being especially boastful this week.
Warning: there is also talk of needles and eyeballs in this episode, but hey, at least that means it’s not all self-care mumbo-jumbo.
]]>The mysterious Alien: Blackout has now been announced, six weeks after the name leaked, and sadly it's not a sequel to Alien: Isolation. Alien: Blackout will bring back Isolation protagonist Amanda Ripley, but for a pocket telephone game rather than anything PC-y. Blackout actually sounds a bit like ye olde Alien game from the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, putting us behind a computer terminal using surveillance cameras and such to direct the crew around and evade the alien. Or a bit like Five Nights At Freddy's. But whatever it is, it's not a PC game, so it's beyond our purview.
]]>The inspiration for Alien: Isolation came from a simple thought experiment: what if somebody let a lion loose in developer Creative Assembly’s office? “I’d get behind my desk and make sure it wouldn’t see me,” says the game’s creative director Alistair Hope. “Then, you’d need to get to the fire escape. Maybe I’d move desk to desk and distract it. If you are confronted by it, what do you do? What do you know about it? What do you know about what it knows about you? That felt pretty cool, and it wasn’t relying on scripted events.”
Most of us know the feelings of dread that accompany playing a horror game. But how do developers create those feelings from scratch? What are the tricks that developers use to scare us, and create a sense of atmosphere? How do they go from imagining a lion in a studio, or an empty bathroom, to moments that will scare the pants off us? I spoke to four of the top minds in the industry to find out.
]]>As much fun as I've been getting out of the Total War: Warhammer games recently, I keep wishing that The Creative Assembly would branch out into other genres again. To this day, Alien: Isolation is one of the most mechanically and thematically exciting survival horror games ever made, and proof that they're a flexible studio. Someone at CA agrees, as a slew of job postings on their careers site include repeated mention of a 'brand-new and exciting First Person Tactical Shooter IP' being produced at their primary studio in Horsham, UK.
]]>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.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Cowardice is a virtue. So says the team on this week's RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. That's because our theme is "running away" - games that encourage you to flee from danger, or that give you a choice between fight and flight. Adam will run from the soldiers of Arma or the post-apocalyptic antagonists of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Brendan will scarper from poor odds in For Honor or Overwatch, while Alice only pretends to run away in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, tricking her foes into giving chase before ambushing them like some kind of velociraptor.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
You probably haven’t and you probably shouldn’t. A year before the world finally got the Alien game it deserved with Alien: Isolation, the burning wheely bin known as Aliens: Colonial Marines was dragged into public view and stank out the industry with countless bugs, terrible writing, awful levels and magically teleporting NPCs. There were so many problems, they were coming out of the god damn walls.
]]>Aside from starting a new tradition of unusually-named Steam Awards, Valve have also pulled out their worn and adored bargain bucket and have begun to fill it with games you’ll enthusiastically buy and probably never play. Yes, it's their Autumn Sale. In the streets, the apocalyptic jockeying for TVs and blenders has started. The moon has turned blood red. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Black Friday, and sales followed with him.
]]>Before my parents abandoned hope of me not growing up a degenerate and allowed me to watch murdermovies, I was fascinated by the local swimming pool's Aliens arcade cabinet and Terminator 2 pinball table - Cool Things I couldn't have. Ooh, the hours I spent watching bigger kids play or waggling the joystick as I pretended to play the demo! This... isn't quite going where I wanted to. Let's skip ahead to the bit where I explain that an Aliens table is coming to Pinball FX2 this month as DLC. Also coming are an Alien vs. Predator table (boo!) and an Alien: Isolation one too (ooh!).
]]>There was much confused rejoicing earlier this month at news that the honest-to-God Alien (and also Leatherface, but whatever) was becoming a fighter in Mortal Kombat X [official site], but now there is even more confused snarling. It turns out that only the konsole I'm so sorry, console versions of the game will be receiving the Kombat Pack 2 DLC which contains the new chaps. The PC will also be denied the Mortal Kombat XL bundle-o-pack. It's an as-yet unexplained and perhaps unwise move from Warner, the publisher already accused of unduly mucking PC-folk around with that very messy Arkham Knight port.
This is the first entry in a new column called The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites a developer to help him put their game up on blocks and take a wrench to hack out its best feature, just to see how it works. It’s about the sweat, grease and genius behind the little things that make games special.
