|
Biomute posted:The thing is that most people have realized that enemies mostly just detract from walking simulators like Alien Isolation. Most indie additions to the genre have already done away with them, and the latest big budget entry Soma adds a few stealth/chase scenes mostly because the devs were worried it was expected of them based on their earlier games in the Amnesia series. They've since said that it was probably a mistake. I mean, just look at this thread. When people are waxing poetic about modding out the Alien in your Alien game you know you've done something wrong. Except for a good long stretch (perhaps not as long as the entire game, I'll agree) the Alien in Isolation is genuinely creepy/scary and at least for me added a lot to the game, walking simulator or not. The people modding it out didn't start out that way, they were already many hours in and just looking for something new to do.
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 14:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 05:51 |
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:For Aliens ripoff games, I remember Silent Debuggers for the TurbographX 16. AN obscure, and not that great, game that I thought I was the only one who knew about it before it showed up randomly on the Wii Virtual Console. It has a good chiptune intro though. This game can get pretty hard but I respect it's ambition for the time. Like basically an FPS but with a station to map out and explore and repair on the Turbo from like 1990? It even predates the first Bethesda Terminator game and I think it was out a few months before even Catacomb-3D. Is it the first FPS as we would know it now?
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 14:52
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:This game can get pretty hard but I respect it's ambition for the time. Like basically an FPS but with a station to map out and explore and repair on the Turbo from like 1990? It even predates the first Bethesda Terminator game and I think it was out a few months before even Catacomb-3D. Is it the first FPS as we would know it now? I remember this title due to a weird, years long obsession with the PC-Engine (TurboGraphx in the US). I originally got one in early 1990 right before being deployed to Turkey (I was in the Army then) because the store was out of Sega Genesis and I wanted a game console to take with me. Years later I was still modding it (for PC-Engine region games) and collecting rare/weird games. This was one of them and yes it was hard as hell. It did beat Catacomb3D by a few months however future FPS games, including Wolf3D, etc. are really a descendant of Catacomb for all practical purposes, or at least it can be considered a direct ancestor for them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 15:28
|
|
|
Way off topic but I always find this creative division between Japan, Europe and the US interesting regarding game design. Video game marketing is so built around hyping up innovation and the idea that you're playing something unlike anything you've ever experienced before, and often the game's creators genuinely buy into that. But often the more a game from one of those three regions is hyped up the higher the odds that a game from a different region did the exact same thing five years ago. While it happens, it's very common for people to act like their games we're created in a pure vaccuum of their own genius compared to how often a movie director will readily talk about past experiences and people they look up to.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 17:26
|
|
|
Ixian posted:Except for a good long stretch (perhaps not as long as the entire game, I'll agree) the Alien in Isolation is genuinely creepy/scary and at least for me added a lot to the game, walking simulator or not. The people modding it out didn't start out that way, they were already many hours in and just looking for something new to do. I think the game should've ended right after the big twist reveal. Once you get there, you're thinking "I'm so hosed". But you just keep going, and going, and going. I think on my first run I stopped playing because I got stuck and was just more frustrated than anything. But it didn't make me hate the game. I got literally everything I ever wanted from an Alien game. I watched the rest on YouTube and I'm kinda glad? That ending was garbage.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 18:59
|
|
|
Play the avp rts game. Its fun dragging dudes to your hive and facehugging them
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 19:35
|
|
|
banned from Starbucks posted:Its fun dragging dudes to your hive and facehugging them This IRL
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 19:40
|
|
|
