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 Alien: Isolation is a 2014 survival horror stealth game developed by Creative Assembly, a company better known for the Total War series. After the deservedly harsh reception faced by previous licenced Alien franchise game Aliens: Colonial Marines, expectations were pretty dismal prior to Isolation's release. However, thanks to the dev team's evident love of the source material, their philosophy of building the gameplay around the titular creaure rather than forcing it into a tired FPS template and their meticulous attention to detail in replicating the movie's set design, Isolation was a limited commercial success and was adored both by critics and fans of the franchise. From start to finish the game builds tooth-grinding tension and gives the player a real sense of being hunted by an inscrutable, predatory intelligence. Rather than relying on scripted jump-scares or bullet sponge enemies (with a few exceptions) to provide its panic-inducing jolts of adrenaline, Isolation instead forces the player to match wits with the Alien's AI and brave the nerve-shredding atmosphere throughout. Our protagonist, Amanda Ripley, is the daughter of a certain Ellen Ripley that cinemagoers the world over are surely familiar with. Seeking closure over her mother's disappearance, she signs on for a retrieval mission with the ubiquitous and morally suspect Weyland-Yutani corporation. The flight recorder of her mother's ship, The Nostromo, has turned up at Sevastopol station, a declining backwater waystation in orbit around a gas giant in some crapsack corner of space. Things are not going well on Sevastopol, as we will see. In space, no-one can hear your commentary This will be a video LP, but unlike the countless facecam screechfests on Youtube it will provide its commentary via subtitles. This game builds atmosphere through sights and sounds and set design so the dulcet tones of my alcohol-ravaged Scottish accent would only serve to detract from that. I'm new to video editing in general and subtitling in particular, so please do offer feedback as the updates come. Do try to be gentle, though, as the Alien will be abusing me enough as it is. I can't lie to you about my chances This playthrough will be on Nightmare difficulty, a relatively new mode introduced via patch. Features of Nightmare include drastically reduced loot drops, an unreliable motion tracker, massively increased damage and acuity of foes including the Alien itself, absence of an ingame map or readily-accessible health, ammo or battery readouts and a host of other mechanical tweaks geared towards paving your wake with a stream of liquid poo poo. I'm not the best player in the world. I've only beaten the game once. I still have PTSD from last time. This will not be a 100% run, but I will do my best to show off everything I see when I'm not hiding under a desk hefting a molotov cocktail and crying. Mistakes will be made, wrong turns will be taken. If I get to a point where I'm worried the difficulty is too prohibitive to progressing the game I'll swallow my pride and turn it down to Hard. Update schedule Living in rural Scotland means I do have broadband, but it's only a slight cut above dialup. Add to my glacial upload rate my relative inexperience with video editing and the considerable difficulty of playing through the game on Nightmare and a weekly update schedule will be cutting it fine. However, I will try to get something up on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, along with bonus death/failure reels and, if the mood takes me, some effortposts about the game, the films, the setting and whatever else I can think of. Spoiler policy Unless you've been living under a rock since 1979 you probably have the rough gist of what the movies are about. As such, the Alien franchise, as well as related media such as prometheus and AvP are fair game for discussion with the explicit exception of Alien: Isolation. Any game-related spoilers should be in tags. Also, I'll allow discussion of Aliens: Colonial Marines despite it causing me profound pain to even think about that ludic abortion. Other Alien and Isolation related discussion can be found at the excellent Games thread on the subject.  Part 1: The Crappiest Place Off Earth Part 2: The Non-Aggression Principle / FAILURE REEL Part 3: Tyrannophallus Rex / FAILURE REEL / POST Part 4: Noises From Upstairs / POST Part 5: Smile With Confidence / FAILURE REEL / POST Part 6: Since You've Been Gone / POST 1st Intermission: Crew Expendable / POST Part 7: Narnia - The Dark Descent / POST Part 8: Phallus in Wonderland / POST 2nd Intermission: Last Survivor / POST Part 9: Ovaries of Steel / POST  Survivor DLC: Amanda / POST CJacobs did a thing. CJacobs posted:You've inspired me (I'm sorry) TomViolence fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Jul 20, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 07:37
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  Amanda RipleyOur protagonist as we brave the labyrinthine confines of Sevastapol station, Amanda is a calm, capable and resourceful engineer who remains competent and stoic in the face of immense danger provided she isn't controlled by a complete idiot. On a mission to find her missing space-trucker mother, she is arguably more invested in getting to the bottom of things than any other character we've encountered thus far - though even mere survival seems like a herculean task, all things considered.  Christopher SamuelsA British-accented company man, something that no doubt sets alarm bells ringing for most Alien fans, Samuels is Amanda's ticket onto the Torrens and onward to Sevastopol. Separated from Amanda during the ill-fated spacewalk to come aboard Sevastopol.  Nina TaylorA Weyland-Yutani legal exec sent to oversee the safe retrieval of the Nostromo flight recorder, Taylor is quite unused to long distance space travel and EVA excursions. Along with Samuels she is separated from Ripley by an accident during their spacewalk to board Sevastopol.  Diane VerlaineCaptain of the Torrens, a Nostromo-style space truck refitted into a long range courier vessel, Verlaine is our best hope of getting off Sevastopol alive. Unfortunately she's currently outside of Sevastopol space and patching up damage the Torrens sustained during our catastrophic EVA.  