Alien: Isolation is an AI-driven science-fiction horror game featuring, for the most part, a single, unstoppable opponent. It’s pretty much a game version of the first Alien film: confined to a space, all you can do about the xenomorph that’s hunting you down is to distract, avoid or briefly scare it. And all around you lies terrible temptation. They feel like they’ll solve all your problems. They feel like safety. They feel like places you should stay inside. But they won’t; they aren’t; you shouldn’t. They are:
THE MECHANIC: Lockers
]]>Oh boy, am I conflicted. Fallout 4’s main plotline requires that I do this thing and as far as things go, it’s a pretty major thing and a major thing that you’d expect someone with the maternal instinct of my character Halle to crack on with straight away. The trouble is, rather than doing this major thing, for at least an hour now, she, and when I say ‘she’, I mean ‘I’, have been poking around Sanctuary, scrapping anything that glows yellow so I can salvage enough materials to build a house big enough for me and my Minutemen companions. I had largely avoided Bethesda’s drip-feed of Fallout 4 pre-publicity but when I somehow found out that the game had settlement building, I think I might have involuntarily passed a little wind in joyous anticipation.
That's because I’ve felt a similar rosy inner glow while hanging around other hubs and houses in many other games I’ve played. I think it’s easy to underestimate the value of having a ‘home’ base option, especially in open world games where there is a free-roaming element, but it's a part of why I love certain games.
]]>I had twin criteria for this. The first was 'is it a decent game?' and the second 'does it meaningfully evoke the spirit, themes or characters of the movie in addition to having Quite Good Guns And Graphics?' The second saw quite a few games which would otherwise qualify ruled out. This year's Mad Max, for instance, was an agreeable murder-romp but it's much harder to argue that it nails the desperation or oddness of the films it's based on. Star Wars: Battlefront, meanwhile, is an OK online shooter with marvellous graphics, but it's too mechanical to 'feel' like Star Wars once you get beyond the spectacular presentation. Ah, 'feel'. That's the thing, isn't it? Does a movie game make you feel like you're a part of that movie's wider world, or is it just wearing its skin?
]]>Below you will find the 25 best stealth games ever released on PC. There are sneaking missions, grand thefts, assassinations, escapes and infiltrations. Stay low, keep quiet and we'll make it to the end.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Creative Assembly, a studio known for the historical strategy of the Total War series, doesn't seem like the obvious origin point for one of the great modern horror games. Alien: Isolation [official site] is not only a brilliant, terrifying creation, however, it's one of the best uses of a license we're ever likely to see.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 4 of the sale.
]]>According to Sega's latest financial report, space stealth-em-up Alien: Isolation [official site] had sold 2.1 million units across all platforms at the end of March. It comfortably outsold the publisher's other new releases during the same year, such as Football Manager 2015 (810k sales) and the two Sonic Boom games (620k total sales).
]]>You might remember Sonder as an intriguing-sounding real-time Day In The Life In Space game which boasted a prog-rock soundtrack. We've not covered it for a couple of years, but it's just broken cover with news that it's going episodic, and somehow also has The Who on its latest trailer.
]]>Last night, BAFTA gathered in London to dish out sinister metal masks to a chosen few gamesfolk who had been found worthy of such an honour. I tend to be dismissive of Awards Shows, unless something that I really like wins a tiny trophy - then I'm quite happy and momentarily convinced that the world is just and right. It happened with Cave Johnson at this year's Academy Awards (I'm ambivalent about Birdman) and at the 2015 BAFTA Game Awards it happened with...Destiny as best game? Oh no. Full results below.
]]>The first time I ever wrote anything about games, it was because I was still brokenhearted about a relationship that had dissolved years ago. PC Gamer edited the 4000 word essay into a six pager about Dota in 2012 and it is still one of the best things I have ever written. But wherever I go, whatever I do, games participate in a meaningful way in many of the relationships I see. Welcome to a special edition of S.EXE: the love letters edition. Brace yourself, you are in for chop. Here are seven stories about falling in love next to a loading screen.
]]>A game about Alien rather than a game about Aliens. A game about fleeing and hiding rather than running and gunning. A game that uses a license as effectively as any in the history of the medium. Alien: Isolation is a worthy successor to Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror classic.
