Category: Gamespot

When it comes to video games portraying the atmosphere and tone of its film influences, Alien: Isolation is in a class of its own. Translating the Alien film series into a unique horror game focused on persistent terror as opposed to fleeting cheap thrills, this survival horror experience channels a sense of dread and slow-burn tension that forces players to respect the very thing that stalks them. Though its reception at launch was met with some polarizing responses–including from GameSpot’s former reviews editor Kevin VanOrd–and along with modest sales, this comparatively unorthodox take on the Alien franchise became a favorite in the years since its release–even prompting fans to make an unofficial VR mod to amp up the scares.

On the third anniversary of its release and in time for Halloween, GameSpot is taking a look back at Creative Assembly’s uncompromising horror game, and how it made players to learn to fear the Xenomorph once again.

Right from outset, Alien: Isolation sets the tone for what players can expect. Its eerie 1977-era 20th Century Fox fanfare opening is a throwback to the beginnings of the Alien franchise. Creative Assembly wears its reverence for the source material on its sleeves, reveling in the iconic 70s retro-futurism that defined the movies. In the game, the nostalgia of it is alluring, but Isolation does more than pay its source material lip-service, it builds on and presents a story of its own that both fits into and enhances the movies.

Ridley Scott’s 1979 film is still regarded as one of the most influential and powerful horror films ever. Channeling elements of slasher films and science fiction, the crew of the Nostromo stumble upon a strange alien life-form of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, quickly spiraling out into a fight for survival. Despite their reliance on futuristic, yet run-down technology capable of interstellar space travel, the film was very much a humbling experience for its characters. For survival horror, this feeling of vulnerability and perilousness is an especially vital pillar of the genre–which Alien: Isolation ratchets up considerably throughout.

Initially developed as a third-person stealth action game with an in-depth cover system, the developers at Creative Assembly soon shifted to first-person to have a more intimate feel. Along with this, it introduced design tenets from the immersive-sim sub-genre–a la Dishonored and BioShock–and leaned on the tension and gameplay of classic survival horror games. Set 15 years after the Nostromo’s destruction, Alien: Isolation brings Ellen Ripley’s daughter Amanda to the Space Station Sevastopol to uncover clues behind her mother’s disappearance. But of course, an alien organism is already onboard, unleashing a seemingly unstoppable creature focused entirely on picking off members of the space station one by one.

Unlike the bombast of movie’s sequels, the game stays true to the first movie’s subdued, disquieting feel. Aside from the flamethrower, firearms are the least useful of tools at the player’s disposal, as the Alien is invulnerable to bullets, and is always lurking in the vents and tunnels of the station. Alien: Isolation is a re-examination of what horror and the fragility of character is in gaming, hammering the notion that you’re trapped, and with no way out.

Video games as a medium have quite a history of boiling complex, highly-intelligent apex predators into a moving target for players to unload bullets into. This is especially true for how the Alien series has evolved in the gaming medium, with most of these games revolving around shooting swarms of Xenomorphs with smart-guns, pulse-rifles–and even with the Predator making an appearance. Because of this, the Alien creature became the quintessential video game cannon-fodder. However, Isolation was cold and cruel in showing players how futile this approach was, instead forcing players to relearn their relationship to the Xenomorph and, ultimately, respect it. While your goals and destination are mostly one-note, Isolation allows players to come up with their own solutions, either from sacrificing resources to craft new items, or by making a bold move to take advantage of nearby enemies as a distraction to make a quick getaway.

With a focus on staying on top of your resources, avoiding enemy encounters when possible, and a static save system that makes simply recording your progress a risk in itself–the main hook of Isolation’s design is making players constantly aware of how vulnerable they are. Coming a year after the lackluster and uninspired action-horror game Aliens: Colonial Marines, the developers at Creative Assembly distinguished their Alien game with authenticity. Alien: Isolation, in many ways, relishes in subverting expectations; whether that’s making players the prey instead of the predator, or giving players conditioned to expect a shooter something entirely different.

Though Isolation’s lead character comes from one of the sequel’s deleted scenes, Isolation benefits from extrapolating out what made the original movie memorable. In addition to Amanda, however, are an assortment of side-characters that can be played as in the Survival mode, offering their side of the story on the Sevastopol. As a ramshackle space station falling apart, populated with knock-off Working Joes androids that couldn’t be sold off due to how creepy and off-putting they look, the setting feels like a haunted house floating in the cold depths of space. And to make matters worse–there’s a high-intelligent, merciless killer lurking about.