AxelA hot-headed Sevastopol resident with a loaded gun and a dry sense of humour, Axel is our first introduction to the "gently caress you, got mine" zeitgeist that has overtaken Sevastopol's population. Willing to cooperate with Ripley provided he gets a ride home on the Torrens, he's our guide through the closest thing the game has to a tutorial segment.   FlareApart from searing retinas, flares are primarily useful for lighting up dark areas, burning your hands and distracting nefarious ne'er-do-wells that would do Ripley harm. The only consumable item, save for ammunition, that Ripley cannot craft for herself.  MedkitOur first craftable item and a very useful one at that. These syrettes, presumably full of nutritious far-future amphetacrack, shore up Ripley's health when she inevitably comes to grief.  Maintenence JackWhen you're trapped in a sci-fi horror video game you better believe the humble wrench is your staunchest ally. While it's very useful for busting heads, the maintenence jack also allows us to accomplish a multitude of engineering tasks. Such as breaking things, twisting things and prying things. Truly a technological marvel.  The flashlight allows you to see in dark areas without the aggravation of red-tinged after-images burning themselves permanently into your vision. The downside is its limited battery life, as Seegson has clearly bought from the lowest bidder and hasn't heard of hand-cranked dynamos. Thankfully batteries are pretty plentiful in the early stages of the game and we'll be wanting to use it sparingly anyway since it paints a nice big target on us.  Security Access TunerThe security access tuner (SAT for short) allows us to hack doors and terminals with simple, timed minigames that become orders of magnitude more difficult the more we fumble, whine and fatfinger our keyboard as something hisses behind us.  RevolverA big, shiny piece of death-dealing hardware that will surely come in handy. Provided you have ammo for it. And the time to line up a shot. And your target isn't incredibly resistant or even immune to bullets. But what are the odds of that?  Smoke BombA simple, home-made smoke bomb, the same as the one you made with babby's first chemistry set. Rather than causing the terror alert that cordoned off and evacuated the three block radius around your house, however, this smoke bomb can serve a useful purpose that won't land you on a homeland security watchlist. Of course, obscuring one's own vision cancels out some of its utility when trying not to bumble headfirst into whoever or whatever you're looking to evade.  FlashbangThis flashbang grenade will blind and disorient anything with corneas, giving a brief window to escape or slip past or bash their brains in. Of course, the ratio of ambulatory threats to corneas on Sevastopol has yet to be determined conclusively.  Motion ScannerI've been told it keys off of micro-changes in air density, but you'll be lucky if you can even get a reading off this broken piece of poo poo. On less ball-busting difficulties the motion scanner is an incredibly useful tool, but on Nightmare it's fairly unreliable. It can be a liability as well, if used in the wrong circumstances, as nearby foes can hear the distinctive pings.  NoisemakerAnother distraction device, the noisemaker emits a barrage of high-pitched dialup modem chirps after a 4-second delay. It's a good idea to change up your distraction strategies where possible as the AI of a certain beastie adapts somewhat if you use the same tricks over and over.  EMP BombA chunky electro-magnet that can be used to temporarily stun synthetics, giving a brief window that is best exploited by legging it or bashing their heads open. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Mar 22, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 07:38
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Puukko naamassa posted:Looks nice so far, but could you maybe turn the subtitles on? I had a terrifying moment there where I thought you meant I'd uploaded without commentary. I take it you mean the ingame subs? I'll put them on from now on. However, I'm currently three-quarters of the way through my recording of the next area, so it might be the update after next before subs kick in properly. The game certainly lays on its oppressive walls of noise, so I can certainly understand the trouble making some things out.
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Mar 20, 2015 09:40
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Yeah, on rewatching the videos myself I've noticed that quite a few of the subtitles are a bit "blink and you'll miss 'em." I'm gonna try spacing them out a bit better so they're not running into one another and up the font size a bit. I'll also try to position them so they're not obscuring - or becoming garbled by - the ingame text. Are they okay in terms of font and colour? I think the white with black outline contrasts well enough, but when I'm editing I tend to focus on them almost exclusively anyway. As for the game's atmosphere I might have a few biases due to being a massive fan of the original movie. They hit the nail so thoroughly on the head with the design of this game that it can't help but evoke in me a bizarre mix of wistful nostalgia and bowel-watering dread. Still, the griminess of all that bakelite might not be coming across on the vids but up close it looks scuffed, worn and trodden on. The windows on the Torrens are pretty filthy as well, which I think is a really nice touch. With such a small crew I imagine they never get round to squeegeeing them. Things are proceeding quite well on recording the next update, but thanks to it being the first significant difficulty spike of the game I've got about 20GB of footage that's destined for the failure reel and probably a standard 50-odd minute video for the update itself. Much of this bloat is thanks to the way the game handles saving, so there's a lot of long takes getting cut as I try to hunt logs, complete objectives and make it to the next save-point alive. What I might do if it starts getting ridiculous is just take screenshots of logs and tack audio tapes onto the end of the videos, adopting a more goal-oriented strategy for the definitive takes.