banned from Starbucks posted:Play the avp rts game. Its fun dragging dudes to your hive and facehugging them It's a fun game that's hobbled by a bunch of poor design decisions. First off it's a console RTS which is a pretty big cardinal sin for an RTS game (although it controls surprisingly well despite this). It also doesn't have any multiplayer (but the game is also very unbalanced in favor of the player), nor does it have any sort of "skirmish" mode where you can just gently caress around and fight the AI. You're stuck playing the campaign missions; some are pretty clever, but not having the ability to make your own rudimentary scenarios kills the game's replay value. Having said that, each species has its share of gameplay bits that are fun as heck. Starting off as a lone facehugger and working your way up to having a massive hive and then running roughshod over your enemies with a horde of 60 Aliens is really goddamn satisfying. The PredAliens are combat monsters, too - they have a special ability where they "evolve" as they kill more enemies, which boosts their health and damage. There's no real cap to how strong they can get, so you can end up with PredAliens with better stats than your Queen, ripping poo poo up. If you play the Predators right, it's entirely possible to defeat your enemies using a single Predator - there's a couple missions based around that premise, in fact. But if you want to go nuts, you can roll out the big guns: in the movies, we're really only seeing Predator civilian hunting gear, and the game answers "what is their military tech like?". The answer is it's totally loving bonkers. The Marines get the armored exosuits from AvP2, and you can upgrade them with Metal Storm weapons. Two exosuits standing back to back can hold off infinite Aliens. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 19:53
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Way off topic but I always find this creative division between Japan, Europe and the US interesting regarding game design. Video game marketing is so built around hyping up innovation and the idea that you're playing something unlike anything you've ever experienced before, and often the game's creators genuinely buy into that. But often the more a game from one of those three regions is hyped up the higher the odds that a game from a different region did the exact same thing five years ago. While it happens, it's very common for people to act like their games we're created in a pure vaccuum of their own genius compared to how often a movie director will readily talk about past experiences and people they look up to. Early western PC game-design history is mostly about the technical stuff and only programmers really care while modern game-design is mostly quite depressing in its lack of innovation. There is exciting golden-age stuff in the middle, and basically it's called Looking Glass Studios. Anything good can be phrased in terms of "How far removed is this from Looking Glass Studios". I think most people who know about it take that kind of secret history for granted. Now, there are references, such as having variations on the number 451 be a code or something in your games, a tradition they started. For example: Did you know the guy who does the music for Westworld worked for Looking Glass? Of course he did. thotsky fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Dec 6, 2016 |
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 20:39
|
|
|
I bought AvP extinction soley because it had AvP on it. Uh, I liked playing as Aliens but other than that it was super boring.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 21:02
|
|
|
CelticPredator posted:I bought AvP extinction soley because it had AvP on it. Uh, I liked playing as Aliens but other than that it was super boring. The Marines are pretty by the numbers and the Predators feel like a stretch to translate into an RTS faction.
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2016 21:17
|
|
|
My favorite thing about that game was that ridiculous alien with large talons that just chopped off people's head, which isn't really great if you want to replenish numbers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 03:31
|
|
|
Biomute posted:Early western PC game-design history is mostly about the technical stuff and only programmers really care while modern game-design is mostly quite depressing in its lack of innovation. There is exciting golden-age stuff in the middle, and basically it's called Looking Glass Studios. Anything good can be phrased in terms of "How far removed is this from Looking Glass Studios". I think most people who know about it take that kind of secret history for granted. Now, there are references, such as having variations on the number 451 be a code or something in your games, a tradition they started. Totally, when I play The Incredibles on PS2 I totally am like "yes, the awesome coding William Farquhar and Pat McElhatton gave to Thief II can be felt in this ingenius masterclass of game design." 
