Recent reviews by InquisitiveBard

Currently, I recommend this game, but, there are definitely some issues.

First off, this type of game is not new at this point. Phasmophobia started it all and now we have dozens of these... Most people who actually play these types of games now are veterans. We know what we're doing. That being said:

The way everything is capped per level is kind of ridiculous. Having to grind the exact same level at least half a dozen times before being able to level up high enough to unlock another map is annoying. Nobody wants to be forced to play the same map over and over and over again just to grind though for experience; especially when you may or may not have all of the equipment to accomplish the optional objectives in able to actually fully complete a game for the full payoff.

Depending on that, it could take more than 4-5 play-throughs just to level up one time..... Dude, that's insane.

Also, the cost of many items is honestly just laughable..... Salt, in any country and any age would NEVER cost over $1000.... Put some realistic costs to items in this game, and make the cost/pay scale more balanced. We shouldn't have to spend half of our money getting basic items that we lose every time we die, it's absurd.

Lastly..... don't make us only able to play on easy difficulty until we reach level 5, that's boring and annoying for veterans who have played 3,4 + types of these games for years.... It's not a good way to retain players who don't want to wait 20 minutes for stuff to start happening...

Other than this, the game is a 10/10 for atmospherics, graphics, map uniqueness, mechanics and everything else. The game has real potential, but stop locking everything down so hard. This isn't a competitive game! It's a co-op game!

Let this be an example of a game not needing to be graphically amazing in order to be amazing. Does it look phenomenal? No. Does it look like trash? Also no. It looks okay, not awful.

But, that's okay, because the game-play and the mechanics is so fun that you're not going to give a sh*t.

You can't play the same map without it changing in some manner, be it environmental or monster enemies.

Can kill cricket looking monsters with a stop sign.

10 out of 10 every day.

I love this game and have spent over 100 hours on it. One of a kind game that created a whole new genre. What's not to like?

The fact that after some updates I lost ALL of my saved up money and ALL gear that I had earned in that 100+ hours of gameplay.

Not cool. I shouldn't have to start over again. Makes me not want to play the game anymore. Gimme my sh*t back!

If you absolutely love just exploring and walking/running/flying around with no aim other than to travel and explore, then this game is amazing. It's so massive and open that you can't even possibly do it all. If all you want to do is explore, find random crap and mine a little bit, and you also don't mind spending $60 just for that, then go ahead and buy the game. You'll adore it with everything in you. Otherwise, read on...


Exploration: As I just mentioned in my header, this game is a dang near unbeatable exploration game in my opinion. There are over 18 Quintilian planets to explore, all of which are proceduarlly generated. There is no amount of time in the human lifespan that could allow you to actually go "thoroughly" and "completely" explore ALL of these places "yourself" and truly see just how diverse (or not diverse) the universe is... I mean, not unless you use a bot, a lot of cheats, and leave your computer on for all time, but I don't expect anybody to discover this for a fact.... like ever..... There is a variety of flora, fauna, and environmental variables that makes many planets truly unique, though there are still a lot of copy/paste flora units across totally different planets.... Errmmm... Why?

Additionally, there is truly nowhere that you can't go. It's a completely open game, just as much as you would find in real life and beyond. This type of freedom is liberating. You can find bases, ruins, monuments, relics, technologies and all sorts of stuff that helps you to explore and trade, but nothing more than that really... All of this is great, but it's hollow in my opinion. Unless you don't mind (or flat out want) to do absolutely nothing but explore and mine, this gets old very quick. It's a limitless feature that's been quarantined in a one-dimensional mechanic, and that's truly disappointing to me. There's no building anything, no form of questing at all, no form of goal... other than upgrading your exosuit, mining tool, and your ship. The crafting seems pointless.

All in all, it seems like some planets are more alike than you would want them to be, like, VERY alike and it's disappointing sometimes. But having 18 Quintilian left to explore, you can't possibly sit there and claim that they're all the same. You just need to "get out more". I think the judging on this part is way too premature.


