Poll: What did everyone think of Alien Isolation?

[BloatedGuppy]

So I'm finally getting around to playing this thing. My feelings on it are...well, they're mixed.

I'll get the good stuff out of the way. The dedication to bringing the license to life is second to none. Everything looks and sounds *exactly* like Alien. There's a care and attention paid in making sure even the tiniest details are canonical. That's great. And the game's graphics and sound assets are absolutely fantastic. Humans are little stiff on the animation side of things, and the cutscenes are inexplicably choppy, but for the most part the production values are top drawer.

As a result, the game can build a marvelous atmosphere. Which it then seems to (almost without fail) completely demolish with its gameplay.

I am no stranger to hard games. I'm not the world's best gamer, but neither am I its worst. I played the original Thief titles when they were new, and those were some tricky stealth heavy beasts. I played Dark Souls (I even one-shot the legendary Ornstein and Smough, by gum!). I've played some of the cruelest, most back-breaking tactical games around. I play DOTA and Starcraft 2. I like a tough game.

It's not that it's HARD. It's that it feels like such BULLSHIT.

Here's a gun. Don't use it, you'll instantly die. The alien will literally pelt down a hallway, ignoring the other people firing guns, to kill you.

Here's a stun prod. Don't use it to prod anything, nothing will happen and you'll die.

Here's some flares and noisemakers. You can throw one. The alien will ignore it and immediately come and kill you.

Here's a cabinet you can hide in. The alien will find it instantly. You can also lean back and hold your breath. It won't make any difference though.

What is even going on with the difficulty in this game? It has two modes. Absolutely no challenge at all, and instant death. The latter seems completely arbitrary. Did the alien decide to gallop back into the room after seeming to stalk off? Time to reload your save, bud!

I should mention I'm playing on Hard (which was the recommended setting). I'm quite certain it's easier on other settings, but I don't want an EASY survival horror game, I want difficulty that makes sense. I want tools I can use to effect my environment or deter my enemies long enough to make an escape. I want routines I can learn and exploit. I want AI I can understand and play cat and mouse with. This feels more like "Roll a dice. Whoops, you got a 3. The alien killed you. Try again".

One time I was meant to go into a room. The room had been sealed, and was full of freezing gas. There were no vents nor windows in the room. There was one door in and out. I'd been in the room on a previous save and it was fine. I walked into it on the second save and the alien fell on my head. He hadn't been in there literally one second ago. There was no logical or physical way for him to have entered that room. The game apparently decided that it was 'alien on head' time. Time to reload your save, bud!

So, questions.

1. Did anyone else find the difficulty in this game rather...whimsical? What difficulty level do you recommend?

2. Are there any super-secret-saiyan survival tips I might not be expected to logically deduce on my own? I'm aware about dripping vents, listening for the alien, leaning back in cabinets, not using your motion tracker when he's in the room, sneaking everywhere, etc, etc. The application of all of it feels completely haphazard. If I succeed, it's because the alien wasn't there. If the alien is there, I inevitably die.

3. I'm presently trying to bring a trauma kit back. There are alarms going off. There are people everywhere, chattering and waving guns around. The alien is too busy sitting in vents waiting to drop on my head to bother with them. If I shoot one, he beelines for me and kills me. He's like their faithful mutt. Is this a particularly bad sequence? It appears to culminate in a button mashing extravaganza wherein I failed to press "E" rapidly enough despite hammering it with my free hand. Always a winning mechanic, that. Time to reload your save, bud!

4. The constant GOTCHA deaths and reloads are absolutely killing the atmosphere and suspense. Rather than cringing or quailing when the alien appears, I now sigh in boredom and irritation and reload my save. That seems counter to the game's intent.

Help me enjoy this game.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The difficulty scale in Alien: Isolation is inverted from the regular. It starts out super-hard and then gradually gets easier as you get more and more toys to play around with. In the firs few levels or so, until you get the molotov schematic and enough materials to craft a few, you are at the aliens mercy and it is all pretty much random chance that dictates your encounters. The best you can do with other people around is to throw noisemakers towards them and let the Alien do its' thing with them while you crawl off in the other direction.