Alien: Isolation saw its release in a particularly interesting year for horror gaming. The genre had gone through a rather surprising upswing with notable releases from independent developers like Five Nights at Freddy’s, to some more larger scale releases like the enigmatic P.T–the teaser for the now dead Silent Hills. What these games have in common with Alien: Isolation was that they forced players into a position of disempowerment, either keeping them in a specific location, or tasking them with making to it one location from another, while avoiding the gaze of the antagonist.

With the survival horror genre, much of the experience is about humbling the player and getting them to feel the sense of uncertainty that looms throughout their trek. Alien: Isolation isn’t about the big victories of taking down bosses over the course of several hours, but rather the smaller victories scattered throughout; slinking back into the shadows as the Xenomorph enters the room, narrowly avoiding certain death, or managing to grab an item of a desk in the same room as a Working Joe. Broadly speaking, Alien: Isolation spends 12-15 hours ratcheting up the tension when needed, and then gradually loosening it up. But in the midst of it all, the ever-present threat of the Xenomorph feels like the touch of fingertips on your neck, threatening to choke the life out of you at a moment’s notice. Its delicate cycling of tension feels more like a constant chokehold.

While Creative Assembly and Sega may never make a game like Isolation again, it will be remembered for its bold, brave inventive realisation of the Alien franchise’s potential. It understood what the property was capable of beyond the shooting galleries and recycling of cheesy one-liners. Alien: Isolation stands as a remarkable achievement for its re-examination and re-invigoration of the horror experience in gaming, and is likely one of the best things to happen to the Alien franchise in a long time.

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been in theaters for a week now, and is already massive box office hit. But despite the the strong critical response, film has been met with a more mixed reaction from fans, with some objecting to narrative and character decisions made by writer/director Rian Johnson. It turns out that Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill also has a few issues with how his character is portrayed. Warning, big spoilers ahead!

In a new interview uploaded by Youtube channel Jar Jar Abrams, Hamill reveals that the Luke in The Last Jedi “is not my Luke Skywalker.” Specifically, the actor states that the Luke from the classic Star Wars trilogy would never end up in the place that we find him in at the start of The Last Jedi; a broken, disillusioned man who has exiled himself to a remote planet to die and take the entire Jedi order with him.

“I said to Rian, ‘Jedis don’t give up.’ I mean, even if [Luke] had a problem, he would maybe take a year to try and regroup. But if he made a mistake, he would try and right that wrong, so right there, we had a fundamental difference,” Hamill said. “But it’s not my story anymore, it’s somebody else’s story and Rian needed me to be a certain way to make the ending effective. That’s the crux of my problem. Luke would never say that. I’m sorry.”

Hamill went on to admit that this classic character was now in different hands, and the Luke that he still thinks of is the one that George Lucas created for his movies, “I’m talking about the George Lucas Star Wars, this is the next generation of Star Wars,” he said. “I almost had to think of Luke as another character. Maybe he’s ‘Jake Skywalker.’ He’s not my Luke Skywalker. But I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well.

“Listen, I still haven’t accepted it completely, but, it’s only a movie. I hope people like it. I hope they don’t get upset. I came to really believe that Rian was the exact man they needed for this job.”

Hamill actually spoke about his disagreements with Johnson about the direction of the movie back in April. In an interview with ABC, he said that he “fundamentally disagreed with virtually everything” that would happen to Luke in the The Last Jedi.

Another controversial aspect of The Last Jedi is the truth about Rey’s parents. Despite the number of fan theories that have built up ever since The Force Awakens was released, in the new movie we discover that her parents were no one of any note. This week, Johnson defended this decision, stating, “I can understand why that answer doesn’t feel good. It’s not supposed to feel good. It’s supposed to be the hardest thing she could possibly hear in that moment.”

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PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is now officially out on PC, and after a few issues that caused servers to crash, the game is playable again. The game launched overnight, after many hours of server maintenance that took the game offline. Fortunately, there’s a free reward waiting for players when they log in.

For the next few weeks, players will receive a free in-game Winner Winner Chicken Dinner t-shirt, which will be dropped into your inventory after logging in. The 1.0 release comes with a few improvements to the game’s stability and balance, as well. Developer Bluehole said previous adjustments had reduced stability issues, but it is expecting “progressive improvements” that should make the game more reliable in the near future.

Bluehole also said it’s further strengthening cheat prevention measures in the game, after it already introduced improvements that saw a 66 percent drop in the number of players using cheats.