Graphics: The graphics are overall very good, especially given the fact that the developer is a very small indie label that made it... There are antialiasing glitches when moving fast, texture smears on dirt units, and the colors are waaaaayyy too saturated for realism. Other than that, the graphics are quite pleasing and impressive. It's nowhere near the best, but most of the time you'll think it looks good unless you're a display graphics nazi, and you can't stop paying attention to the few problems there are :P

Gameplay: There's not much to go over here, given the whole point of the game is just exploring and running around finding pointless crap, but there is some. First, the inventory system blows.... You need like everything you ever run across, but you only have like less than 12 suit slots, and less than 20 ship slots and it takes forever to start being able to expand those. There's no "master storage chest" either... This actually limits your exploring capabilities and makes hording resources practically impossible. So no, you can't gruel through two planets of constant mining and then go explore 12 planets with no worries, it's just not going to happen.

The character and ship controls are pretty smooth and simple to learn, it took me all of 5 minutes to learn how to play the game. This is a huge bonus, considering what all you're doing in the game and what these types of games typically end up having high learning curves.


Animal Life: I've been fortunate enough to be in a part of the universe that all of the planets I've visited have had "high" fauna ratings... I've seen TONS of wildlife...... and none of them are hostile, even those that look like they should be. There's no form of natural selection going on. You just find 17 different creatures playing tea party together and they don't care a lick about your presence... To me, in my experience, there's no lack of wildlife or variety thereof, there's just the lack of there being anything to the wildlife than just filling up space....

Survival: The hardest part of surviving is just keeping your life support/toxin filter systems charged... As I've said, I've yet to run across any hostile wildlife, or fauna (except for one paste over unit on 2 different planets), and all of the planets I've been to are largely unpopulated....

It's weird that I travel half a planet and there are no cities, no settlements, no significant presence of cognitive or indigenous humanoids or aliens. And even when you find an outpost or base, it's not really an outpost or base.... It's like a house and a shed (in terms of size), and there's only ever 1 alien at each one. Maybe two if you're lucky. Most of your time is spent just recharging your ♥♥♥♥, mining, and sight seeing. The survival aspect, at least in my experience, is very dull....

Overall, the concept of this game and the goal of it's creation is awesome and I, like many others, jumped on the hype train and bought this with excitement. However, there' just SO MUCH lacking in all the functionality that is here, it's almost bare. I honestly think it's because they made the game too big. Nobody will ever explore 18 Quintilian planets, and the procedural generator is probably failing miserable to do it's job well in hindsight to this fact. So, they either need to polish EVERYTHING up A TON, or they need to take some crap out so that the generator actually makes every planet truly different, diverse, and dangerous in it's own right. And really..... lets start seeing some civilizations, some towns, cities and natural selection for Gods sake. All these planets are terribly empty as far as civilization is concerned.

I was excited to get this game. Seeing all the walk-throughs and the trailers made me really want to get this game. I haven't had a great Sci-Fi RPG to play since the Mass Effect series, and this seemed like it would be a good one to hold me over until Andromeda comes out..... Well... about this..

I'll be honest, I haven't played this game hardly at all, for two huge reasons:


CONS:


1) IT'S BROKEN

And it's broken at a fundamental level at that. The store page, and developers say this game has full controller support, yet, even with gamepad selected in the settings, not a single gamepad works. My Xbox One or Steam controller. It's as if there is no controller present, they don't work at all.... Additionally, if I play the game with kb/m selected and applied as the control method, and am actually using those without any controller selected, during gameplay the stupid game is still telling me to press A for okay and all that garbage.... So I can barely play the game with kb/m as it is. I mean if you can't even physically play the game and the schemes are all jacked up, nothing else matters right???

Tech support has been next to useless on fixing it and it's really sad that a patch hasn't been rolled out to make this game truly "full controller support" worthy.

2) AWFUL LIP SYNC

Man, the lip sync for this game is terrible, abhorently terrible. I've seen B-Class Asian movies made in China with better lip sync than this. When it comes to a "story driven" RPG that has lots of "Dialogue" and facial close ups, this is something that MUST be on point.

Because of these two issues, I've had a really hard time even wanting to continue playing the game so that I can give it a true review.


