I love the Alien films (well the first two, anyway - I prefer to pretend the latter ones didn't happen. Like the Matrix. But I digress. Already. I'm only five words into my post and I've gone off on a tangent for ages. Get some control, Late!) and have tried most of the games that have spawned from the franchise, and they've all been a bit rubbish (though I was in that minority that quite enjoyed AvP) - so I was overjoyed when the latest one, Alien Isolation got very good reviews.
Yet I gave up on it last night - about half-way through.
I'm alright at stealth games. I like to explore most games anyway, and I always enjoy finding alternative paths, so a game based on some of my favourite films and with mechanics that I like should be right up my street! It's very tense as you creep around a newly unlocked area of the space station collecting everything you can scavenge (ammo, and parts to make smoke bombs etc.) and checking in at computer terminals etc., whilst constantly checking your motion detector; before scooting into a locker or similar hiding place just as the alien appears. And then you're trying to peek out through the slats to see where it is. It's incredibly tense. You can't see it. Take a peek at the motion scanner. The alien hears the beeps, and kills you. You restart from the last save point (which was only a couple of rooms back, but it took you 20 sodding minutes to get through those couple of rooms). You repeat every step from above. Including the bit where you get killed in the locker you were hiding in. You repeat it all again (collecting all the stuff you can each time, checking the computer terminals again each time) but hide in a different place. Different place but same result. So this time you decide to be a bit less cautious, you don't skirt around the edge of the room in a crouched stance, but instead walk at normal pace through the middle, and you're fine. You walk into the second room, your attention has perhaps slipped a little, you don't notice that tell-tale gloopy mucussy stuff dripping from the overhead vent, you see the alien's tail go through your torso. You restart from the checkpoint. You switch it off and watch tv for a while, having wasted over an hour without really progressing. And when you do make it to that next checkpoint it's pretty much the same thing again. You're in a new area. You explore it. You die repeatedly.
I'm playing on medium/normal difficulty, and I'm a seasoned gamer. I don't know if I'm just being rubbish, if I'm getting old, if I'm so used to games being easy these days that I have a hissy fit when I encounter a little difficulty whilst completely forgetting that games used to be way more unforgiving.
Whatever it is, I give up.
Installed Far Cry 4. Absolutely loving it, so far. I'm not very far into it, but it's so much more intuitive, so much more fun. So much easier.
Is that last part a good thing? I'm not sure. It sure feels like it, though, as I whiz around this war-torn land like the genetically engineered spawn of Rambo, Che Guevara, and John Marston.
Also been enjoying #IDARB (playing local 1v1). Great fun.