Playing on Hard is all about controlling the aliens behavior since its' behavior is rather erratic when it is in search mode. Throw noisemakers to lure it off in the wrong direction, make sounds and throw flares in intersections so that it arrives and goes off after the flare etc.. The first few levels can be rather tedious simply because you don't have enough things to work with and on hard there's a "leash" on the player which means the Alien will invariably be rather close to you no matter what you do. Once you get most of the items the game becomes much, much better. Though I fully understand if you don't want to trudge through the initial tedium.

Also, I switched down to the medium (normal?) difficulty after the trauma kit level on my first playthrough, which also made the game much more enjoyable for my first time through. Coming back for a second go made Hard much more enjoyable. Don't be ashamed of it, the game is meant to be fun, right?

 

[veloper]

The stun prod is intended for synthetics, not the alien. It works brilliantly for it's purpose, but also make sure it's reloaded before use and then switch to a wrench to destroy the joes.

Flares only if the alien can't see from where you throw it.

The gun does indeed have very limited uses. Mostly you'll just pull attention to yourself with it.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I liked the gameplay and the world. The story was serviceable, but it felt like fanservice instead of like a sequel. The more I thought about the story, the more I disliked it. It doesn't make enough sense.

What in it didn't make sense to you? I thought it was perfectly fine when I played through the game, at least I didn't notice any glaring errors.

 

[teqrevisited]

I loved the atmosphere. The sound design and aesthetics were spot on. The story was secondary to my experience, though, honestly. All I cared about was seeing more of the environment and the alien.

There was a point where I kept getting invited to an alien-only dinner for one but that quickly passed when I stopped stockpiling the distraction tools out of fear that 'I might need them more later!' because I needed them to even see later.

 

[Zhukov]

I enjoyed it. I got distracted before finishing it, but I really liked what I played.

Alas, seems like this is going to be The Last of Us all over again.

Here's a gun. Don't use it, you'll instantly die. The alien will literally pelt down a hallway, ignoring the other people firing guns, to kill you.

Call me crazy, but I enjoyed being handed a mostly useless gun. It's a last resort option.

If you can just shoot your way out of trouble then it isn't True Survival Horror For Intelligent People.

Here's a stun prod. Don't use it to prod anything, nothing will happen and you'll die.

It works on humans. Low-noise one-hit kill from stealth.

Here's some flares and noisemakers. You can throw one. The alien will ignore it and immediately come and kill you.

Okay, this flat out contradicts my experience. Whenever I threw a noisemaker the alien went running after it.

I don't think flares are intended as a distraction device. Never used one, honestly.

Here's a cabinet you can hide in. The alien will find it instantly. You can also lean back and hold your breath. It won't make any difference though.

Also contradicts my experience. I was only found once while in a cupboard and once while under a desk. That after dozens of encounters.

I will grant you that cupboards are kind of a crap shoot. Either he walks past an you're fine or he happens to find you and you die with no recourse.

1. Did anyone else find the difficulty in this game rather...whimsical? What difficulty level do you recommend?

No.

I played on the second-hardest difficulty. (Don't recall what exactly it was labelled.)

2. Are there any super-secret-saiyan survival tips I might not be expected to logically deduce on my own? I'm aware about dripping vents, listening for the alien, leaning back in cabinets, not using your motion tracker when he's in the room, sneaking everywhere, etc, etc. The application of all of it feels completely haphazard. If I succeed, it's because the alien wasn't there. If the alien is there, I inevitably die.

Nah, don't think I know anything you don't.

The only bit of potentially-insultingly-obvious advice I can give is to be really patient and methodical in your movement and use you motion tracker constantly. Not everyone's idea of a good time, I know.