PROS:


1) The music is really good from what I can tell so far, it invokes that true space faring, sci-fi feeling.

2) The graphics are pretty awesome from what I've seen in my 30 minutes of total gameplay. Haven't noticed any graphics or display issues at all, and the game produces a solid environment, I'm impressed.

3) Voice acting is surprisingly good and the dialogue has been carefully crafted. I can tell there is a freaking awesome story behind this game with tons of immersion.


Overall, I'm sure the pros far outweight the cons, but at the end of the day, your game has to be playable and free of stupid bugs that nobody else has...... Such as the control input issue that makes this game nearly unplayable for me. When this is fixed, I will certainly play the crap out of this game.

I won't get down to the nitty gritty on this review, but I'll point out the strong and weak points that I personally see in Attila and try not to rant on in overemphasized detail and repetition. I'll try to keep it as simple and as short as I can.


I haven't been on the Total War bandwagon for very long, I've only played since Rome 2 (over 1k hours between Rome 2 and Attila so far), but I've been an avid strategy lover and RTS player for my entire gaming life (2 decades). Games like Total War and others like Star Craft and so on... I won't go into detail on that or make a list that gets off subject... My point is, is that I know a good strategy game when I see it, when it comes to all of the necessary elements and defining aspects that make an RTS or other strategy game a strategy game. Attila, in this aspect, is a great game.... but it is far from flawless for what it is and in comparison to it's earlier predecessors.... lets begin....


AI AND DIFFICULTY:

Attila is an improvement on Rome 2 in many ways, and one such way is the AI itself. The AI is much smarter (though the AI has always struggled and had a myriad of flaws since the beginning of the Total War series), but as long as it is a vast improvement on Rome 2 in this aspect, I'm a happy guy. And it is certainly an improvement....

I've put in about 400 hours on Attila so far and I've yet to see a battle where the AI does absolutely retarded stuff like abandoning perfectly good and effective siege equipment in an assault to go charge the walls extremely early when they're still standing and well defended... I've yet to see the AI run around (or get stuck in one spot) with wall ladders in the middle of the field just letting itself get hammered by arrows.... I've yet to see the AI charge an entire army with just one overspread unit (doesn't even break formation, which is the only point in this that I see)... I've yet to the AI abandon a siege that it's about to win (or is at least currently winning) for no freaking reason at all.... I've yet to see the AI in Attila do a number of absolutely retarded things that it did in Rome 2, and for this, Attila is definitely a welcomed improvement. Now the AI still does questionable things regularly, but at least they're only questionable instead of outright stupid and ridiculous! This is acceptable to me and most people, as patches and future DLC will always polish this up. Overall, the AI is pretty good for what is expected in a Total War game.

The difficulty is also a good improvement. In Rome 2, as far as actual AI intelligence, strategical implementation, and diplomatic involvement were concerned, the game stopped getting HARD at the actual hard difficulty level... The only thing that Very Hard and Legendary did was throw in unrealistic and random diplomatic penalties and ridiculous buffs to the AI so that it was over powered... but the AI itself was still just as retarded, still just as unadaptive, and still just as bugged.... it was awful. Because of the unrealistic and unfounded diplomatic penalties and AI buffs on VH and L difficulty, I never played them once discovering this, because it took away from the realism of the game for the sake of making it harder in stupid ways that don't make any sense in a game based on historical accuracy and realism...

Now this still works the same way in Attila, it's a game and there's only so many ways that they can make it harder as you get to VH and L difficulty. However, it's actually balanced now, and I personally have noticed a more intelligent AI when you get to these levels (though not very much). So now, there's somewhat of a point to playing on VH and L difficulty if you're looking to keep the realism and historical accuracy somewhat in tact.

All in all, in comparison to Rome 2's AI (though Attila is using the same engine I might add), Attila is a vast improvement and actually a challenging game without being utterly ridiculous and unrealistic in order to do so. This is a very welcomed change.


GRAPHICS:

The Graphics are largely the same as they were in Rome 2. I personally don't see too much of a difference other than polishes and minor tweaks and minor improvements. Oddly enough: though there is hardly any real significant improvements to the actual graphics quality and rendering, Attila is way less smooth than Rome 2 is. Attila on Ultra settings performs noticeably worse than Rome 2 on Ultra settings (pointing out again that there is little difference between the two); so the performance SHOULD be about the same..... but it's not.

