Its too long, its too short(Alien Isolation)

I am currently playing Alien Isolation and I am just so annoyed with the choices the developers made in the overall design of the game. We will complain about games being too short but then you have games like these that are simply too long. Its not that 15-20 hours for a game like this is bad but what I am doing within those hours.

Alien Isolation sets up this great atmosphere, immersion and introduction into this world. Then they slowly grind away at their accomplishments by adding mass amount of filler. You don't experience this in the first few hours of the game. In fact, you will believe that the complaints made against this game is shear madness but once those hours past the grind begin and the developers will recycle the same mechanics consistently throughout the rest of the game.

Once you moved pass the gloriously beginning you will be bombarded with nonstop failures, power outages, find alternate route, activate sequences of switches over and over and over and over again. It does not stop. I am not understating this. This is the bulk of the later 2/3 of the game. All of the greatness dies. Not rapidly but slowly. You are no longer fearful of anything. Everything becomes a chore because of the frequency. The pacing is downright terrible mainly due to the over reliance of the hide, wait,move,hide wait gameplay. This would not be a problem if it wasn’t as frequent.

Couple the tedium of the same mechanics is the back tracking and moving from point A to B to A to C to B to A to B to D to A. This another aspect that does not die. You will begin to anticipate the predictable gameplay after a while. The moment you get an object you know there isn’t going to be any power, you know that the initial path is going to be obstructed, you know the alien is going to slow you down, you know you have to find a keycard, code or activate switches. Why? Because it happens all the time.

There are a lot of stuff that was implemented for the same of realism. However, realism and gaming don't go hand in hand the vast majority of the times. One of the main detractors from this is inconsitency. In one instance the game pushes realism onto the play and later it pushes traditional gameplay mechanics that break the rules that were initially implied or established. This what breaks the immersion. For stealth like games I believe its important to be consistent. The consistency solidify the rules in the world and achieves a greater sense of believability.

For those who have played this game, what is your take on the overall design?

I finish alien isolation on hard i love the atmosphere the story the cat mouse gameplay i hope if the team make sequel dont change the formula overall second best game i playing on Ps4 and one of tne best games of all time for me

i can understand the criticisms and i've seen a lot of others on gs with the same opinion but those things you mention didn't really bother me. it would've been nice if the mission objectives were less repetitive but everything breaking and going wrong is pretty much what you'd expect from a space station that's gone through what sevastopol had and the constant need to hide was essential for survival. i liked that kind of realism and thought it really added to the atmosphere. plus there was so much that the game did right that i could overlook a few niggles. my only real problem with the overall game design was the ending.

that didn't happen to me and is probably a key factor in why i didn't get frustrated with the game length or mission styles much. the alien and the androids didn't lose that fear factor (in their own way the working joes from apollo core in rubber suits were just as scary as the alien) and, despite getting better weapons i still felt vulnerable right up to the end. the game just got more and more intense as it progressed. ammo was scarce, flamethrower ammo ran out quickly, the alien was crafty and unpredictable, the working joes were creepy as hell and tricky to kill and the locations got progressively more intimidating and atmospheric. it's definitely my favourite game from last year

I don't mind things breaking and not working. However, when its done in a systematic way that is not believable;purposely not using realistic, it breaks the immersion and I feel that I am being dragged along. The atmosphere and the overall believability was very strong in the beginning and I bought into the feel of the game but they lost me in the later 2/3s of the game. The believability changed from "Okay, I can understand and buy the reason this is happening", to "Seriously, I just came from that location and power conveniently went out and now I have to go back".

The fear factor died once I got the flamethrower and the stun baton. There were moments where I got so tired of the hiding and waiting that I just ran through flaming and stun accordingly.

I enjoyed it overall however I definitely felt it was too long... Towards the end of the game it started to become a bit of a chore. Plus there seemed to be a difficulty spike towards the end which really annoyed me.

I'd definitely love to see another game but I think they should make it a bit shorter.

I agree with you 100% about the game and everything you wrote Pedro, I wish I could have enjoyed it but alas I didn't because of some of the things you mentioned. Don't get me wrong though I'd love a sequel, but they should add gunplay (as in not being limited to just hiding and waiting for the alien to pass) maybe introduce more enemies , that and more variety in the missions. I'd love them to make a game like what Aliens Colonial Marines should have been, otherwise it was a decent effort from the developer.

I've had the game since October last year and I'm about half way through. The first few hours were some of the best I've had in recent years but I'm finding it incredibly hard to go back to. Maybe stealth isn't my thing, I just get incredibly frustrated with the alien and especially the androids. Probably too long for the kind of game it is.

could you kill the working joes with the orange suits with the stun baton? i thought it was just the shotgun and boltgun. those guys stopped me from being able to run and gun in the last half / third of the game like you describe. as did how quickly your flamethrower went through fuel and how frequently the alien appeared. you could only run around in the open and keep it at bay for so long before it ran out.

around two thirds in was around the time you hit apollo core and alien nest, wasn't it? i really liked those bits and thought they were some of the most tense in the game. but i'll admit that after that the pacing suffered and it did start to drag a little. as i said though i could overlook that as there was so much else that the game did so well such as the atmosphere, stealth mechanics, sound design etc

In reality Alien Isolation is a rather short game. . . at least content wise. It is only stretched to feel very long with the slow movement, extreme difficulty, and constant dying and reloading. But I loved it. I played it in many shorter sessions, rather than a few long ones. I think doing that can change one's opinion of this game enormously. This is one example of too much of something all at once as being a bad thing.

While I don't think isolation is a bad game, there are a lot of design decisions that I disagree with as well. The plot is more or less just a series of fetch quests and it really doesn't seem like the writers put too much attention in to how the player should get from encounter to encounter in terms of a plot sense, let alone an ending that was possibly the worst of last year. That said, I do think that they accurately captured the atmosphere and tension of the original film, which is a massive achievement, but the parts without the Alien, such as the android encounters, just felt dry and boring overall

@Pedro: the design as in graphics imo is the best xbox one game. i've beat it 2 times finished the other day now on another playthrough i can't get enough of the great universe. the androids when following you i love that intense feeling of them following you that feels kinda real, and it is challenging at times especially the missions with androids except the first mission with them, the jump scares are well unexpected for me anyways and there's like 6-7 jump scares, even when moving around stealthy it feels real i get nervous when being stealthy this game does have a few realistic things about it. it is very long but long isn't bad.

I bought it on sale on Steam.

Installed it once but never played it.

I hate it*.

*i.e. the modern state of gaming and my lack of time to play games). I think I need to find a 9-5 job. I love driving truck but I don't have a life outside of work (this is the first weekend in probably 6 that I haven't had less than 48 hours off, and in fact, I got 4 days off in a row due to lack of freight moving through the supply chain). Oh well, I signed up for it because I needed a more reliable source of income and didn't want to go back to university for additional degrees. Fortunate thing is though, my company has a city P/D division that I should be able to transfer to at some point in the near future... and I worked a bit in the city before going out on the highway and enjoyed it more.

This is an old thread you guys. A 6 month old thread that is.

I can see why some people don´t like the game, but I loved it. I´ve played it in 1 or 2 hours sessions and I honestly think that´s the "correct" way of playing it. Best 2014 game for me and my fear is that in a sequel the developers change the game too much in order to make it more mainstream.

Even the backtracking, that so many people criticised, I must say it worked great for me. Don´t know exactly why but it made me feel even more tension and disconfort to know that I had to return to a place I thought I had "cleared".

Above all I think AI is a game of patience and calculated moves, and by being so it offered me a completely different and fresh experience, when it comes to videogames.