3. I'm presently trying to bring a trauma kit back. There are alarms going off. There are people everywhere, chattering and waving guns around. The alien is too busy sitting in vents waiting to drop on my head to bother with them. If I shoot one, he beelines for me and kills me. He's like their faithful mutt. Is this a particularly bad sequence? It appears to culminate in a button mashing extravaganza wherein I failed to press "E" rapidly enough despite hammering it with my free hand. Always a winning mechanic, that. Time to reload your save, bud!

Huh. That was one of my favourite bits.

I threw a noisemaker at the humans and hid under a gurney. Alien ran after the noise, killed a couple of the humans and scattered the rest. Then I Stealth101'd my way past.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Before I started playing I did some poking about on the internet about the difficulty levels and from what I read from people who played through on multiple difficulties the problem with Alien Isolation's difficulty is that a harder difficulty actually reduces the "feel" of the game; it undermines the atmosphere. The reason being that one of the things difficulty is apparently tied to (based on people doing testing and going through game files) is 'leash' range of the alien. So if you're on the lowest difficulty the alien is free to wander off and around whilst searching for you. But on higher difficulties it is basically tethered about three feet from you so it will quite literally ride your backside right the way through the game. Sure it makes it harder, but it also makes it more irritating because it will literally NOT move beyond a certain distance from you.

I can't remember what I started on. I've not finished yet. I seem to remember being lost and stuck on a particular bit and then getting distracted with other stuff.

 

[stroopwafel]

I really liked the game as well. It captured the look and feel of the original movie perfectly. If you don't like that movie and/or slow, methodical gameplay than most likely you won't enjoy Alien Isolation. It's a stealth game obviously with lots of insta-kills but the randomized AI and interspersed save points added a sense of tension I haven't seen in many other games, and never got frustrating for whatever reason(unlike for example a game like Outlast which has a similair set-up minus manual savepoints).

So yeah, I thought it was really good. Though I couldn't really play it hours on end like for example Witcher 3, Bloodborne or the Souls games. I think Alien Isolation is at its best in one hour sessions or so.

I threw a noisemaker at the humans and hid under a gurney. Alien ran after the noise, killed a couple of the humans and scattered the rest. Then I Stealth101'd my way past.

Oh yeah, that's the coolest part of the game.

 

[OneCatch]

It's not that it's HARD. It's that it feels like such BULLSHIT.
...
Help me enjoy this game.

I liked the game. I actually think it was slightly too forgiving in some respects - you can always work out roughly where it is from the clattering in the vents for example. Nothing of the silent creeping around that it uses to kill the majority of the Nostromo crew. I think that they could have made it quieter but also less prone to following you quite as closely. But then perhaps that would have made the game boring - if you did effectively get away from it for more than about 15 mins you'd just be wandering around empty levels.
The Alien itself does focus on you a little more than other humans, but it will readily attack other humans if it spots them first so you can set up distractions very easily - it didn't bother me too much.

As for specifics:

Here's a gun. Don't use it, you'll instantly die. The alien will literally pelt down a hallway, ignoring the other people firing guns, to kill you.

The gun is useful, but you should have an idea of where the Alien is before using it, and where to hide after using it. The Alien will investigate, so you need to be ready to break contact and hide/escape before it arrives. Use it quickly and decisively rather than for a shootout against a group.

Here's a stun prod. Don't use it to prod anything, nothing will happen and you'll die.

The stun prod is useless against the Alien (obviously). However it's fantastic against humans and androids. Attack from stealth where possible, but it can also frontally stun Joes and allow melee beatdowns or simple escape.

Here's some flares and noisemakers. You can throw one. The alien will ignore it and immediately come and kill you.

Flares help the Alien see you and are thus really crap as distractions. They can be useful for lighting up a gloomy area so you can see anything entering that area, but you should not be in the light - you should be hidden in shadows nearby.
You can also use them to draw Joes into an ambush because they won't cause the Alien to investigate unless it's already in line of sight (in which case you shouldn't be picking a fight with a Joe).