All in all, if you played Rome 2 and got well aquainted with its aesthetics, don't go into Attila expecting something spectacular and greatly improved...... because it's simply not there.


DESOLATION:

The whole desolation option is awesome, simply because it was a real tactic that was used back then (though only in the right circumstances and by certain ruthless cultures). Adding in a new and additional real life tactic was a nice refreshment...... However, there is one downside to it: Factions that aren't even hordes, or who were never even known to use such tactics OVERUSE this option like a crack addict!!! In my grand campaign right now, half of the total of unoccupied land is desolate... when I discovered Greece (playing as Geats), ALL of it was desolate... It's a great new tactic and feature, but it is extremely imbalanced and the AI just doesn't use it reasonably at all.

One of the biggest reasons for going to war in this age (or at all in human history for that matter) was to conquer and gain land! Not just destroy the entire earth by burning every single thing you conquered.... only very few in history have done that, but everybody else actually wanted to gain something from their conquests, and destroying everything simply renders that impossible and pointless.... There needs to be A LOT of new logic algorithms and action-set-rules added to this feature and the AI to make it what it should be. But as of right now, it's just awful and half of my empire has been gained by just resettling desolate regions...... how fugging boring and downright retarded is that.....


FACTIONS:

There aren't as many playable factions in Attila (YET) as there were in Rome 2, but in total there are just about as many (guestimating, not using real figures here). Attila still has a ton of factions to play with, and unless you do nothing with your life but play this game, there's no way you could do a grand campaign with every faction.... please, go do something with yourself like everybody else... get outside. go meet people. go eat something. please. for the love of God.

Yes, I think the option to play as any faction should be there don't hear what I'm not saying... I just think that if you already have a handful of factions that you want to play as already, that there's not really a big deal if some others aren't available..... unless again, all you do is play this game and you have some crazy goal to play a grand campaign as every faction that exists or something.... please go do something with yourself.... please. because nobody else will do that... You're one of the few, if not the only one that will.


DLC:

Though some of it is "meh...." at least CA hasn't been near as money grabbing with this game as they were with Rome 2 (at least yet anyway)! Somebody is trying to keep their greed in check it seems, and for that, I applaud you. Just keep it up, don't ruin it please. Try releasing a free DLC every now and then like CDRedProjekt!!! They're definitely doing it right.


OTHER:

I'm running out of characters so I'll end this here.... Largely, Attila isn't a far cry from Rome 2 or any other Total War game. You just have a different time period, new diplomacy elements, small story elements in the grand campaign, vastly improved AI and battle mechanics, return of the family tree, new post-battle options, hordes, and that's about it. Good game though, I personally recommend

Evolve isn't as great as I thought it would be, but for trying to do something new, it's a pretty decent game. Below I'll go through the pros and cons, but ultimately I will upvote Evolve simply because it is something new and isn't all that bad in the final result. Will update review as I find/remember other things to review.



- MAP SELECTION: There are a lot of different maps and many of them have different effects/buffs/debuffs that you can select for it (such as inclement weather, hostile wildlife, poisonous plants and so on; there are many)... If you really toy around with this, you can get a pretty fresh experience out of the same map. Additionally, All of the maps are actually different and aren't copy-paste jobs with minor changes. One of the most annoying things in multi-player games these days is a lack of different maps that cater to certain game modes, Evolve does not lack in this category at all, and will expand even more as additional content is released.

- GAME MODES: For this idea, they implemented a satisfactory amount of game modes such as Hunt, Nest, Evacuation, Rescue, and Defend... Ultimately, the decisive way to win either of these game modes is to either kill the monster, or the monster kill all players. Once this is done, it doesn't matter how well you've been winning a specific game mode.... since you're dead... Other than this obvious likeness between all the game modes, they are all pretty different if you try to play the mode instead of just hunt-and-kill. I will go over the game modes farther down...