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Mar 20, 2015 13:32
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slowbeef posted:At the 15 minute mark, and trying to decide if I want to watch more or just buy the game. So thanks for selling me on it... Glad to see I'm doing the game some justice. Moonshine Rhyme posted:Yeah I got to say, this game has some of the best environments I have seen in a game to date period. They did an awesome job recreating the look and feel of the first Aliens movie. My only advice would just be to maybe try to be a little more "cinematic." The game is gorgeous, but we can't see it as well if you don't look at anything. That's a small gripe though, I think your doing pretty well. High hopes! Yeah, I kind of hustle through the first few areas at a fair clip. Partly this is due to my familiarity with the game's opening, partly because I want to get to what I consider the meat of the game. Another factor is video length, but that can easily be remedied by splitting things into 50-minute chunks. Fridurmus posted:That aside, I think that this is off to a great start! I will definitely be doing the Nostromo DLCs, probably as an intermission once we reach the rough mid-point of the game. They're not exactly spoilery as far as the game's plot goes, so I can put them in anywhere. Aumanor posted:Another suggestion for the LP, whenever you release a new episode, make a new post with a link to it, don't just update the first post. Makes it significantly easier to follow. Many people just check the bookmarks to see if there are new posts in the thread and will only see those they haven't yet read. Case in point: I didn't know there was a new ep before Ekster mentionned it in his post. Yeah, I'll definitely be doing this from now on. When I had the RickVoid posted:I noticed you've been doing a little "roleplaying" with character positioning during the videos to make it look more like we're watching out the eyes of person, rather than a video game. Please keep doing this, it's great. It's a very immersive game, which is where a lot of my enjoyment of it comes from, so I tend to have these little quirks when I'm playing anyway. Glad they add to the whole effect. Certainly for the first little bit of the game where it's effectively a guided tour, I wanted to show things off as if Ripley's discovering everything for the first time and just putting together how hosed up everything is. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Mar 21, 2015 |
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Mar 21, 2015 02:03
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TomViolence, are you planning on showing off the two Alien related DLCs, Crew Expendable and Last Survivor?
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ViggyNash posted:I tried a couple hours of this game and while I can admire its technical brilliance actually playing it frustrates me to no end because I feel like I have negative agency. I'm a throughly masochistic gamer, so dragging myself through this PTSD-inducing labyrinth is right up my street. I get what you mean, though. You're constantly being pushed through the game with little or no say in what you do or where you go. If it's not the alien herding you like a sheepdog it's the station falling apart or the Joes' indefatigable pursuit grinding you down. Of course, all of this is pretty  as far as I'm concerned.Gridlocked posted:Oh man the hands shaking right after the Alien appears in episode 2 is a great touch. While I agree with you in that I'd love to see such care and attention given to another run at an Aliens game, I think taking the focus off combat for Isolation was a masterstroke. Although you'll get your wish at least in part as we will be coming by some limited means of defending ourselves against the alien before long.
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Mar 21, 2015 08:13
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RickVoid posted:Finally had a chance to sit down and watch the second video. I've seen playthroughs of this game before so I know when the Alien is supposed to appear and how it's going to behave but Christ it still gets the adrenaline going every time. You won't have to wait long, god willing, as I'm currently subtitling said nightmarish section just now. Should have it up by the end of the weekend. After that, however, I'll probably slow down a bit. Want to push this one out quite early to give a real taste of what the game's about. EDIT: I completely forgot to mention this earlier. Some of you mentioned the videos have a 4:3 aspect ratio. Unfortunately this is likely due to my weedy monitor only supporting resolutions up to 1280x1024, so I'm afraid I don't think there's much that can be done about it. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Mar 21, 2015 |
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Mar 21, 2015 13:03
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Skippy Granola posted:I just watched the first two episodes, and man I am already riveted. High praise indeed, though much of the quality comes from the game rather than my presentation. I've always loved Alien and being poo poo scared. This really is the perfect game for me to do an LP of, so hopefully I don't mangle it too badly. Blastinus posted:By the way, is it just me or is this Xenomorph a bit sturdier than its usual depictions? The folks in that one encounter unloaded quite a few rounds into it and it didn't even slow down. Oh yeah, in gameplay terms the Alien's pretty much invincible. However, we will encounter some means to defend ourselves and get a little bit of cathartic payback in the upcoming chapters...
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Mar 21, 2015 22:37
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azren posted:Yeah, you've given me the "should I just buy it" dilemma. The answer is probably "yes," but I haven't played a game through in ages. I'm a horrible gamer... I hope you do buy it, that way we can get a sequel!  Sel Nar posted:In the Nostromo, it was an empty cargo bay, with the chains normally being used to tie down heavy objects in transit. I can only think that the same would be done on Sevastopol station in case of something like gravity fluctuations or moving the station with a Nostromo-like tugboat. Part of what I love about this game is that they work so much from the films into it without standing next to references with a big sign going, "Hey guys, remember this?" I never noticed myself the station's resemblance to Alien's mining rig, but it looks a hell of a lot like it, right enough. We can look forward to a lot more subtle nods like that. inflatablefish posted:I've just finished watching the failure reel, and I was really hoping you'd walked under the drool that was dripping from the vent. I'm sure you'll get your chance to see it. The alien tends to spring that trap in areas where there's a mix of enemies and hazards to face, so I'm sure I'll run headlong into a vertical ambush before long. Part 3's uploading right now. I had it done and ready to go yesterday, but youtube knackered it somehow so it looked like a blotchy inkblot painting. My hope is that if I double the bitrate youtube's compression won't bite such obvious chunks out of it.