Noisemakers are one of the best items in the game. Either chuck them as far away from where you're headed in order to send the Alien to the other side of the map (or towards enemy humans). Or use them if the Alien is about to find you - even if you can only throw one into the far corner of the same room. It will usually 'forget' where it was about to look before hearing the noisemaker, though this is a last resort because it will likely stay nearby.

Here's a cabinet you can hide in. The alien will find it instantly. You can also lean back and hold your breath. It won't make any difference though.

I had a lot of trouble with the lean back and breathing thing. Solved by simply holding the buttons as soon as Alien is near. Don't wait for the prompts, and don't breathe out until it's a few meters away. Stay leaned back as long as it's in the same room.
Broadly, if it can see you getting into a cabinet, it will immediately grab you. However, if it doesn't see you going into them it won't systematically check cabinets. It sometimes will randomly check them though - better to keep moving.

Did the alien decide to gallop back into the room after seeming to stalk off?

Probably not - however, the Alien will keep going back to an area if it suspects you are there somewhere. Might have seemed like broken AI, or cheating bastardry, but if you hide somewhere for a few mins you'll see/hear the Alien going back and forth along the entrances and exits trying to catch you sneaking out.

One time I was meant to go into a room. The room had been sealed, and was full of freezing gas. There were no vents nor windows in the room. There was one door in and out. I'd been in the room on a previous save and it was fine. I walked into it on the second save and the alien fell on my head. He hadn't been in there literally one second ago. There was no logical or physical way for him to have entered that room. The game apparently decided that it was 'alien on head' time. Time to reload your save, bud!

I also thought that bit was very unfair actually! Nowhere to hide except that one crate.

1. Did anyone else find the difficulty in this game rather...whimsical? What difficulty level do you recommend?

Played and would recommend Hard. I don't think it's whimsical. You can have very bad luck by being wrong place wrong time, but you can minimise risks. And there aren't many instantly-fatal situations which you have had no control over.

2. Are there any super-secret-saiyan survival tips I might not be expected to logically deduce on my own?

1) The Alien can apparently hear doors opening and closing. That's how it follows you. Mostly unavoidable, but you can lose it for longer by avoiding unnecessarily opening doors. Or trick it into thinking you've gone one way by opening a door then continuing down corridor. Not sure if this is true for airvents.

Speaking of which - 2) the Alien doesn't really like ground level vents. It will go into them, but not as often as you might think.

3) The Alien will get more and more wound up as it sees/hears things. It'll start fairly sluggish and passive, but the more noise you make (and this includes other people and noisemakers) the more actively it will hunt you. This seems to reset between levels and seems to diminish if you stay stealthy and move to a different area. But staying in one place repeatedly using noisemakers or guns will make it come and hunt you more and more aggresively. Driving it off with Molotovs or Pipe Bombs will get rid of it for maybe 20 seconds, but it will come back absolutely fucking livid.

4) In larger areas with cover it can actually be advantageous to quietly keep the Alien in sight if possible - better to know exactly where it is - and wait for an opportunity to progress. Because of 3) it can sometimes be safer than a risky distraction or rushed escape strategy.

 

[Evonisia]

I played it on normal, as I will never understand how any difficulty other than the one called normal is considered the one you're supposed to play. Found it challenging enough, the Alien always had me on my toes but I did manage to get through well enough. The Synthetics sometimes made things boring but not enough to undermine the whole game for me. Perhaps that Alien ignoring the Humans sequence is an issue with Hard difficulty, as I've triggered them shooting me and managed to hide in time for the Alien to kill them.

A lot of the issues you've mentioned seem like you've tried to stopping the Alien when it's already chasing you. Literally the only things that stop it once it's running at you is the flamethrower and the molotovs, both of which you get roughly a third of the way into the game.

As for the hiding thing: I never personally had an issue with this on normal. The only times the Alien found me when I was hiding in something was when it had reached the room before I did it.

The gun and the stun prod are meant to be used on Humans and Synthetics respectively. Admittedly, sometimes I found the stun prod to not work when they're facing me. The flashbang AFAIK does not work on the Alien, but does the Humans and Synthetics.