- GRAPHICS: The graphics for this game are phenomenal and there are no noticeable glitches to me. The only issue I see is that the V-Sync is next to worthless and pretty much non-existent. I have a $2500 system (almost two years old value when purchased) that I take extremely good care of and keep optimized (IT professional here). My graphics card is an EVGA SC 980 and my processor is an Intel i7-4775k 3.5GHz w/ smart cache... See my profile if you want more specifics. Even with V-Sync turned on, while having a more than fantastic CPU and GPU, tears in the screen are frequent and very obvious. I can tell no difference with V-Sync turned off or on.... This needs to be fixed because I know it's not on my end. There are other games I play that are more graphically demanding (even having higher hardware recommendations) where the V-Sync works and I have no tears. So it's for sure the game.

- WEAPONS: The weapons are freaking awesome IMO, and each hunter has his/her own unique weapons and abilities which helps keep it fresh just as long as you switch it up frequently.

- HUNTERS: You have 16 different hunters, again I'll say all of them come with their own unique weapons, abilities and personalities. There is definitely no lack of variation here. Only issue is that it may take forever to unlock certain hunters and monsters, which can create grinding. And lets be honest, nobody honestly like grinding...

- MONSTERS: The same goes for the monsters, only I can't help but wonder why we only have 4 different monsters, while all minions are always Goliath babies, when there are 16 different hunters... We can definitely tell that the priorities were 75/25 here... They need to put more monsters in here and make the minions/babies the same kind of monsters as the main monster in the specific game being played at the time is. Other than this, no complaints.


GAME MODES:


- In HUNT, you've got the basic one-and-only objective: The monster must kill all Hunters, and/or evolve to stage 3 and destroy the generator before being killed. If you're the hunters, then you just do the opposite: stay alive and kill the monster before it evolves to stage 3 and destroys the generator. This game mode is great as is, though the generator part is a little random in my opinion.

- In RESCUE, there are a certain number of survivors throughout the map that you must find, and protect/escort to an evacuation point. You have to rescue a certain amount of survivors to win, and if you're the monster then you have to kill a certain amount to win... This amount is 5.... There are also multiple groups of survivors each round. This makes it to where it's really a game of chance, which is annoying. The other annoying part is that even though there are aboutr 20 survivors throughout the whole game, you only have to rescue or kill 5 in order to win.... This game mode idea is a great idea, but it really needs to be revamped to make it worthwhile. If they set it to where there is only one group of survivors per round, and make it to where you have to rescue a majority of the total of 20 in order to win (unless you kill the monster, or vise versa), then this game mode will be a lot better, it will make a lot more sense, and it'll be much more skill/tactics oriented. I've won this game mode by aimlessly wondering around and sometimes never even encountering the monster... In practicality, it will be a lame game mode until the revamp it AT LEAST in the ways I mentioned.

In NEST, the monster has infested the specific map and there are 8 eggs throughout that are ready for hatching. The monster must protect and/or hatch all eggs while keeping the babies alive in order to win. Or must obviously kill all the hunters. It's pretty obvious what the hunters have to do. This game mode is cool and may be my favorite to play as Hunters in. The downside is that the monster can only hatch one egg at a time and the baby will roam around aimlessly which can make it easy bantha fodder; while the hunters have no limitations in regards to the eggs. The other downside is that all minions/monster babies are Goliaths..... even though you may be playing this game mode with the Kraken or another monster.... I didn't think the Kraken produced Goliath offspring... This is the same case no matter what monster... the minions are ALWAYS Goliaths, which to me is annoying and lazy on the development part..... If the egg limitations are removed for the monster, and if the minions actually reflect that of their parent species, then this game mode will be better and will also make more sense.

In DEFEND, The hunters are defending a ship that's refueling to leave with refugees from a monster invasion. The monster is attacking with multiple minions per wave and the Hunters have to hold them off long enough for the ship to finish refueling and leave; or they obviously have to kill the big daddy monster. It's obvious what the monsters have to do. I don't really see much wrong with this game mode other than the previously mentioned minion annoyance, and you should have more customizable defense options...

In EVACUATION, it is a prolongued mini-campaign mode that consists of all game modes played back to back. The winner is the best 3 out of 5.