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 05:29
|
|
|
The thing about Alien Isolation that really confuses me is the UI, both for the game and the in-game computers. The dev's talked a lot about how they loved the computer interfaces of Scott's movie and wanted to recreate them, but they actually don't resemble the movie's computers at all? The game makes everything look like a DOS interface, but the ones in the film are based around complex vector images, high quality text, and flashes of light. It should look like a cleaner, multicolored Battle Zone, not my families home computer in the early '90s. Nothing should be pixelated. It's weird because the environments clearly illustrate that they spent a lot of time poring over the film's imagery (A bit too much maybe. Why does a research base look exactly like a scaled up oil refinery? They couldn't make any original designs?) but if feels like somehow no one on the team ever saw one of the films computers. Yet that is specifically the detail they talked about being faithful to in the promo material.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 06:05
|
|
|
How did we get on this Aliens video games derail in the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation thread? No but seriously, I'm sorry about that derail (it was great though.) I also really liked Alien Isolation. I hated the ending though and I think they should have ended sooner. Maybe even left on a cliffhanger.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 06:45
|
|
|
Much like Leatherface (whose debut film was the inspiration for Alien's build up and pacing at the end according to Scott,), Alien is a Mortal Kombat character, so the thread has never been offtopic in any direction, and we can also talk about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at length since thanks to Mortal Kombat, and Ridley Scott, all of these things are creatively connected. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cuu8OjUTMk
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 07:24
|
|
|
Jenner posted:How did we get on this Aliens video games derail in the Mortal Kombat: Annihilation thread?  The ending was really unnecessarily sequel-bait-y, which was especially weak considering we're apparently never getting a sequel. And even if we did get a sequel, I'm not sure what it would do gameplay-wise to justify the length of a full game; Alien Isolation was overly long as it was, and pretty much milked the "stalked by an unkillable Alien" premise for all it's worth.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 07:59
|
|
|
 This is amazing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 08:23
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Much like Leatherface (whose debut film was the inspiration for Alien's build up and pacing at the end according to Scott,), Alien is a Mortal Kombat character, so the thread has never been offtopic in any direction, and we can also talk about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre at length since thanks to Mortal Kombat, and Ridley Scott, all of these things are creatively connected.  I'm not the OP but this is a great point. Also that video rules.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 08:35
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The game kinda did end on a cliffhanger, and that was one of the things I liked the least. Like one of the things the developers hinted at was that they'd address how Amanda Ripley could be embroiled in a Company plot to capture an Alien and still end up dying of old age as described in 'Aliens', and then that ended up being the one thing the game didn't do. If they do make a sequel, I hope they just make a short single-player campaign to resolve the story and focus the rest of the game around DayZ-like multiplayer, but with a handful of unleashed xenos instead of massive amounts of dumb zombies.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 10:41
|
|
|
I agree that AI was overly long, and Ripley being captured and resined into part of a new hive combined with all the stuff that came after was way over the top. But I thought the production design, the look of all parts of Sevastopol and its terminals etc. was absolutely fantastic. So was the sound design and lighting. I understand most people didn't like running and hiding for the majority of the game. For me personally though the game captured perfectly the feel, the terror, of the '79 film which was such a huge part of my childhood. I don't think I've ever been as terrified in my life as I was seeing the film in the theater as a kid, especially the sequence that begins after Parker and Lambert get killed and Ripley is alone. Playing the game in a dark room with headphones on makes me feel pretty much the same way, even after playing it completely through four separate times. It was game of the year for me, without a doubt.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 22:47
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:The game kinda did end on a cliffhanger, and that was one of the things I liked the least. Like one of the things the developers hinted at was that they'd address how Amanda Ripley could be embroiled in a Company plot to capture an Alien and still end up dying of old age as described in 'Aliens', and then that ended up being the one thing the game didn't do. Well her being instantly saved sounds like a 'ok' ending, instead of her floating around in space before dying. Then at least we would know how she died before Aliens.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 22:57
|
|
|
The only good Alien game is Dead Space.