Personally I found the game great on the whole. The atmosphere didn't fall apart for me, the gameplay was tight enough and it did actually manage to scare me a few times too which is rare for horror. The story's weak as piss, but it's serviceable. The game comes alive after an incredibly slow burn of ten missions or so, my only major quibble with the game is that:

Spoiler

The later game Synthetics and the Facehuggers are absolute bullshit. The Synthetics don't seem to give one single fuck for your ability to turn corners and the Facehuggers are hard to see when you mostly encounter them in dark rooms or the Alien hive filled with spit.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

1. Did anyone else find the difficulty in this game rather...whimsical? What difficulty level do you recommend?

2. Are there any super-secret-saiyan survival tips I might not be expected to logically deduce on my own? I'm aware about dripping vents, listening for the alien, leaning back in cabinets, not using your motion tracker when he's in the room, sneaking everywhere, etc, etc. The application of all of it feels completely haphazard. If I succeed, it's because the alien wasn't there. If the alien is there, I inevitably die.

3. I'm presently trying to bring a trauma kit back. There are alarms going off. There are people everywhere, chattering and waving guns around. The alien is too busy sitting in vents waiting to drop on my head to bother with them. If I shoot one, he beelines for me and kills me. He's like their faithful mutt. Is this a particularly bad sequence? It appears to culminate in a button mashing extravaganza wherein I failed to press "E" rapidly enough despite hammering it with my free hand. Always a winning mechanic, that. Time to reload your save, bud!

4. The constant GOTCHA deaths and reloads are absolutely killing the atmosphere and suspense. Rather than cringing or quailing when the alien appears, I now sigh in boredom and irritation and reload my save. That seems counter to the game's intent.

Help me enjoy this game.

1. I'm pretty sure I played it on normal, which was plenty difficult.

2. Noisemakers. Try to always have a full stock of noisemakers. The stun rods are only for androids and they need to be reloaded.

3. Get some noisemakers and draw the alien to the enemies, or failing that, get them to fire their guns. Sneak around somewhere and watch the alien kill all of the people. Also, if you are between the alien and where you throw the noisemaker, you'll die.

4. You might need to take a break and try to take it as slow as possible. Playing with headphones is good and gives a decent spatial awareness of where the alien is. Just try to keep a good distance, but bear in mind that through the alien sequences it will always rubberband back to you. You just have to creep around, never run, and keep an eye on the vents.

The game is a bit of a clusterfuck, but I found the atmosphere quite enjoyable on normal difficulty. The parts I found most annoying were the completely enemy/danger free sections where you walk around for about an hour at a time following screen prompts.

 

[Mutant1988]

I freaking loved the game. Best Alien game ever made, by far. The only issue I had with it was the extended scenic segments, like walking outside the station. Dragged on for ages and weren't really that interesting.

Spoiler

Exploring the derelict on the other hand was absolutely amazing.

Here's an important thing to remember when judging Alien Isolation.

It's a stealth game first, survival horror second and action third. You're not supposed to be seen and if you are, well... Better hope you have quick enough reflexes and environmental awareness to run away and find a nice little hiding spot or have a nice little crafted toy or weapon to distract or scare your pursuers off. Evading the Alien is by far the easiest, as it makes a TON of noise as it moves around and it makes very distinct sounds for when it's walking, crawling through vents and exiting or entering the vents.

Pro-tips? Always check for dripping drool before walking beneath a ceiling vent. If you see drool, the alien is there and will probably stay there for some time if you keep quiet.

Ground level vents, as One Catch says, is very rarely used by the Alien. I can only recall it using it once throughout my entire playthrough and that one time it saw me enter it.

And don't even bother with cabinets. They take far too long to get into and out of to make them worth using, except for the rare times where you know the Alien won't show up right next to you.

Spoiler

Which is pretty much ONLY in the hive

. Hide under a desk or table instead or stick to vents.