- DLC: The whole DLC thing for this game is utterly awful, terrible, and straight up pointless!!! The whole DLC shop, other than the season pass, is nothing but SKINS.... Yes, so you can the color of your monster or guns, and each pack is about 5 whopping dollars.... Really??? You think I want to spend another $5 dollars to just to change colors of ♥♥♥♥?? Uuummmm no.... that's retarded. I will spend $5 on real content that actually effects the game, not these lame ass skin packs that the developers are spending way too much time on and milking customers with, when they could be making real money and time worthy content.

GTAV is a solid release. Superb voice acting, great story line, gameplay is as fun as it ever was in GTA, and the graphics are fantastic. I'm playing with all settings maxed out and all advanced settings on/maxed and the game runs smoothly. I've yet to notice any glitches and am enjoying the hell out of the game, though I haven't got to spend too much time on it yet.

On a less serious note until a thorough review can be done:

Played chicken with oncoming traffic and committed vehicular manslaughter. Got out of car, pulled now-dead-driver out of his/her car and began to kick and stomp it profusely in front of others.

Hijacked boat and commenced running over swimmers; chopping up their bodies with the boats motor blades and watching blood taint the water..... would definitely buy this again.

First off, I'd like to say that TEW is NOT a terrible game, however, it has more issues and let downs that I like (or even should exist), therefore, I cannot recommend this game. At least right now with my current progress... I am a long-time survival horror fan (horror fan in general) and I love these types of games, movies and everything. It's hard to scare me or disturb me, but I know real horror when I see it. In all honesty TEW, in my opinion, is just a modern recreation of Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill, with some additional survival elements added to the game and fantastic graphics. It has NOTHING new or innovative at all. I'll list the strengths and weaknesses I see and why I do not currently recommend this game.

NOTE: Review is subject to change as I experience any, and/or when I finally beat the game and have completed the experience entirely.

WEAKNESSES:

1) 30fps lock, forced widescreen, and aiming
The 30fps lock is absolutely retarded... I know they created this game with the intent of making it feel, play, and even look old school, but you can never totally achieve that unless you and the gamers want to take a time machine back to 1990.... The fact of the matter is that you need to be modern at a basic level. That includes not only graphics, but design features of the game as well. fps is included in this. With the quality of graphics this game has, limiting fps to 30 creates issues for a lot of people (though some don't experience any). If you're going to have great graphics, you need a great fps, and that's just a basic fact.

Forced widescreen isn't all that bad of an idea, but the fact that it takes up between 30-35% of the ENTIRE screen IS bad! I know they're trying to achieve a movie feel, but it's a game and you're still controlling it. The forced widescreen is such a leap that it is uncomfortable on many levels for most players. On top of that, the aspect ratio isn't even spot on for the forced wide-screen... They need to really change this... The bars need to be cut by 1/3 (maybe even 1/2 or removed entirely), and the aspect ratio needs to be optimized for TRUE wide-screen if they're going to do it all... Right now, it's just a full screen aspect ratio stretched out between two random ass black bars to make it look like it's wide screen when it's actually not... it's awkward as hell... some people may be able to get used to it, but many can't.

Aiming.... the zoom for aiming is quite massive... this may be very intentional, but it makes aiming harder than is realistic... Anybody who is trained at using fire arms and knows how to aim would easily be able to cap a zomie in the head while it was only yards away from them... especially with how awkwardly and at times slowly they move. The fact that it's just awkward moving the aiming corsair around because of how far the zoom is makes the player (and Sebastian) shoot about as good as 2 year old. It also moves way too slowly. This may be a subjective downfall, but to me, it's a big enough one to point out.

2) Not Scary... At All
For people who have played their share of horror games and seen their share of horror films, you will be disappointed to find out that the fear factor of this game (at least to me) is next to 0... most of the enemies are just ugly ass zomies, then there's one bad guy that is a total rip off of skin-face (chainsaw massacre dude). There also enemies that you can tell were directly influenced from Silent Hill... enemies are predictable... the AI is dumb... everything I've experienced so far is something I have already experienced 50 million times to the T, and is therefore no longer scary or disturbing.