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Mar 22, 2015 18:58
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J.theYellow posted:I didn't know Dan Abnett was primary writer for this. He's done a LOT of scifi adaptive writing, including for Warhammer 40k. Used to do a lot of teamups with Andy Lanning for comic books, in particular the 2008 teaming of 6 different D-grade Marvel space-heroes that they called GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. That team lineup (minus Adam Warlock/Magus) ended up being the one they put into the blockbuster space opera with Star-Lord, Gamora, Drax the Destroyer, Rocket Raccoon and Groot. Yeah, Dan Abnett seems like a great fit for this kind of game, what with his Warhammer 40K experience in bringing life to a grimdark far future. Another name I recognised from the writing staff is Will Porter, who will ring a bell to anyone who's been following the perpetually constipated zombie survival indie game Project Zomboid. As I understand it, while Abnett was in charge of the overall story Dion Lay and Will Porter were charged with creating all the neat little details like logs, world-building like Seegson's corporate history and other stuff that's easily missed but appreciated all the more when found. Another neat thing about cast and crew: for the Nostromo DLCs (and Nostromo logs) they got the original cast, with the sole exception of (I think) Ian Holm to lend their voices for that extra layer of authenticity.
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Mar 22, 2015 21:14
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Extra Tasty posted:My only experience with this game is a stream where the player got lost almost immediately and so nothing happened for two hours. It's nice to see this from someone who actually has pre-existing knowledge of the thing! Oh, I do get lost quite a bit, but I have a vague idea of where I'm going most of the time. Helps build tension, if nothing else. The design of the station alternates between working against me with (justifiably) cookie-cutter corridors and working with me with nice, distinct landmarks as I go along, so my competence will be nicely inconsistent in that regard.
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Mar 23, 2015 03:19
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 Part3: Tyrannophallus Rex / FAILURE REEL In which we get to know our new roommate. His personal hygiene leaves much to be desired and his eating habits are grotesque. Keep your head down when he's in a bad mood and don't go having any parties because he hates noise.  Dr. Kuhlman A new friend we discover holed up in medical. Know those annoying NPCs you get in RPGs whose sole purpose is to give out fetch quests? Kuhlman is cast from the same mold. For the record, he does not have a problem.  RansomeWe haven't actually met Ransome, but we're getting a feel for his character nonetheless. Channeling Burke from Aliens, he's a corporate slimeball with shady motivations.  Dr. Lingarde Senior medical officer aboard Sevastopol, Lingarde's vlogging sheds some light on our current predicament.  PipebombA simple improvised explosive, notable for being the first gadget we can make that will hurt the alien. Extremely versatile, but costly to produce.  Stun BatonPresumably meant for subduing large space-cattle, this prod is a powerful melee weapon capable of outright killing a human with one jab. However, its primary purpose for us will be stunning working Joes in order to finish them off with the wrench. Does nothing appreciable to the alien, aside from pissing it off.  Molotov CocktailBeloved by dissidents, protesters and guerilla fighters throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the molotov cocktail has been updated for the spacefaring future by vastly overcomplicating its design. The plus side is that we can rig it for proximity and it's a source of TomViolence fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 10:24
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John Charity Spring posted:I wonder if it'd be better to keep a few deaths in the main videos - you can cut and skip ahead past stuff that's already been shown, but keep at least a couple of the deaths. It'd probably have more tension for the viewers that way. Yeah, I was thinking that myself when I was compiling the failure reel. Some of the deaths are pretty visceral in terms of sound, so I might leave some in so you guys can get the full benefit. It'll keep you on your toes, too, hopefully. EDIT: I changed up my video encoding to strike a balance between quality and filesize. Please do tell me if there's a noticeable drop in watchability as a result, as youtube has a nasty habit of munching pixels and rewatching my own videos in 720p is arduous thanks to lovely, lovely internet. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 18:52
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LoonShia posted:I'm watching the videos in ten minute chunks, then pausing for a while to breathe. Does the tension ever let up, or do you keep playing tag for twelve hours? Medical's the first area where we get to spend some real quality time with the alien. It's also one of the harder areas in the whole game, partly because it's such a shock to the system, but also because it's so claustrophobic. Once the game opens out a bit more and we have more room to run around the difficulty levels off again. LoonShia posted:E II: Can you actually use the motion tracker at all on Nightmare, or is it borked beyond repair? It's certainly useable, but the screen flickers and fogs up and occasionally gives false positives. Usually at the worst possible moment.