I liked the gameplay and the world. The story was serviceable, but it felt like fanservice instead of like a sequel. The more I thought about the story, the more I disliked it. It doesn't make enough sense.

I didn't get that impression at all. It felts like a solid continuation of the story that works just fine on it's own, without needing to reference or tie into the sequels.

The ending-

Spoiler

freaking sucked though. Way to undermine any sense of accomplishment there Creative Assembly. No, no... I liked struggling and suffering all that time only to lose in the end... I mean, that's cool I guess and totally not the reason why I ****ing resent Alien 3 or anything, erasing every sense of accomplishment and resolution from Aliens

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I bought this earlier this week and have to say, I find it INCREDIBLY dull and a slog to play through. Empty environments, chore-like tasks (open this door with X, that door with X etc.), so far I'm just bored. In fact, the past 3 nights I've started playing it, and two of those I've actually fell asleep whilst playing.

I'll be surprised if I persist much longer tbh.

 

[Silvanus]

I played Alien: Isolation on Normal difficulty, which was certainly difficult enough, and didn't venture into the silliness you're describing, Guppy.

I know the developers encouraged people to play on Hard, but I'd say ignore 'em. Play on Normal. A very enjoyable, still challenging, experience.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Alas, seems like this is going to be The Last of Us all over again.

Modern sneakers do seem to have a fetish for insta-death as punishment if you screw up. It's possible that this is just what people are used to now. I keep comparing them to Thief.

And really, TLOU only had one or two lousy stealth sequences. My issues with that game's crap-sack gameplay went WELL beyond the stealth. Good story though! Wonderful characters.

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Thanks for the tips, guys. I'll give noisemakers another chance, and probably drop the difficulty to normal. This "tethering" of the Alien sounds like it might be at the heart of some of my issues. If you can't shake it no matter how carefully you play that seems a bit preposterous/cheaty.

I swear to god I tried the stun prod on an Average Joe, but perhaps I flubbed the stunning, because he just murdered me much as Average Joes always do. I thought about shooting him after I broke his first choke hold but I was too apathetic.

I had read somewhere that flares keep the Alien staring at them for a while and give you some freedom to move around. I assume this is NOT the case?

 

[Evonisia]

I had read somewhere that flares keep the Alien staring at them for a while and give you some freedom to move around. I assume this is NOT the case?

Flares IIRC do keep the Alien's attention for a few seconds, but unlike Noisemakers it doesn't stop the Alien from noticing your running. It's a tool to get in to a new room if anything.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

So I'm finally getting around to playing this thing. My feelings on it are...well, they're mixed.

I'll get the good stuff out of the way. The dedication to bringing the license to life is second to none. Everything looks and sounds *exactly* like Alien. There's a care and attention paid in making sure even the tiniest details are canonical. That's great. And the game's graphics and sound assets are absolutely fantastic. Humans are little stiff on the animation side of things, and the cutscenes are inexplicably choppy, but for the most part the production values are top drawer.

As a result, the game can build a marvelous atmosphere. Which it then seems to (almost without fail) completely demolish with its gameplay.

Yup, it does it very well. It's a refreshing change of pace to see a world in which a livable habitat in space like the Nostromo would exist, rather then the tried and tired Hadleys Hope aesthetic of a function over form industrial colony.

I am no stranger to hard games. I'm not the world's best gamer, but neither am I its worst. I played the original Thief titles when they were new, and those were some tricky stealth heavy beasts. I played Dark Souls (I even one-shot the legendary Ornstein and Smough, by gum!). I've played some of the cruelest, most back-breaking tactical games around. I play DOTA and Starcraft 2. I like a tough game.

It's not that it's HARD. It's that it feels like such BULLSHIT.

The game can be very erratic when it comes to difficulty, going from a leisurely strolls to hair pulling frustration and it seems a lot of it falls to luck. The game demands patience, both as an essential approach to stealth and to forgive some of it's shortcomings.