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2016 23:51
|
|
|
ruddiger posted:The only good Event Horizon game is Dead Space.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 03:55
|
|
|
Event Horizon is a better DOOM movie than the actual DOOM movie because it at least spent ton of time on horror stuff instead of being a two hour long movie that spends over 45 minutes of its time on people talking about genetic mutations.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 04:45
|
|
|
Jenner posted:
The game also has Jason, ***LEATHERFACE*** and Predator as DLC characters and they're also awesome. Like they didn't have to go the extra mile to make caving someone's head in with a ball hammer part of Leatherface's repertoire, but they did and it's awesome. Warner Bros. has owned New Line for years and between that and the smaller studios WB has I hate that they don't have Netherrealm just make a real version of Terrordrome. A Mortal Kombat game but with horror movie monsters. I mean yeah it won't be able to be rated T like Injustice but that kind of roster would definitely pull more $$$ than any Mortal Kombat game. Even without licensing anything outside of the Warner Bros. umbrella overall they got: Beetlejuice Creepshow (IT'S FATHER'S DAY! "FATALITY." AND I GOT MY CAKE!) Cujo Evil Dead Exorcist Freddy Friday the 13th Hellraiser Howling Gremlins Jason Lost Boys Michael Meyers Poltergeist Like that's a huge number of both monster/ And it's WB so it's not like they don't have the $$$ to get whoever else they want in like the DLC characters for Injustice. One on one fighting games are ideal for having characters with iconic personalities shown through their actions and how they fight and behave and move, and all of those movies have been scrutinized to death over the years so a lot of the character design work is already ready to go and it'd be very easy to fit each one into an already existing archtype of fighting game character. I know WB is smart enough to know this because they put Freddy into Mortal Kombat (2011) and then put Jason, Alien, Predator and Leatherface into Mortal Kombat X but it'd be amazing if they went all out. Is there any Alien game under development at the moment? I'd be surprised if there isn't a more actiony one made for whenever Blomkamp's "Alien 3" is coming out. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Dec 8, 2016 |
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 05:00
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Is there any Alien game under development at the moment? I'd be surprised if there isn't a more actiony one made for whenever Blomkamp's "Alien 3" is coming out.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 05:21
|
|
|
Tenzarin posted:Well her being instantly saved sounds like a 'ok' ending, instead of her floating around in space before dying. Then at least we would know how she died before Aliens. david_a posted:This is the newest Alien game I can find. Aliens vs Pinball is pretty neat if you like pinball, though; I won a digital copy for Xbox One in FOX's trivia contest back in April. And for those who prefer actual pinball machines, there's a physical table in development as well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 06:27
|
|
|
The same way we're getting Blomkamp Alien 3 they should make like a Duke Nukem 3D-like sequel to Alien Isolation called Aliens whatever and have it open two seconds after Isolation ends with her pod crashing on earth and her being like "Those alien bastards are gonna pay for messing up my ride. *chomps on cigar*" And the rest of the game is a clone of DOOM* 2016 but with some urban environments. She completely eradicates the xenomorph race from existence and liberates earth almost single-handedly and is a renowned interplanetary hero but decades later she develops cancer from holding that janky motion sensor up to her face for so much of the isolation game but Weyland-Yutani doesn't want to foot the bill for that so she dies broke and alone and in pain and Weyland Yutani spends like $5 trillion to completely cover up everything she did and it works because people are idiots. But then there's a brief flash forward to the end of the film Aliens at the end where after Newt/Ripley/Hicks enter cryosleep Bishop finds this out completely by chance and wakes up Ripley/Hicks to let them know the truth about her daughter and Ripley goes "IT'S TIME FOR REVENGE" and Hicks is like "LET'S ATTACK AGGRESSIVELY" and they lay in a course to kick some rear end. No holds barred action fest with Aliens in the name that has a downer Alien 3 style ending for Amanda and also ties up everything for both when the Aliens film happens and for when Blompkamp's Alien 3 comes out and it be considered the greatest storytelling moment in gaming history because it's a huge budget action game but the dying from cancer part will be playable. Sega you can PayPal me at neorasa at AOL dot com. *Fun fact, the original DOOM was going to actually be an official Aliens game at first with a hub area in each level and more backtracking/inventory stuff like Hexen or Quake II.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 15:37
|
|
|
Neo Rasa posted:Event Horizon is a better DOOM movie than the actual DOOM movie because it at least spent ton of time on horror stuff instead of being a two hour long movie that spends over 45 minutes of its time on people talking about genetic mutations. it's also a better Hellraiser in Space movie than the Hellraiser movie where they're in space.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 18:47