The scariest part of the game is the environment... and that's a bad thing. The environment should only ever serve to setup the scares, immerse you into the world, and put you in the mood. Yet the developers seemed to fail entirely at establishing this beyond the strong environment. To me, it's just not scary and a survival horror kinda needs to be scary, not a regurgitation of something that everybody is already used to and no longer scared of... Whenever I play this game, I feel like I'm playing RE4 again, and that is a bad thing.... I shouldn't feel like that, I should feel like I'm playing The Evil Within: a "new" game with it's "own" identity.

Yes there's nothing new under the sun, and it's extremely rare and unlikely for anything truly original. I'm not saying that, I'm saying that it's impossible to play this game without feeling like you're actually playing a Resident Evil or Silent Hill game. That's why this is bad. It's The Evil Within, not Resident Evil or Silent Hill...

3) Bad Port.... I really shouldn't have to explain how obvious that is...


STRENGHTS


1) Graphics are pretty good if you have an up-to-date system. It's a pretty game to play.

2) The story is good (though not amazing). It certainly isn't a new idea, but at least it's well written with good voice acting and progression. The only bad part to this is that the chapters are super short.

3) The Name is awesome; metal as ♥♥♥♥.

4) Game-play is pretty decent, not very clunky or confusing (except for aiming). It's an easy game to play, mechanically.

CONCLUSION: TEW isn't a terrible game and it's good enough for me to keep playing it because I spent $60 on it and I don't want to waste my money. It's also good enough to at least play through 1 time. However, it's not good enough to make it my first choice, or make me stoked whenever turning it on. It's just another Resident Evil/Silent Hill game. Literally, that's it. The design flaws can be worked around with console commands or editing the .cfg file, and hopefully more stuff will be fixed with patches, but I just can't recomment this game because it fails to wow me in almost every way. Plus it's a bad port... wait for it to go on sale, but do not spend $60 on this game... You will likely slap or kick yourself for doing so.

NOTE: Review is updated and finalized! Hope it helps!

I was a little skeptical about this game at first, simply because the Alien movies were so good, and because CA totally bombed Total War Rome 2 (their latest huge release before now)... However, my longtime love of survival horror and the films got the best of me while watching game-play and trailers, and I decided to drop the cash and give it a go.

STRONG POINTS:

1) Story & Atmosphere
For those of you that have seen the Alien movies, you will know what I mean when I say CA absolutely NAILED the environment perfectly! I feel like I'm actually in a new Alien movie not just during the cinematics, but also in the game-play itself. A huge sense of deja-vous tends to creep over you, even whenever there's nothing special going on at the moment. The cut-scenes and the cinematics are very well done and immersive. Alien Isolation is a game format sequel to the last Alien movie and with it's fantastic graphics, great voice acting, strong story telling, and perfectly reproduced environment, AI truly lives up to the name in this aspect.

2) Enemies & Dangers
One of my original fears was that I was going to spend an entire game only running from the Alien, and that there would be no other dangers. Fearful that the game-play would be direly repetitive and that the AI for the Alien would be easy to trick. I was afraid that this would be yet another upset in the already struggling survival horror genre (not to confuse true survival horror with action horror games where you don't have to think and adapt in order to progress). Oh boy was I wrong... The game has PLENTY of variety. I'll explain:

*First off, you have multiple dangers and multiple enemies. There are survivors on Sevastopol station. Some are loners and you're not sure how you should approach them (if at all). Then you have gangs of survivors who are so scared that they have decided to kill anybody outside of their group, and then you have small groups of people who are just out for themselves and won't help you but are no known danger at the time. As the game progresses, you learn you can trust nobody.

*Secondly, you have the Seegson Android VIs walking about the ship that have decided you and the other survivors are threats (due to security breaches, lockdowns, and so on)... They are creepily fast (walk like Michael Myers) and say nice or abstract things to you while they are trying to kill you. Until you beat the game, you never know when or where you'll run into anything and the AIs are extremely difficult to kill early on until you get good weapons.