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Mar 23, 2015 19:01
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J.theYellow posted:Great choice of music. I was wondering how many people would catch onto me using a song about getting repeatedly hosed by a big dick. Also happens to be one of my favourites. With a handle like TomViolence you can bet on hearing a lot more 80s alternative rock, for better or worse. Samovar posted:I'm sure it has been said before but my God, I love how loving lovely 70s-future aesthetics of this game is. For some reason it is that kind of... crap clunky tech that appeals to me the most, not shiny lights or user-friendly keyboards with a voiced computer. Just utter, utter infuriating CRT screens with eye-straining glare, oil-rig tools and jerry-rigged devices. I don't know why I love that so much. It certainly makes a refreshing change from everything looking like a slick, clean iPod. The game wouldn't have quite the same ambience if my access tuner had a touchscreen or all the doors ran off facial recognition tech. The save terminals in particular put me very much in mind of punching in at my old job, though the game's admittedly not quite as stressful. Octolady posted:Watching this game with headphones reeeeeally ramps up the tension, holy poo poo. I would definitely recommend giving the game the dark room and headphones treatment. Nothing quite like getting so on edge I lose my poo poo at something innocuous like the cat barging in my door because she's wanting fed.
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Mar 24, 2015 04:15
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Samovar posted:You watched the first film when you were 5? Wow, and I thought I was young for watching it when I was 7. Yeah, that scene in particular had quite the effect on me. Still does, to this day. Can't watch it without feeling this really tight, constricted feeling in my chest. Probably something that happens to quite a few people I bet. As for the chestburster itself, it does look quite disarming compared to the 7-foot monstrosity it eventually grows into, kind of like a hairless, eyeless kitten or somesuch. Tacopocalypse posted:I gotta say, that Throbbing Gristle joke was quite a pull. Not quite sure what you mean by this. If you mean I was kind of pulling it out of my rear end, over-reaching for something "witty" to say in the moment, you're probably right. I've still not zeroed in completely on a fitting tone for my commentary. Also, if I am gonna try and be witty it's probably not best to make jokes about a niche industrial band from the late 70s. Spalec posted:Yep, during the hacking sequences/inputing door codes/saving you are entirely vulnerable. The game really does love doing this to you. Whether you're hacking doors, twisting nuts with the maintenence jack or just saving the game, it really has a knack for making you feel horribly exposed. That's also the reason why I don't tend to linger at terminals, where your view is locked on the screen and can't even flit manically off to the sides as it can when saving.
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Mar 24, 2015 16:32
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Tacopocalypse posted:Sorry I wasn't clear, I liked the joke because it was obscure. Plus I'm a TG fanboy. Don't worry, dude. Your commentary's good. S'all good in the hood. I'm happy to take both praise and criticism with equal gratitude.
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Mar 24, 2015 21:15
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Sel Nar posted:Speaking of everyone's favourite chest-popping scene, anecdotes from the cast members all agree that they should have known something was up when they assembled for that scene, as they were told nothing about what was going to happen, but the Entire Film Crew were wearing raincoats. So, all those horrified reactions? Pretty much authentic. Only John Hurt was told the barest hint of what was going to happen, and that's because he got to stick his head through the table with the dummy body on it. Apparently for a lot of scenes in the movie the actors were just pushed relentlessly and set against one another. Ripley and Parker's shouting match after Dallas dies is pretty much genuine. Veronica Cartwright losing her poo poo during the chestburster scene is a classic as well. I think she got the biggest squirt of blood and she just goes mental. I also read somewhere that Badejo Bhalaji, the actor in the alien suit, had to wrestle Yaphet Kotto down so that he'd finally agree to do Parker's death scene. Between Alien and The Shining I'm beginning to think that to make a horror masterpiece you have to be a sadistic bastard of a director. On a somewhat related note, the making of documentary's well worth a watch, as is BBC film critic Mark Kermode's documentary Alien: Evolution, which I'm sure is up on youtube somewhere.
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Mar 24, 2015 22:09
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LashLightning posted:I noticed that a part of the Xenomorph clips through the wall at 26:33-34. Yeah, I noticed the clipping thing in editing. A little flicker, very easy to miss. Must just have been the tip of his tail or something. Axel also manages to defy the laws of time and space when exiting a vent in part 1, phasing right through the cover. My theory is that he's a time-lord. As for wheelchair guy, I'm pretty sure it is indeed a chest wound, though it's unclear whether it's a run-of-the-mill gunshot wound or a consequence of xenomorph-inflicted impalement. Or something far worse. 
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Mar 25, 2015 00:15
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RickVoid posted:Time to post this now. Oh god, if that had happened in my playthrough, I think I'd be trying to exorcise my computer right now.
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Mar 25, 2015 18:52
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PC Gamer linked me to some sweet concept art.  More here for those interested. Be advised, some of it is slightly spoilery.
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Mar 26, 2015 00:58
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Antistar01 posted:I really like this game. Not so much the save system, but apart from that it's pretty great. Yeah, the resource scarcity's really starting to bite, something I never had a problem with on my original hard playthrough. I'm hoping that if I ration my gadgets I'll still get ample chance to show everything off. If not, there's always survival mode to play with a few extra toys, plus the chance to show the alien AI at its worst excess of psychic bullshit. Think Nightmare's bad? Try having the bastard almost land on you every five feet. As for the widescreen thing, I'd never thought of doing 1280x720. The thing that puts me off it at this stage is a desire to keep the videos consistent. I'll give it a try, though, and see how it affects the video capture and performance. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 19:28
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Seriously though; maybe you could run it in a (borderless?) window? Isolation has amazing visuals; it'd be great to have it in widescreen.
