If Shadows of Mordor is the best Assassin's Creed game since Revelations, then The Evil Within is the best Resident Evil game since... the last alright one?
There's so little to say about The Evil Within - you play a generic cop, with a generic backstory and you're fighting through a series of generic Resident Evil/Silent Hill settings. An insane asylum, a spooky village, a spooky mansion (wherein unethical experiments are being carried out and overly elaborate traps abound), some kind of underground industrial area, a deserted city... oh and a spooky corrupted church.
There are no real characters in this game - backstory is related exclusively to you by journal entries for your generic cop that you read before going to your "save game" asylum (no, really). This is also the place where you can upgrade your character and use keys you find to get more gear.
Your main enemies might as well be zombies but as this is 2014, they have to have SOMETHING to elevate them above being JUST zombies. So their eyes shine and you can blow half their head off and they'll keep coming. There's a LITTLE variety, you get fat ones (the game even TELLS you they have more health... and they say it's bad for your health), stabby ones, ones with masks and later on you get some Assassin's Creed cosplayers that can summon an insta-death creature.
The game does have a good number of bosses (although a few you'll face multiple times) but none of them are particularly exciting... and pretty much all of them amount to attack weak points for massive damage, you can use your "agony bolts" to do fancy things like freeze, shock or blind them (it's hard to tell if there's any material difference between as they're basically all different flavours of stun) but firing explosive crossbow bolts at their face seems generally a better use of your time and resources - although, obviously you can stun them and then use your shotgun, which you keep for close encounters.
Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the game (beyond the occasional sudden flip of camera angles when the game gives you instadeath runaway sequences) is the level transition. The game is - SPOILER ALERT! - all in the Matrix (kind of)... but (as oft seems to be the case), there's no particularly imaginative use of that, beyond one moment being in an asylum and the next a spooky village or windowless industrial complex.
That might be why, when a level ends, it feels the need to announce that you've finished it. There's no real point to that beyond explaining the transition.
With unremarkable gameplay, non-existent characters or plot... there's absolutely nothing to recommend this. It does the absolute bare minimum to hold your attention and you'll be waiting for an exposition dumb that never really comes - the ending seems to suggest some sequel baiting or DLC to answer some of the unresolved questions but with such a lacklustre and banal game... why would you care?
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Alien: Isolation
Alien: Isolation is a game that gets the Alien franchise. Everything from the art design to the attitudes of the individuals and corporations speak of people who have not just an appreciation but an understanding of what the films (the first two, before it all went downhill) mean.
It's also a game which understands the survival horror genre... Even in its first incarnation, Dead Space put most of the emphasis on run and gun... yes, you sometimes had a situation where you'd be running low on ammo but it was ALWAYS expected that you'd shoot your way out of danger. Alien: Isolation is completely the opposite.
For most of the game, you're helpless. It takes a while for you to get your first gun - which you're very rarely going to have enough bullets for and even if you DO have bullets, the xenomorph just gets pissed off if you shoot it - although, a shotgun round at point blank range is enough to give it pause.
About two thirds of the way through the game you get the flamethrower, which evens up the playing field a little but all it does is make the xenomorph run away for a while and you really can't afford to waste the ammo.
Some games promote stealth by giving you extra XP points or rewards - this game does it by not killing you as much and on the highest difficult, this game is going to kill you plenty... Mostly because the alien is (mostly) a one hit kill and it is FAST. If it sees you, you're dead.
It's not the only danger though, you've got a bunch of human survivors who are either going to shoot you immediately or shoot you slightly LESS immediately and the creepy Working Joe androids... It all plays into shiny veneer of corporate hype over the gritty, dirty, noisy reality.
Sevastopol station perfectly encapsulates the feeling of a future full of broken promises. Sevastopol was a failed endeavour, in a backwater, peddling substandard androids and now in the process of being decommissioned... which is probably why they weren't best equipped to deal with a xenomorph infestation.
So, you're Amanda Ripley - the daughter of Ellen Ripley - and fifteen years after the events of Alien, you're still wondering what happened to your mum... so, you immediately head off when you hear that the flight recorder of the Nostromo has been recovered, along with your friendly android and a corporate lawyer.
You can't dock, so you have to go EVA and things IMMEDIATELY go tits up, when an explosion means you lose contact with your buddies and the ship. From there, it doesn't take long for you to realise that everything has gone to hell on the station but unlike Dead Space, the game doesn't immediately blow its load and have you grappling with a xenomorph.