PUBG’s 1.0 release brings many new game mechanics to the main game, including climbing and vaulting, which the game’s creator says “will change the game severely.” The new release also marks the debut of the new desert map called Miramar, which was recently available to try on PUBG’s test servers. Players will find new types of obstacles, weapons, and vehicles in Miramar that will affect how you approach the game.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds first hit Early Access nine months ago, and has become a major success since then. The game launched on Xbox One earlier this month, available for $30 via the Xbox Game Preview program, and attracted more than 1 million players in its first 48 hours on the console. That version received its first patch earlier this week, which made “first pass” improvements to its visuals and performance and squashed a number of bugs. For details on everything new and improved in PUBG’s 1.0 PC launch, you can read the full patch notes.

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Destiny 2‘s Curse of Osiris expansion launched a couple weeks ago, and players have already delved deep into it and uncovered a lot of cool Easter eggs and mysteries. One of those mysteries involved the Lost Prophecy quests, and now we know what happens when you complete all of them: you get a sweet Exotic Ghost shell.

Once you complete all of Curse of Osiris’s campaign missions, all of Mercury’s normal Adventures, and one Heroic Adventure on Mercury, Brother Vance will give you a Lost Prophecy: Verse 1 item. Collecting enough items (for Verse 1, that’s a Concentrated Radiolarian Culture, composed of ten Radiolarian Cultures) allows you to complete the quest, get a Tablet, and redeem that Tablet for a Legendary weapon from the Forge. You can get more info on how to unlock the Forge here, and you can see all the weapons in the gallery below (ordered by Verse number).

There are 10 different numbered Verses to complete, although you can’t finish them all at once. Vance only offers three per week, with the selection changing on the weekly reset. There’s also an additional eleventh Verse, which awards a powerful shotgun upon completion. It’s unclear how exactly you get this quest, but it appears that you must complete Verse 10 at the very least. Vance does not give out Verse quests in order, and from our experience, it is not necessary to complete all ten before getting the shotgun quest. Some players suggest that you have to finish half of the Verses, including Verse 10, to get the quest.

Finally, when all is said and done and when you complete all eleven Verses, a special emblem and really cool Exotic Ghost shell will drop. The shell has a nice selection of Mercury-focused perks, as well. Check it out:

In other Destiny 2 news, The Dawning began today on PS4, Xbox One, and PC and brings a holiday makeover to the game. You can participate in snowball fights, get new gear, and check out the festive decorations in the social space. Bungie has also recently detailed upcoming changes to both the Three of Coins buff and the Masterworks weapon system.

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In 2015, Dontnod Entertainment’s Life Is Strange made quite an impact with its endearing, and heartfelt story. Focusing on the slice-of-life moments of young Max Caulfield in her ordinary small town, it cleverly weaved in a time-travel mechanic to allow players to control the fates of the many characters in Arcadia Bay–for better or worse. However, the core of its story focused on the emotional connection between Max and fellow outsider Chloe, who shared several heartfelt moments together while contending with the reality of their tragic and less-than-ordinary circumstances.

With season 2 still a ways out–featuring a brand-new storyline and characters–fans have been enjoying the prequel Before The Storm, developed by Deck Nine Games. As a companion piece to the first story, it shifts things over to a younger Chloe (voiced by Rhianna DeVries), and how her emotional journey three years priors to season 1 led to the character many have grown to love. In addition to seeing how she gets her iconic blue hair, owners of the Before The Storm deluxe edition will get to experience the bonus episode Farewell next year, which will tie-up the story for Max and Chloe.

Prior to the launch of Before The Storm’s episode 3, co-game director Chris Floyd and actress Ashly Burch–who was the voice for Chloe in season 1 and served a story consultant for the prequel–spoke with GameSpot about their work on the game. During our talk, we learned how Chloe evolved between both games, and how they hope to live up to their fans’ expectations as they put the capper on the main story.

A lot of fans hold these characters dear to them, which likely made it challenging to try and revisit them for the game. Can you talk about how the change in perspective made things different this time around?

Ashly Burch: Well, it’s interesting to see Chloe in this context, you never really got to see a sense of her relationship with Rachel, apart from the fact that Chloe cared a lot about her. So I think the first Life is Strange is a lot about Chloe’s story told through Max’s eyes. They share a story, but it’s about their emotional arc through that game. But in this game, the story is about Rachel and her storyline. I think the thing that that makes it so satisfying is that even though you’re playing Chloe, you’re really learning about this character that’s almost mythic from the first game. And you’re playing her story, and the revelations about Rachel, and the story you’re following is about Rachel. It was really smart decision on [Deck Nine’s] part.

Chris Floyd: It was really a thing we discovered early on in the story and analyzing the original game. In many ways, the protagonist is a lens to see the rest of the story, and so that makes that main relationship–in the character of Chloe in the first game, and Rachel in Before The Storm–the focus of the story you’re telling. So yeah, by the time we got to the third episode, we really put a lot into this question of Rachel’s identity. She supposedly had the perfect life, was successful with everything, but she still had some-earth shattering problems. And Chloe was the right person at the right time to help her out.