What is even going on with the difficulty in this game? It has two modes. Absolutely no challenge at all, and instant death. The latter seems completely arbitrary. Did the alien decide to gallop back into the room after seeming to stalk off? Time to reload your save, bud!

You can't rely on finding gaps in the Aliens patrols as the Aliens pathing is random. This is not Thief. You must goad the alien into moving to areas you don't want to be to get to areas where you need to be. Later in the game you can drive the alien off, but it's a temporary solution with limited viability (alien develops resistances to "aggressive" solutions).

I should mention I'm playing on Hard (which was the recommended setting). I'm quite certain it's easier on other settings, but I don't want an EASY survival horror game, I want difficulty that makes sense. I want tools I can use to effect my environment or deter my enemies long enough to make an escape. I want routines I can learn and exploit. I want AI I can understand and play cat and mouse with. This feels more like "Roll a dice. Whoops, you got a 3. The alien killed you. Try again".

There is a degree of randomness to the game, but only in so far as when and where the Alien will appear, what it does and how it moves when it's wandering around. The alien might drop down on your ass at a terrible time leaving you with limited responses. As soon as you do something however, it becomes far more predictable. Making noises draws its attention... guaranteed. Whether it's you or something in the environment or an AI, the Alien WILL respond. This CAN be used to your advantage.

The alien was far more predictable and reliably affected by certain tactics in my playtrough (hardest difficulty). I don't even consider myself an especially skilled or patient gamer.

One time I was meant to go into a room. The room had been sealed, and was full of freezing gas. There were no vents nor windows in the room. There was one door in and out. I'd been in the room on a previous save and it was fine. I walked into it on the second save and the alien fell on my head. He hadn't been in there literally one second ago. There was no logical or physical way for him to have entered that room. The game apparently decided that it was 'alien on head' time. Time to reload your save, bud!

Loading saves resets the Alien (by placing it somewhere else in the environment). This is to help prevent making a save that has the alien in extreme proximity to the player with no avenue for escape. The obvious drawback is that you can't predict where it will be even if you die and repeat an area.

So, questions.

1. Did anyone else find the difficulty in this game rather...whimsical? What difficulty level do you recommend?

2. Are there any super-secret-saiyan survival tips I might not be expected to logically deduce on my own? I'm aware about dripping vents, listening for the alien, leaning back in cabinets, not using your motion tracker when he's in the room, sneaking everywhere, etc, etc. The application of all of it feels completely haphazard. If I succeed, it's because the alien wasn't there. If the alien is there, I inevitably die.

3. I'm presently trying to bring a trauma kit back. There are alarms going off. There are people everywhere, chattering and waving guns around. The alien is too busy sitting in vents waiting to drop on my head to bother with them. If I shoot one, he beelines for me and kills me. He's like their faithful mutt. Is this a particularly bad sequence? It appears to culminate in a button mashing extravaganza wherein I failed to press "E" rapidly enough despite hammering it with my free hand. Always a winning mechanic, that. Time to reload your save, bud!

4. The constant GOTCHA deaths and reloads are absolutely killing the atmosphere and suspense. Rather than cringing or quailing when the alien appears, I now sigh in boredom and irritation and reload my save. That seems counter to the game's intent.

Help me enjoy this game.

1: Only played on the hardest difficulty, so I can't really advise you. As far as I'm aware, the Alien is still just as random and can still instakill, so lowering the difficulty won't solve your problems. It does have a higher threshold before it gets "summoned" from noises you make (I believe it doesn't respond to the motion tracker while it's in the vents on lower difficulties) I believe there are more supplies to scavenge and you can take a bigger punishment too, which obviously only affects non-alien entities.

2: Noise is bad. Any noise. Running, Shooting, knocking stuff over, motion tracker etc. all have the potential to bring the alien down from the vents. Lower difficulties might be more tolerant to certain noise sources. Running and Shooting are very likely to "summon" the alien if he wasn't previously in the area.

