Alien Isolation First Look

[mopman94]

Alien Isolation (PS4, PS3, PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One) had a large stand at EGX Rezzed in which they announced the release date of the game will be the 7th October 2014. I had a quick go on their demo, these are my thoughts and what the demo consisted off.

The demo was of an alpha version of the game. Before you start there is a video explaining your situation. You have a motion sensor, much like the heartbeat sensors from Call of Duty: modern Warfare 2, this tells you where the alien is in proximity to yourself. It tells you that you should hide from the alien as it will use its senses to try and hunt you down. You have a flash light, but be warned this will make you more visible and you can run but that will make a lot of noise. The demo then begins. You are on a space ship drifting through space, everyone on board is dead, you are there to retrieve some information. I played on the Playstation 4 version and the visuals were beautiful, the lighting was believable and I don't know if its because I was only a foot away from a 40" screen but it felt very immersive. It is a very jumpy game, you catch glimpses of the alien, you can hear it and it blips on your motion sensor now and then. The noises make you jump and you become afraid of this virtual creature that you know cannot hurt you. You manage to restore power and begin to hack into a terminal but it goes wrong, there is an explosion and the craft starts drifting through space more rapidly, the alien is drawn to your location, as you hide under the desk its tentacles trip over you - its at that point you realise how amazing the sound is in this game as you hear them sliding along the ground. You then have to escape through an airlock which is very challenging as you need to sneak past this huge alien to do so.

Once you reach the airlock the demo ends and it plays a trailer of the game. The game itself is amazing and really does its job as a horror game. I personally won't be buying it as I hate jumpy games but anyone who is a fan of the genre should seriously consider this game. Its not like the alien games back on the Playstation 1 where you run and gun everywhere, this is a much slower, much creepier game in which you must use stealth because you are constantly being stalked by an unimaginable creature that you cannot kill. It's like a bad dream and for many people who watched the alien films when they were probably to young to, a dream you will have had.

[Almercenary]

Thanks for the overview, good to see there going to a slower paced game. I'd rather that than some easy run and gun stuff.  Might end up picking it up, only after it drops though.  Never been a huge fan of that series.