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RickVoid posted:Your spoiler was actually mentioned in the third video, So we can probably safely discuss the AI behavior. Survival mode is basically a timed challenge with the primary objective of escaping a certain area of the station. There's secondary objectives sprinkled in, such as restoring power or locking off stairwells or the like that have ticking score counters. The longer you piss about, the lower your score. Survivor mode alien is a terrifying beast that stays on you like a bad case of herpes and some of the challenge maps have droids and humans thrown in for extra fun. It's a good time-waster for after you complete the game. It also allows you to play as some of the secondary characters, who have different starting loadouts for added (or reduced) difficulty. I really suck at survivor mode, but I'll probably show it off once the main game is done. EDIT: I'm uploading a test video for 1280x720 resolution with the lastest update. You guys can take a look at it once it's uploaded and let me know how it compares. I can see a definite plus side in that it cuts down on file size, but I want to see if there's a noticeable loss in quality on the other end. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 00:34
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Comrade Koba posted:Sold. I can't remember if the base-game comes with any survivor mode maps already in, but if it does give the mode a try. If you don't like it, don't bother with the survivor mode DLCs. If you find it's your thing, grab the season pass. The two Nostromo DLCs are short little set-piece reconstructions of a few of the movie scenes, worth getting if you want to run through a dying spaceship in a screaming panic. Two of the survivor mode DLCs, Lost Contact and Safe Haven, change up the survivor mode format by working in multiple stages with a save-point in between. I dunno if I've helped here or just muddied the waters further, but welp.
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Mar 27, 2015 10:33
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Part 4: Noises From Upstairs In which there aren't nearly enough deaths to justify a  Marshal WaitsChief of the colonial marshal service aboard Sevastopol, Waits had the dubious honour of a front-row seat as the station descended into the darwinian (in every sense) anarchy we see it in now. Despite his less than hospitable demeanour, he seems to have his priorities in the right place concerning certain anthropomorphized sexual anxieties lurking aboard the station. You might recognise his voice and likeness as those of USCM Lieutenant  Gorman of the Sulaco. RicardoDeputy marshal and Waits's sidekick, Ricardo seems to have been the go-to guy for dangerous fetch quests prior to Amanda "Muggins" Ripley's arrival. Probably why he's the more personable of the two.  Henry MarlowCaptain of the salvage vessel Anesidora, Marlow is the widower of our unfortunate patient zero Catherine Foster. Finding the Nostromo flight recorder, he and his crew set down on a misanthropic planetoid franchise fans will know as LV-426. Hilarity, of course, ensued shortly thereafter. UK goons likely won't recognise his voice and likeness as that of Paddy from Shameless, but apparently it is in fact Sean Gilder that plays him. Also, it is downright impossible to get a decent mugshot of him. Level 2 Security Access TunerWe've now upgraded our security access tuner, possibly by updating it's firmware from a punch card or cassette tape. This allows us to hack more doors and consoles, which will no doubt come in handy. Flashbang V.2Our flashbangs now have a bit more snap, crackle and pop with this optimized design which I'm forced to assume just gives them a larger effective area and a longer duration.  Gas Cutting TorchYour standard oxy-acetyline torch, used for cutting open hatch covers and other protective casings. Takes forever to use, leaving us very vulnerable, but does have one nice touch in that it's got a built-in vision protecting screen over the flame. It's odd the little things Seegson does splash out on considering the rest of the station and its equipment was clearly produced by the lowest bidder. P.S. I've revised any plans concerning widescreen in light of my utter incompetence at playing the game in a slimmed down window coupled with a desire to keep a consistent aspect ratio throughout the LP. Apologies to anybody that had their heart set on it, but I'd be squinting through a letterbox for much of the game and failing even more than usual as a result. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Mar 27, 2015 |
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Mar 27, 2015 13:53
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CJacobs posted:I love the way the alien's face is shaped, it makes his mouth always look like he's doin' a ~and this I know, his teeth as white as snow, what a gas it was to see him~ How could you ever say no to that smile?
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Mar 27, 2015 15:11
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face, especially visible in the ep 3 death reel. Ripley is scared out of her gourd and meanwhile the alien's just havin' a good ol time. 
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SageNytell posted:I really did not expect that last section, well done by the developers! Are we to assume that Marlow found the flight recorder immediately prior to the details of his... account? Can't remember if it comes up exactly how they found the recorder, but it was certainly prior to their discovery of the derelict since Heyst says something about the scattered junk inside having the same name stamped on it. I figure they maybe found it floating in space somewhere around Zeta Reticuli after Mama Ripley jettisoned it with her final report in hopes that "the network" would find it and pick her up. It would certainly go someway toward explaining why she doesn't get found for another 40 years, since her log was intercepted by a bunch of amoral roughneck salvagers instead of a WY rescue team. Also, gotta say, I really love the whole derelict segment. The devs managed to fit it into the story without shoehorning it in too savagely and they also managed to give it a proper sense of scale and gravity. You kind of know what you're in for when the sequence kicks off, but it's no less spine-tingling for all that, particularly when the derelict itself appears, looming through the fog. Through the whole thing I had to reconcile a desire to survey every nook and cranny with a feeling of utter dread in the pit of my gut as I knew what was coming.