*Thirdly, the stations damaged systems are actually a threat to you. Exposed power lines will hurt you if you touch them, rooms that have air purification turned on will adversely affect your abilities, fire hurts you, and so on. The environment itself can be a threat if you're not careful where you're going and how you go about it.

*Lastly, you have the Alien itself. The Alien that is nearly impossible to run from! Once it sees you and pursues you, you're dead. You can't hope to run fast enough to get away from it, or run fast enough to get into a hiding spot where it won't see you as you're getting into it. If it sees you and pursues you, you're screwed unless you have a flamethrower... otherwise, just accept it and be prepared to load your previous save...

The best part, is that the Alien can partially learn from your behavior and adapt to your patterns. If you're way too repetitive and slow, the Alien will begin to catch on. It will still eventually find you, even if you're quiet as a dead body hiding in the same place completely out of view. It will eventually find you (trust me, I know). Even when you successfully sneak past it to a different area than it is currently stalking, it will find it's way to you. The noise from your walking/running, and your interaction with objects and computers will draw it to your area once again... As long as you're in the same map level that the alien is, it WILL find/follow you no matter how good at sneaking and diverting you are. The hunt is never ending. All in all, just when the game starts to get overly repetitive, it changes just in time. You face a different enemy in a different area, different circumstances and so on.

3) Secondary Survival Aspects
You have to actually find tools, blueprints, weapons, maps, and supplies to get places sometimes (or at least make it difficult to do so anyway). You have to make med-kits from supplies that you have to actually look for... You don't have convenient first aid kits on the walls that are calling your name ready to instantly heal you. If you rush along in the game and fail to pick up a tool that you need later on, you're gonna have to go back and find it (yes, even if it's way back there). You won't have to do that very much at all though, unless you have a bad habit of constantly rushing along and skipping everything. Ammunition is rare and hard to come by, so when you finally find a gun with some shots, you have to be extremely wise on when to use it, cuz if you run out of ammo, you might not find any more for hours to come. Then you're stuck with a melee weapon.

In summary, there are plenty of different threats and you pretty much have to make or scavenge a lot of the stuff you need in the game. So, on top of having to sneak around trying not to get captured or killed, you actually have to pay attention to your surroundings and pickup all the tools/parts that you can, so you can be prepared for later... You never know when you'll need something. Oh and door hacking, rewiring, or typing in codes doesn't pause the game, you have to time those.

WEAK POINTS:

1) The Story is LLOOOOOOONNNGGG!! I'm a huge RPG player and writer. I love a big expanded story line but even for me this game seemed like it was starting to get drug out during the last few hours of progressive game-play. It took 27 hours to beat this game just on Medium difficulty and this is not an RPG (keep in mind playtime is relative depending on skill and focus). There are no side quests, exploration, dungeon diving, guilds, customization, or anything like that. You have the story and only the story. 27 hours for "only" that is probably the longest story ever, at least in my experience. So go into this game expecting to have to put a lot of time into it, and get comfortable with it.

2) Too many plot twists and "back-and-fourth-errands" towards the end. This to me ties into my first point right above this one. In trying to make this game as long as possible and dragging it out towards the last few hours, in turn, it got a little annoying that you couldn't just accomplish ANYTHING you needed to do in one step. You'd finally achieve it, but nnooooo something has to go wrong and you end up going on a maze tour back and fourth to do points a, b, c, d, e, f, and sometimes g... This is good in well placed moderation, but too much of it over and over again just annoys people and actually creates monotony.

3) POTENTIAL SPOILER...... it's a cliff hanger... After being such a massively long game and overcoming so many impossibilities... I like the fact that this heavily implies a sequel game, but I hate cliff hangers, so if you do too, then just go ahead and let that disappointment set in.

Other than that, this game is one of the best true survival horror games that has released in a while. You have to think, adapt, use strategy, conserve, and pay attention to your surroundings. Everything matters, and sometimes your only choice is to run or hide and hope that you can get away. No game is a true survival horror if you can blast your way out of every situation or do the same exact thing every time. If you love the Alien series and true survival horror, then this is a must purchase. Unless you have unrealistic expectations of infallibility in every way, you will like this game.