It lets the tension build, as you find out that there has been a complete breakdown of law and order and everyone has adopted a very "everyman for themselves" attitude because of one certified grade-A alien killing machine but the build up to the reveal is nice, it lets the suspense build.
Unfortunately, once the xenomorph is revealed, it follows you around like a puppy - in that regard, the game could certainly have benefitted from a less is more approach but as soon as it turns up, it's on you like glue for the majority of the game and most of the time, it'll be sitting between you and your objective.
The fact that pretty much all of its attacks are instadeath, combined with the save mechanic (the game has very few checkpoints, the overwhelming majority of saves are done at savepoints but they're fairly liberally sprinkled through the levels... although, their gentle beeping will become a heavenly sound) can make that feel cheap, at times - especially when you've gone through a section three or four time, JUST to get chomped because the alien decided to turn around.
Of course, that's usually the trade-off in this kind of game - much of the tension is generated by the knowledge that the game isn't holding your hand by giving you checkpoints every five steps you go and when you finally get a break and manage to run through that door and lock it behind or get into the lift and mash the button, the sense of achievement and relief is that much more palpable.
Games with checkpoints make death little more than an inconvenience, psychologically at least - Alien: Isolation makes it meaningful and the inclination to hold your breath when you're hiding in a cupboard and an alien is right outside, as well as the way your heart races when you're on the last stretch to the end of a level.
Really, for a franchise which has just had the clusterfuck of Colonial Marines - this was much needed. The story COULD have been a little more involved and there's a tendency for characters to help Ripley only to conveniently get chomped before they might get to tag along... but that's kind of a staple of the horror genre.
The game does end with a shameless bit of sequel/DLC baiting but that seems to par for the course these days and really, while it's cheap - this was such a good game, more is really warranted and purely from a canon point of view - we know that Amanda Ripley dies of old age...
Strange that a developer synonymous with RTS games should be the one to break the run of bad Alien games with an FPS - strange and impressive. The whole game is like a love letter to the film but not in a gormless fanboy way.
So, you're Amanda Ripley - the daughter of Ellen Ripley - and fifteen years after the events of Alien, you're still wondering what happened to your mum... so, you immediately head off when you hear that the flight recorder of the Nostromo has been recovered, along with your friendly android and a corporate lawyer.
You can't dock, so you have to go EVA and things IMMEDIATELY go tits up, when an explosion means you lose contact with your buddies and the ship. From there, it doesn't take long for you to realise that everything has gone to hell on the station but unlike Dead Space, the game doesn't immediately blow its load and have you grappling with a xenomorph.
It lets the tension build, as you find out that there has been a complete breakdown of law and order and everyone has adopted a very "everyman for themselves" attitude because of one certified grade-A alien killing machine but the build up to the reveal is nice, it lets the suspense build.
Unfortunately, once the xenomorph is revealed, it follows you around like a puppy - in that regard, the game could certainly have benefitted from a less is more approach but as soon as it turns up, it's on you like glue for the majority of the game and most of the time, it'll be sitting between you and your objective.
The fact that pretty much all of its attacks are instadeath, combined with the save mechanic (the game has very few checkpoints, the overwhelming majority of saves are done at savepoints but they're fairly liberally sprinkled through the levels... although, their gentle beeping will become a heavenly sound) can make that feel cheap, at times - especially when you've gone through a section three or four time, JUST to get chomped because the alien decided to turn around.
Of course, that's usually the trade-off in this kind of game - much of the tension is generated by the knowledge that the game isn't holding your hand by giving you checkpoints every five steps you go and when you finally get a break and manage to run through that door and lock it behind or get into the lift and mash the button, the sense of achievement and relief is that much more palpable.
Games with checkpoints make death little more than an inconvenience, psychologically at least - Alien: Isolation makes it meaningful and the inclination to hold your breath when you're hiding in a cupboard and an alien is right outside, as well as the way your heart races when you're on the last stretch to the end of a level.
Really, for a franchise which has just had the clusterfuck of Colonial Marines - this was much needed. The story COULD have been a little more involved and there's a tendency for characters to help Ripley only to conveniently get chomped before they might get to tag along... but that's kind of a staple of the horror genre.
The game does end with a shameless bit of sequel/DLC baiting but that seems to par for the course these days and really, while it's cheap - this was such a good game, more is really warranted and purely from a canon point of view - we know that Amanda Ripley dies of old age...
Strange that a developer synonymous with RTS games should be the one to break the run of bad Alien games with an FPS - strange and impressive. The whole game is like a love letter to the film but not in a gormless fanboy way.
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