Adam: We're not using the X word.
]]>Xenomorphs? You eat 'em for breakfast. Scraping out its carapace with a spoon, between mouthfuls of acidic meatgoop you try to launch a lecture on how actually "xenomorph" isn't its name. That's just how tough you are. For you, dear friend, I have a treat. Alien: Isolation has added two new difficulty modes, including one aimed at making everything a whole lot tougher.
Alternatively, if you've steered clear of Isolation because the very idea of it send a chill down your spine and sets your skin a-crawling, the other mode makes it all easier so you can more freely tour and world and follow the story. You're never wholly safe, though.
]]>Tunnel Vision is a fortnightly series about VR gaming.
In space no-one can hear you no no no do not start an article about an Alien game that way, Meer. You're better than that, dammit.
Straight to business instead: as mentioned in the last Tunnel Vision, it didn't take long for folk to work out that a simple ini tweak would reinstate Alien Isolation's missing Oculus Rift support. I say 'missing', but the reality is that it was only ever an experimental mode left in for internal and promotional mucking-about-with.
]]>What happened before the events of Alien: Isolation? Well, the movie Alien, which you can play bits of in the two DLC missions first offered as pre-order bonuses. All right, but what happened after Alien but before Alien: Isolation? Things went awfully wrong aboard Sevastopol Station, is what. Sega have revealed the first of five DLC packs for Survivor Mode that'll explore those unpleasant days before Ripley arrives, set to arrive next Tuesday, October 28th.
This calls for the coining of a horrible new term. I'm going with post-pre-DLCquel.
]]>Over at Frictional Games' official blog, creative director Thomas Grip has written an extensive and thoughtful analysis of Alien: Isolation. It's worth reading in full, providing a brief history of the 'horror simulator' genre that runs from 3D Monster Maze (1982) to the modern interpretations found in Slender and the like. Isolation gets a post-mortem treatment that begins simply - "Alien: Isolation is an interesting game" - then veers into a wham-bam takedown - "At its core it fails to be a faithful emulation of the original Alien (1979) movie" - and, BOOM - "it really is just a pure horror simulator, like Slender or 3D Monster Maze, just with more sections to play through".
Grip does have lots of positive things to say about Creative Assembly's game though and a few thoughts for the future. That's SOMA talk.
]]>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."
]]>My VR column returns! Now that my Oculus DK1 is replaced by a less nauseasome DK2 at last, the pressing problem is less "ooh, me poor peepers" and more "so, er, what is there to actually play?" The stark fact of the matter is that very few developers have yet included meaningful Oculus support, because this is not yet a consumer device. This is very much the case at a software level as well as a hardware one.
In the next column I'll do a round-up of some of the more interesting experiments doing the rounds for DK2, but today I want to talk about VorpX. It's a name that sounds like an ill-advised sci-fi remake of Jabberwocky, but actually it's paid software which forcibly injects VR support into all kinds of PC games that don't otherwise support it.
Important update: Alien Isolation now working. Aaaaaaah.
]]>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.
]]>Expectations? Enormous. Alien: Isolation is a first-person stealth/horror adaptation of my favourite film. Not a direct adaptation but a digital recreation, in terms of both its setting and its style. I've been starved of horror games in recent years and this one has a lot to live up to. Several hours in the company of the creature have just about convinced me that it might be time to believe.
]]>Given the astonishing care and attention The Creative Assembly have put into recreating the feel of Alien in Alien: Isolation, mightn't it be sort of nice to recreate a little of the movie? Well gosh golly, they've only gone and done that, making the original cast and the spaceship Nostromo. Crumbs, and they've got members of the cast to provide voices, even Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley!
And the inevitable drawback for something so exciting: it's for pre-order DLC missions, one of which will be exclusive to certain retailers too. At first, at least. Boo.
]]>Imagine the Xenomorph from Alien is in the room with you right now. Where exactly? You don’t know. But you do know it’s in there. You lean a little forward, peeping over that stack of empty pizza boxes. Meat feast. You have been meaning to tidy those away. You peer into the gloom. You hear something above you. Something scuttling. Something dark. You look up! But it is too late. You have been eaten. Well done, imagination!