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Mar 27, 2015 17:54
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Samovar posted:I guess my game bugged out at having to find the compression cylinder part; the Alien never attacked the trio at ground level and at the part where you see it lowp over the railing, the two people just stood there, no patrolling or investigating. Oh yeah, I had those glitches happen on my first playthrough. Imagine my surprise on this run when the alien dives down from the vents and slaughters the entire posse in the storage area and vaults that guy over a railing in the plant room. I genuinely didn't have a gameplan, because I didn't know that stuff was meant to happen. As for our survivalist pals, I just kinda took the whole space-rear end in a top hat libertarian joke and decided  .
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Mar 27, 2015 19:13
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Dreadwroth posted:I always loved the alternate cut of Alien where the Xeno dosen't really kill them, just drags em off to be turned into cocoons, it really makes it seem even more weird and alien than the stupid ant hive crap in Aliens makes them out to be. While I'm conflicted on which cut of the film I like better (the original theatrical cut just seems more condensed and focused to me) that scene where Ripley finds Dallas in that half-mutated state is really, really creepy. The lighting and sound is so dream-like and surreal, like she's stepped into another world. Still quite fresh in my mind, too, since the sci-fi channel had both Alien (Director's Cut) and Aliens on the weekend after I started this LP. Ripley's one of my favourite horror protagonists of all time because she's sensible enough to just go "welp," burn everything and blow up the drat ship there and then.
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Mar 28, 2015 10:58
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My god, it never ceases to amaze me how old, crappy and dated A:CM looks for a supposedly modern game. I think AvP2 had better visuals and it's ancient by comparison. Graphics, of course, aren't everything but colonic marines had fuckall else going for it either so I might as well focus on that.
TomViolence fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Mar 28, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 18:26
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Just finished recording the session that's gonna be part 5. My heartrate hasn't returned to normal yet. Got a whopping two hours of footage, half of it being gently caress-ups, deaths, excessive backtracking due to getting lost and duplicate recordings thanks to me fat-fingering the video capture button in a blind panic and screwing up a whole take. It's gonna be a bitch to edit together, but you guys need to see how much of a brutal dick the alien was this time. Holy poo poo, I'm still cruising the adrenaline high.
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Mar 29, 2015 00:02
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Arglebargle III posted:Is that thumping in the walls just random noise designed to scare you are actually the alien clonking around in the vents? It was pretty constant this video. It's designed to be pretty ambiguous and you can never really be sure, but certainly the majority of it throughout part 4 was just environmental sound. Aside from his short, scripted swoops down from the vents the alien kept very quiet indeed, though I've never been able to establish when exactly he's away for a coffee break. I kind of don't want to know, either, as feeling safe would undercut quite a lot of the game's appeal for me. Even when the alien's definitely away getting a manicure Sevastopol manages to evoke him at every turn. Elements of his sound profile have been incorporated into the sounds of vent covers, doors, steam pipes, the transit system and all sorts of other environmental details to make the player jump out of their skin. Similarly, a lot of the station's architecture was built by some sadistic design committee that decided to make every pipe fitting and electrical conduit resemble its head.
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Mar 29, 2015 13:45
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RickVoid posted:One thing I forgot to mention about your jaunt through medical, OP, you blew through the morgue really quickly and it seemed like you were worried that the alien would show up in a place where there weren't any hiding spots. I've never seen him show up in that area. His only point of ingress is the vent that is initially locked, and then once it's unlocked it's your only point of egress, so he's never anywhere near it. I genuinely didn't know that. Ha, makes sense that I'd blast through the one area where I'm safe at lightning speed. I think I had bad memories of my first playthrough where I was still licking wounds from getting brutally rogered in the first medical area so much so that I could barely hold it together in the morgue. The ominous noises of the alien scrabbling around upstairs really cements him as an ever-present threat. I've pretty much flown through the game on both runs purely riding on the seat of my (poo poo-filled) pants, so it's a great learning experience. Once I've done nightmare all the way through, I think I'll treat myself to a scrublord novice run to 100% the game. Won't be LPing that run, though, as it would be exhaustively long and quite boring, in stark contrast to this terrifying balls to the wall rollercoaster I'm experiencing just now. SNEAKY EDIT Inferior posted:He does show up in the Morgue, but only if you really dawdle, I think. He killed me in the little corridor there once on my initial playthrough. I spent most of my time hiding in cupboards the first time I played. Ah, so I probably do have a few repressed memories of dying in that morgue after all. Certainly on my first run I stalled at the coolant cylinder puzzle for quite a while. To trigger the objective you need to try (and fail) to initialise the coolant on the computer - after which the cylinders become interactable - and I think I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out what was wrong. Also, gently caress cupboards so very, very much. Especially on nightmare, where they introduce a new breath-holding mechanic that I for some reason can't get the hang of. I dunno whether you have to wait for the prompts or just lean back and hold breath pre-emptively. Whatever the case, I gently caress up horribly everytime, get heard, seen and killed. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 20:18
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azren posted:So, since the only thing I own that could possibly play this game is a PS3, how well does that version work? Does anyone have any experience with it? Yeah, the whole Amanda thing in the director's cut nicely sets the stage for Ripley's surrogate relationship with Newt and the other additional scenes add a lot without being overindulgent. I wonder how Alien: Isolation's plot is supposed to fit in with Amanda supposedly dying ignorant of her mother's fate at age 57, if it is at all? I'm hopeful Creative Assembly'll get pestered to do a sequel if enough people buy this game - even if it's on steam at 75% off. Although making lightning strike twice and getting two good games out of the concept might be pushing things...
