PixlBit

Anyone who has listened to the last episode of my podcast (thank you so much, btw) knows that I've had initial bad experiences with the Alien franchise. How appropriate that I decided to make my first playthrough of Alien: Isolation public through Twitch.

I had a couple of visitors who talked with me as I played the first four hours of the game, neither of whom I've met before. One was a serious fan of the game, having played the game through all of its difficulty settings and eager to help if I needed any. The other was interested in the game and was asking me about my thoughts of it.

If you haven't played this yet and you love survival horror and the first Alien film, you owe it to yourself to give A:I a try. When this game wants to, it will truly scare you. Visually, it's very impressive. You're not on the Nostromo (the refinery ship in the first film) but on one very similar to it so the interior design is very similar and I was very impressed by the attention to detail and lighting effects. Sound-wise, it's a stunner. Between the ambience of the ship, the music score and the sudden jolts caused by environmental situations or enemies, this game had me on edge long before everything went to hell.

As for the Alien....

Fans of the first film will recall the moment where Harry Dean Stanton comes into contact with the alien while searching for Jonesy, the cat. Stanton's character is in such awe of the creature that he doesn't run away or defend himself. He's just frozen like a deer in headlights. When you finally meet the alien (a good 3 hours in, I should say), it's a tense, memorable moment and your character is so powerless that the only thing you can do is hide and watch as it crouches on the table you're hiding behind and then walks away. I had two unfortunate encounters with it: one head on (it's damn near impossible to run from it; it's faster and one-hit kills you) and one where I unwisely walked over a ceiling vent (a tip: if you can see drool coming from a vent, don't walk under it; don't walk under vents if you can help it). The last thing you see is that phallic tongue-mouth coming for the screen.

So far, I like the game and admire its ability to evoke the first film and expand on its universe in a way that the sequels couldn't. Any problems? Some control issues, although minor. I wish that Amanda Ripley (your character) could start into a run or sprint more easily. Pressing in the L4 stick when you're in panic mode or truly want to cross a distance fast enough isn't as intuitive as I'd like it to be. The map and objective systems work fine once you get used to them but there were moments that I didn't know how to progress. One moment involved you finding a floor vent that I walked over many times. At that point, I never have used a floor vent or have seen one, therefore I wouldn't think to look for one. I had to look up an online faq for that one. Any other problems were solved by the kind soul who helped me through the twitch chatbox.

Anything else? Still playing through COD: AW multiplayer. I reached rank 22 yesterday and it's still fun. I even popped in Shadow of Mordor and played some more of that. I played Apotheon, the recent PS+ title and while I like the look and sounds of it, the controls are a little weird, particularly the combat which isn't always precise.

I watched my rental copy of Gone Girl and it was another winner from David Fincher. I read the book a year ago and was impresed by how Gillian Flynn snuck in a bitter view of marriage into a mystery thriller. The adaptation was just as effective. It's arguably Ben Affleck's finest performance so far but Rosamund Pike owns this film on so many levels.

As predicted, my area was hit by snow and ice so work was cancelled. I think it wasn't as bad as it could have been (I was able to leave my parking lot) so I suspect that I'll return to work tomorrow.