|
|
|
Event Horizon is the best and I feel like it is really underated. I guess the execution was a little off but the concept is awesome.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 19:25
|
|
|
I just rewatched it and it owns. The two big weaknesses are the characters (the movie doesn't know how to sketch them out vividly like Alien does, so their eventual deaths are pretty bleh) and the escalation of the threat. Alien gets more and more tense as it goes, and holy poo poo does the camera milk those sets for all they're worth. Event Horizon is straight up goofy in a really nineties way, from the walls of blood to the credits music, and it doesn't so much build tension as geyser schlock.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 20:55
|
|
|
On the other hand Supernova is uniformly awful.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 21:00
|
|
|
Xenomrph posted:Using Amanda Ripley at all meant the developers were kinda writing themselves into a corner right out of the gate. By involving her in an Alien plot, given what we're shown of the character's fate in 'Aliens', it raises a whole bunch of questions - she doesn't come across as the kind of person who would just give up on the search for her mother, or at least not without some sort of strong motivation. Does she keep searching for answers and Weyland Yutani has her killed and covers it up? Do they pay her off? Does she get some sort of emotional closure and get on with her life? The story kinda almost approaches answering that last one, but then half-asses it and ends on a sequel-bait cliffhanger instead. Totally complicated their job for sure, though I get why they'd want to try and create some kind of connection instead of inserting <generic character> - although Amanda ends up being fairly generic in the game anyway. They could have retconned it, I suppose, since she only comes up in Aliens SE as part of that deleted scene. Certainly The Company as depicted isn't above faking a different kind of death for her in order to manipulate her mother's emotions before the inquest. You know, she lived a long, happy life, didn't know what happened to you though, sorry, now hopefully you are feeling guilty enough to spill the beans, etc. That wouldn't be much of an improvement over the actual ending to the game but it could have worked. As it is the game itself spends very little time on Amanda's search for her mom, begging the question of why she is a character in the first place. The only reason the character is considered relevant at all (in the movies) is because short as that scene was it has an enormous impact on Ripley's relationship with Newt and her character overall in the rest of the film. Honestly every time I watch the SE I wonder why it wasn't the theatrical cut (all of it). It doesn't run all that much longer and adds a lot to the film without throwing off the pace, unlike the SE of Alien (which I also love, but prefer the theatrical release overall). Considering Sigourney Weaver came back to do the voice acting you'd think they would have spent more time on it in game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 21:08
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:On the other hand Supernova is uniformly awful. It had that actress who was briefly the Hollywood It Girl (I don't remember her name, that is not a status with a long shelf life) topless. That and the fact that Francis Ford Coppola was involved in some bizarre behind the scenes directing drama are the only things I remember about it after you brought it up. Event Horizon is pretty awesome, though flawed. Good build up, decent if overdone ending, it's the second act of that film that is its biggest problem.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 21:12
|
|
|
General Battuta posted:I just rewatched it and it owns. The two big weaknesses are the characters (the movie doesn't know how to sketch them out vividly like Alien does, so their eventual deaths are pretty bleh) and the escalation of the threat. Alien gets more and more tense as it goes, and holy poo poo does the camera milk those sets for all they're worth. Event Horizon is straight up goofy in a really nineties way, from the walls of blood to the credits music, and it doesn't so much build tension as geyser schlock. On the other hand, Sam Neill chewing the scenery gloriously.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 21:57
|
|
|
Event Horizon has three things going for it. Really interesting set designs, Sam Neil, and Lawrence Fishburne. Without any one of those three things it would not be a good movie.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 22:04
|
|
|
UmOk posted:I guess the execution was a little off but the concept is awesome. this is why it always bums me out. i'll watch it and not hate it but they could've done so much more with that concept.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 23:32
|
|
|
Groovelord Neato posted:this is why it always bums me out. i'll watch it and not hate it but they could've done so much more with that concept. Maybe the sequel is better? I don't know, haven't seen Deepwater Horizom yet
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 23:55
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 15, 2024 05:51 |
|
|
General Battuta posted:Maybe the sequel is better? I don't know, haven't seen Deepwater Horizom yet Everyone dies in the end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2016 23:55
|
|