It must have been daunting for Deck Nine to pick up after Dontnod for this prequel. Can you talk about what interested you about this project, and how the development went?

CF: Well, it was a great privilege to be asked to make another Life Is Strange game, and it was a lot of pressure. We were huge fans of the original game, we recognized what was so amazing about its story and how it told it. Visually it’s really fascinating, and just about everything that Dontnod did was not only a high bar, but was also a kind of unique vision. So for us to be the next Dontnod for this game, and try to do what they did, it was really a lot of pressure. And what we did was every step of the way, we just asked ourselves: are we living up to those standards? Does it feel like Life is Strange? Are we being true to these characters that people love? That was kind of our north star.

I’m really proud of the work Hannah and I did on the first game, and it was like we went on a journey with those characters.

What’s it like being able close out your time with Before The Storm and for the bonus episode?

AB: It’s so great to be able to play the character again [In the Farewell bonus episode]. It’s Hannah and I saying goodbye to these characters, to playing these characters, and saying goodbye to the fans of the series. I don’t know of any plans to keep these characters going forward, so it feels like a nice bookend to the previous game.

For newcomers, which game should they play first?

AB: I’m not sure, that’s an interesting question. They’re both designed to be stand-alone–I’m sure the first game wasn’t expecting prequels or sequels. But I am curious to see how people would react if it was played sequentially.

CF: We tried to design it so that people would come to our game first, we didn’t spoil anything from the original game, and tried to make it a self-contained story so that it can easily roll into the next one. But most players on Before The Storm are familiar with the game, and they’re playing it because they’re fans of it. I have spoken with other journalists who haven’t played the original game and started with this one, so I am curious to see how their experience with the prequel will color everything they see in the first Life Is Strange.

We often hear a lot about how passionate fans are about Life Is Strange, and how they saw a bit themselves in the game. And it’s certainly one of the rare games that focuses on a particular generation and age group that usually don’t have much focus in games. Was there anything about these characters that stuck out for you?

AB: What connected me to [Chloe] was that she has so much anger, and it comes from a place of feeling unsafe and unloved. She used to have a person that she could rely on for that, and that’s gone. So not only is she feeling lost in the way that teens often feel, but she’s experienced real loss at such a young age. Trying to process that without letting it consume you kind of created who Chloe is–so she’s rebellious and cavelier with her safety and others. Any teen can probably relate to that, the feeling of being stuck and not having anyone understand you, but I also think there’s another layer of kids that age that relate a bit uncomfortably close to Chloe, and I think that gives a viewpoint into that that can people feel seen. And especially, in games, that’s not type of characters you see.

CF: I think we hear a lot from fans as well about this as well. They’d point to a character like Chloe and say “Oh that’s me when I was a teenager.” Or “I sorta wish I was like Chloe when I was a teenager.” When it comes to portraying the lives of teenagers, it can be tricky, but we have a really diverse and amazing group of writers–some of whom were teenagers not too long ago–so they can relate and draw upon their experiences. So our hope is that the experiences of these characters can resonate with everyone who plays the game, recalling memories of being teenagers. Because those are always experiences we carry with us for a long time.

Though we still have the Farewell episode coming out next year, this is pretty much the end of the line for these characters and their stories. Can you talk about certain things that made you feel proud while working on a game like this?

CF: For my part, the thing I’m most proud is the collaboration with really talent people. I’m just really proud of the team we assembled, and then we came into this game with–rightfully so–a lot of skeptical eyes on us. Understandably so. And to see the fanbase out there cares about this series as much as we do, that they really resonated with what we created, and we seemed to have lived up to that. When I think of the The Tempest scene on the stage, which ties together a lot of our more ambitious ideas and writing, to not only have this Shakespeare scene take place in our game–without alienating people–and to even write our own Shakespearean dialog in this improvised section, the costumes, and so many other things. I think of it as one of the highlights for the series.

AB: Definitely working on Chloe in the first season asked a lot of me, and it’s the first time I felt like I connected with a character, emotionally, to that degree. I’m really proud of the work Hannah and I did on the first game, and it was like we went on a journey with those characters. The first season was an emotional journey, as many people who played it knows, and Life Is Strange is something that just does things so differently. You know, telling stories that don’t often get told, and I feel like they were responsible about how they told those kinds of stories. It’s really amazing to be a part of something that was so emotionally effective and meaningful for people, and it’s just so different from other types of games on this level. There’s some wonderful indie games out there, but you don’t usually see it with a level of polish or a bigger team. It’s a testament to how far spread it is. There are people that want that kind of thing.

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