Of course, it is looking possible you will not need your imagination to enjoy these scenarios anymore because the folks making Alien: Isolation at Creative Assembley and SEGA have been tinkering with the Oculus Rift development kits and have shown us their deliciously scary ‘prototype’.
]]>Alien: Isolation is a hybrid of stealth and survival horror. A game where you are a very weak person against a very strong thing, but where you know where that strong thing is at all times. You can't kill it, but you can avoid it, antagonise it, and occasionally attack it to give you time to flee. I've been wandering the Sevastopol, encountering humans, crafting, and the beast. Here's what went down.
]]>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.
]]>They knew how to dream of futures, those film makers of the late 1970s and early '80s. The dusty leather of Mad Max, rain refracting flickering neon in Blade Runner, and chunky busted technology in Alien. What are we teaching the next generation to hope for, Google Glass and cloud computing? It's all too clean and too tidy, covering up the inevitable doom. Thankfully The Creative Assembly are putting an awful lot of work into recreating that analogue "low-fi sci-fi" vibe with Alien: Isolation, as a new video developer diary thing shows off.
The TCA gang are on hand to gab about analysing the film's concept art, trying to emulate prop-making techniques of the era, and committing VHS vandalism to get a fuzzy UI. It is very pretty.
]]>Whenever I talk to someone about Alien: Isolation, there's two possible tones of voice. First: gushing, praise-tier relief that either it's apparently good or that, having just played it themselves, they can confirm it's good. Or: dark, grim worry that it will live up to the series more recent exploits and be, in a word, trash. There's a sort of desperate hope surrounding the survival space station explorer, a need for just this once, please, let it be fun. In their latest missive below, Creative Assembly explore their plans for sound design and how the movements of the player will effect what they hear.
]]>When he isn't hanging around in hotel beds with Nathan, John and assorted other folks, Hayden Dingman plays games and then writes about them. As GDC creaks to a halt for another year, he filed this report, detailing the fears and frustrations that arose during a hands-on experience with Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation. Is it the Alien game we want? Is it the Alien game we deserve? Is it gonna be a terrifying survival horror game, a standup fight or just another bughunt?
]]>I was skeptical at first, but Alien: Isolation is shaping up to be quite the thing. Or at least, the idea of it is. It's just you and this perfect embodiment of predatory hunger, all mouth, claw, and other mouth. Some, say the game's developers, will try and confront it, but most will quickly learn that most life-expectancy-enhancing of all emotions: white-hot terror. So you'll run and hide and escape and evade. Survive. But how will all of this work? How do you design an alien that thinks for itself and slinks around in your shadow at just the right time? Go below for a video demonstration from Creative Assembly.
]]>Here are some new shots from Sega's merry space rom-com, Alien: Isolation. I believe it's a comeback vehicle for Tim Allen *record-scratch, generic baseline-driven disco* who's about to find out that trying to stalk the daughter of Sigourney Weaver through the bowels of a space station isn't as easy as he imagined. Along the way, he'll find out what it's truly like to be an acid-blooded killing machine in a world that's moved on. I believe the synthetic that's been torn apart in the screens might also be a comeback for Rob Schneider.
]]>A new collection of screenshots for Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation have appeared. Aliens, corridors, tools, and is that the chewed up remains of a Synthetic who's been dragged across the floor?
]]>We sent Brendan to Creative Assembly to meet the star xenomorph of their new first-person survival horror, Alien: Isolation. While he was able to file yesterday's extensive hands-on report from the field, he has not been seen since. But a crack team of RPS androids infiltrated the facility and recovered a sticky voice recorder with his name on it, containing an interview with Al Hope, Creative Lead on the project and Jon McKellan, Lead UI Art & Design. Here is a transcript of that interview, in which they discuss why this is true to Alien, who else players may encounter, how they think they can keep a single foe scary throughout, hiding in lockers for ten minutes and how and why Ripley's daughter is the protagonist.
]]>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.
]]>There's a new Alien game! It's ok, Gearbox didn't make it! Total War devs The Creative Assembly did! And it's Alien rather than Aliens! And it stars Ripley's daughter! And there's a whole load of motion-scanner based spookiness! And there's a preview of it right here! And there's a trailer below! And it looks all 70s at the start! And and oh just watch it, right.
]]>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.
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