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Mar 30, 2015 17:31
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chitoryu12 posted:It's a deleted scene, but yeah. She's handed a datapad with a photo of her elderly daughter and is told that she died (I think of cancer) 2 years beforehand, with her body cremated and leaving no children. Body cremated and leaving no children sounds almost too convenient, doesn't it? Obviously, I guess it's more convenient from a screenwriting perspective than anything, but it leaves the door open for all kinds of  theorising.
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Mar 31, 2015 21:58
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Part 5: Smile With Confidence / FAILURE REEL Marshal Waits solidly believes in the old adage "build a better mousetrap." Guess who gets to be the cheese?  SinclairHead of Seegson security aboard Sevastopol, Sinclair's a crooked cop, a black marketeer and a shakedown artist. Not only is he chiefly responsible for Foster getting her malevolent passenger through quarantine, he has also turned to murdering civilians and taking their poo poo so that he and his cadre of thugs and looters can hole up in Solomon's Habitation in hopes of waiting out this whole mess.  FlamethrowerThis magnificent piece of kit is our lifeline when the alien sniffs us out. One or two bursts from this baby sends him packing, and even just the threat of a blast of flame keeps him at arm's length. However, the flamethrower guzzles fuel at a ridiculous rate and, worse yet, the alien becomes gradually more heat resistant the more we use it. Plasma TorchA better torch, which cuts more things. Enough said. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 12:35
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LoonShia posted:I'm not surprised that (current episode spoiler) Samuels turns out to be a synthetic. He does look a lot like Lance Henriksen, and W-Y policy appears to be to have one on every journey. Thing I love about this little thing is that nobody makes a big deal about it. It's like realising out one of your co-workers is gay or whatever. You're just like, "Oh, right. Explains a few things in retrospect..."
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Apr 1, 2015 13:54
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Arglebargle III posted:I'm watching Alien. Ripley is very much a background character for the first 20 minutes. The first thing anyone says about her is "We'd better stay the gently caress out of her way." drat straight! Dallas, rather than Ripley, seems to be built up as the primary protagonist through the first half of the movie. Ripley being the last survivor must have come as some surprise to a 1979 cinema audience, what with female protagonists being pretty novel outside of exploitation or slasher films. The first impression we get of the character is that she's a by-the-book busybody and the script kind of leads us on as she clashes with Dallas, who's prioritising Kane's welfare over quarantine regulations. I imagine a lot of audiences on first seeing the film were like, "You tell her, captain! Crew comes first!" ...then we find out she had the right of it.
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Apr 1, 2015 15:56
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Arglebargle III posted:When Ash attacks Ripley, Ripley uses the intercom to call for Lambert and Parker. Both are still alive, but neither responds. Ash must have disabled the intercom before he went into the mainframe room. When he appears in the mainframe scene he has already decided to murder Ripley. I never realized any of these things about Ash in my first or second watches of Alien. Ash is a much, much more sinister figure once you understand the plot better. Oh hell yeah. On a rewatch you really pick up on all those little details that cement him as a profoundly sketchy character. What's worse is, in my opinion, that it's pretty clearly a personal thing for him, rather than just a matter of his programming or his company orders. He's fixated on the alien as a sort of perfect, darwinian engine. Hence his "I admire its purity" speech. In the Alien universe, it seems, androids are just like people or, in fact, are people. You get good ones and bad ones and Ash seems to be a uniquely hosed up example of the worst extreme. It's also incredibly disconcerting how glitchy he gets, veering right into the uncanny valley without the need for any rubbery skin or glowing eyes.
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Apr 1, 2015 16:15
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Arglebargle III posted:I don't agree. I see Ash as conflicted but ultimately hostile to the human characters, much like HAL from 2001. Ash would prefer not to kill Ripley, but he's going to because Ripley's actions will cause him to fail his mission. And if he's going to kill Ripley he's going to do it in a logical and premeditated way. That happens to involve oral violation. I mean, you're right that he's fixated on the alien. But I wouldn't be surprised if he genuinely liked his crewmates too. He's buggy and weird. Oh yeah, I wasn't meaning he had anything personal against his crewmates, more that he was personally invested in his mission thanks to his fascination with the alien. However conflicted he is about offing the poor saps that get in his way, it's likely that factor of admiration or scientific curiosity that decides it for him unless he actually is hardwired to do as the higher-ups told him to. He even extends his sympathies to them in the end, though I'm never sure if that's sincere or an empty platitude. Certainly, Ash somehow manages to be a far more sympathetic character than Burke from Aliens, for instance, who is probably 100% biologically human, not counting trace elements of snake DNA. EDIT: VVVVVVVVVVVVV Usually one or two, I think. I've never actually played normal, but on hard it's in the 2-3 range most of the time if memory serves. It varies over time depending on how much the alien's been flamed already. I think there's also a cooldown in play, so it's best to blast him twice or even three times in swift succession. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Apr 1, 2015 |
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Apr 1, 2015 16:37
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