Horror Drag

Alien Isolation is a game that will interest fans of the horror genre or the Alien franchise. I happened to be fan of both so this was another game I wanted to play on my PC. The only thing I wasn't keen on was the first person view but upon finishing it, the first person view felt like the right choice. 

I feel like having no weapons in a horror game like just an easy and obvious design choice in a horror game. It doesn't work most of the time like how Shattered Memories have proven. Alien Isolation thankfully didn't adopt this approach but for most of the time, you didn't have an effective weapon against the Alien. The problem is once you get the flamethrower late in the game, you feel invincible as you can stop the Alien from attacking you. 

There are obvious pacing issues with this game, it drags far too long and ruined some of its goodwill and credibility earned with a bad ending. Some of its climactic moments occurred in the middle of the game making the end parts of the game a bit boring by comparisons. While RE4 was also a bit too long for its own good, the end parts were never boring thanks to Mikami's sense of pacing. In Alien Isolation, I thought the game was ending in several different instances before the actual end of the game. 

Aside from the bad ending, there are no bonus content upon finishing the game. Well there are survivor mode and maps but those are not related to the story mode. Thankfully the pre-order bonus included 2 DLC episodes based on iconic moments from the original Alien movie. I recommend playing the movie DLC after finishing the game but I can imagine there are fans only played these episode without bothering with the main game. 

The Superior One

War. War never changes.

Except he wasn't talking about the console war which changed quite a bit over the generations.

I remember during the PSOne/PS2 era, I didn't have a PSOne yet and most of the RE games and MGS took more than a year to reach the PC platform. I was never really a PC gamer by choice, more like a PC user by circumstances but let's not get into that here. Eventually when they do get ported, these games didn't looked any better on PC than on the 32-bit systems. That was when it ran like it supposed to if it's a "good port". There were no DLC back then so you weren't getting additional DLC for free like you normally would for late PC ports these days.

Then you have the infamously bad PC ports like RE4 and DMC3. These PC ports were ported long after its console release so it wasn't like there wasn't enough time to make a decent port. I never experienced these ports myself but heard enough to know they weren't good PC ports by any means. It certainly was a good time to own a console game if you liked console games and certainly hard not to feel like the superior one. 

Then the tide started to change sometime during the PS3 generation. PC ports no longer run and looked like it's console siblings. Most of the time, the PC ports looked superior and is released on the same day for all major systems. The most notable game being Tomb Raider 2013 which didn't have the luxury of releasing on the PS4 system yet. So the old generation console version and the PC port looked worlds apart from what I read. I was lucky enough to avoid the old console version and managed to pick up the PC version on the cheap during the recent Steam sale. 

This generation is by far the worse, the PS4 is finally getting definitive/upgraded version of games PC users have long enjoyed since the day of release. But PS4 users are not getting these upgrades for free, you have to re-purchase these games again and start over. Even then, the definitive versions may not run as well as expected like the recent RE5 on the PS4. On the other hand, PC users get these upgrades for free most of the time. Not to mention the games themselves are already cheaper if you don't mind going full-digital via digital distribution service. 

So war has changed quite a bit, at least in terms of system wars. Sigh, I just want to play the best (or better yet, only) version of a game, is that too much to ask for?