Flares and Noisemakers are good for distracting the Alien. The former requires the Alien to have line of sight of it or be in close proximity to work. The latter can summon the alien from anywhere and it will go straight to it unless otherwise distracted (by you or others).

The Alien seemingly has 3 phases of alertness. I gave them some handy lore friendly names. Patrol, Stalk and Pursue.
-A patrolling alien doesn't know your around, is far easier to distract (at the risk of making it stalk) and if left alone for long enough, will just wander off (leave in a vent). Hiding under objects or in lockers is viable.

-A stalking alien knows you are around and tends to hug the area it thinks your at (which is when it is mostly likely to turn on a dime and reenter an area it just left), it is less prone to distraction or can't be distracted for as long and is more alert to noises (like the motion tracker). Hiding is viable but risky.

-Pursuit is when the Alien spots you, it can't be distracted as it beelines to you. At this point you have to stand your ground. Fire and Explosives are the only viable solution. Spooking off the alien is only temporary and it will return shortly and continue stalking (for what seems like a prolonged period of time). Hiding is useless until it returns to stalking.

3: Your third and forth "questions" aren't questions, just mini rants. I'll answer anyway.

A good tip for this game: don't fire first. If you do have to shoot, take note of nearby ceiling ducts and try to find cover that breaks line of sight to those ducts. If the Alien drops it will go to what it see's first, unless you are still shooting when it drops.

If you have a noisemaker, throw it at the gathering humans, let the Alien sort them out. Otherwise just stealth it... pretty much all encounters with Humans can be ghosted handily without getting their (or the aliens) attention.

4: There really isn't any Gotcha deaths. The Alien never just appears in front of you. It needs to physically traverse the same complex environment as you. The vents allows it to navigate quite rapidly, but even then he can only appear from specific places and only moves in straight lines (it doesn't move diagonally either). There are certain Trap moments in the game that can get you if you are inattentive to certain tells, such as drool dripping from a ceiling duct. The alien makes a lot of noise itself, in vents or on the ground, so it should never sneak up on you.

The game isn't perfect, but my experience seems very different to yours. The issues I had with the game was more narrative and pacing related, not so much mechanical (at least as far as functionality goes). Items for me were far more reliable, the Alien was far more readable, AI was far more forgiving... I don't know what to say.

 

[OneCatch]

Thanks for the tips, guys. I'll give noisemakers another chance, and probably drop the difficulty to normal. This "tethering" of the Alien sounds like it might be at the heart of some of my issues. If you can't shake it no matter how carefully you play that seems a bit preposterous/cheaty.

I swear to god I tried the stun prod on an Average Joe, but perhaps I flubbed the stunning, because he just murdered me much as Average Joes always do. I thought about shooting him after I broke his first choke hold but I was too apathetic.

I had read somewhere that flares keep the Alien staring at them for a while and give you some freedom to move around. I assume this is NOT the case?

The tethering is very loose - it keeps the Alien in the same map area as you (and not always then). Doors opening and other unavoidable noise can bring it a little closer, but Noisemakers and other distractions seem more 'interesting' to the Alien - it will go after a Noisemaker instead of some opening doors or your footsteps.

The Joe's melee attack doesn't seem to be interruptible - I had similar frustration initially. Best method with the Prod is to strike early and let them walk into the attack. Rest assured; you do get better weapons for the Joes later!

Flares will occupy the Alien for quite a while, but only under very specific circumstances. It's not drawn to the noise (or at least, not much), so the Alien has to be at ground level already. It also has to have line of sight; not like a Noisemaker where the Alien will seek it out. And if the Alien is already near it may well see you illuminated by the Flare before you can throw it and get to cover.

So they're only really useful when you can predict where the Alien is going to go. For example, if it's periodically patrolling a corridor outside a room you can wait for it to go away and chuck the Flare into the corridor. Hide in the room again. Then, when the Alien comes back, it will be transfixed by the Flare for quite a few seconds, during which you can be on your way. You've still got to be quiet and stay out of it's line of sight though.