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So apparently Alien Isolation was a cross gen game
- Thread starter Deleted member 19924
- Start date
Near the end of a generation there are often games that look just above and beyond their peers - from 360/ps3 I'd also put TLOU / UC3, Halo 4, Crysis 3, Battlefield 3, Witcher 2 and more up there with Alien Isolation.
The delta between top tier high budget (or just very talented) studios wringing every last drop out and your average game from your average studio is very large, and I think it only got larger this gen.
The delta between top tier high budget (or just very talented) studios wringing every last drop out and your average game from your average studio is very large, and I think it only got larger this gen.
Battlefield 2.....? Unless you mean battlefield 3? I would argue BF3 looks like a next gen game on PC compared to PS360 versions so I'm not sure thats a good example
Gonna quote myself on my experience playing AI in VR when it first released:
The day this came out, me and my buddies played through it in Virtual Reality on twitch for NeoGAF. The opening is really long -- due to switching players and stuff, it actually took us 4 hours to get to the alien, but his introduction to us in VR was one of the most mind blowing VR moments ever, because of how we reacted. See, the alien can actually appear slightly before it's normal cinematic introduction in the game randomly. There is a bit very early on where you have no idea what's going on, other than a lot of chaos, and the alien can appear here before it's proper introduction.
So my friend was playing the game, and gets to this part, and he's walking around all cautiously. Up to this point, all we'd seen were murderous androids, so he assumed more were around. He had his eyes open for androids to avoid. While walking through a corridor, he sees a stream of odd water coming down from a vent ahead of him. This is the first time in the game we'd seen something like this, so he's talking to me as I'm watching his VR view cloned on my TV in front of us. He's like "what in the world is this?" and walks under the stream of water and looks up.
The moment he looks up, he sees the alien, sprawled out in the vent above, drooling down, hissing, it's jaw hinging open. THUNK -- the alien's mouth thingy kills him instantly. It was the most stereotypical movie death you can imagine. You always think you'd be smarter than people in the movie, and he even had the forehand knowledge that he was playing an alien video game, and still got killed in such a stereotypical way. Amazing moment.
Later on, during the first real encounter with the alien, I had put on my haptic feedback vest -- it's a pair of transducers strapped to your chest that mirrors the audio. In many games it works poorly, but the sound design of alien isolation - sparse music, where the alien's walk produces a shitload of bass, makes it perfect for such vests. So the alien is hunting me as I'm in the medical ward. I dove behind a desk with a privacy cover next to a wall, so I'm basically trapped. I can't see out -- the opening to the desk is facing the wall, all I can do is hear the alien walking around the room. And feel him too -- the transducers actually let me feel his footsteps in my chest. I could literally feel him in the room, knew exactly where he was just by the feel of the vibration in my chest. I feel him walk to the left side of the room, then feel him walk to the right side of the room, then feel him walking in the middle of the room. Then I feel the bass getting heavier and heavier. He's moving towards me. In VR, when the game had VR support, they mapped your head tracking to the model's rigging, so that when you moved your head, the model's head moved. The game makes noise when parts of your body knock against items and the alien can hear it. So, IRL, I'm holding my head as still as possible, hoping I don't knock the side of the desk and alert him. I feel him, thud, thud thud, then stop. I slowly looked up, and I can see the bottom of his extended jaw peaking out past the desk. I am directly below the alien. I am looking up at him. He scans left and right but never looks down. It is one of the most tense moments I've ever experienced in a video game. I could feel myself actually holding my breath, making sure not to move. the hairs on my arm stood on end. The alien turns around and walks away. I get my moment to escape and catch my breath.
I have never, ever had a game hit me like that.
Yes, alien isolation is amazing. I really think it loses something now that VR support is gone, but it's still an amazing game.
A few weeks after that, my mother wanted to try some VR, so I threw her into Alien Isolation during a part where I had the alien trapped and ready to come out. I didn't tell her what she was playing. She cursed up a storm, haha.
I have to say, some of the deaths in VR felt really, really uncomfortable. Especially the one where the alien, like, mounts you on all fours and pins you down then very slowly opens his mouth in your face. I mean, that's the point, it's an invasive, very awful death. And boy does it feel like it.
The day this came out, me and my buddies played through it in Virtual Reality on twitch for NeoGAF. The opening is really long -- due to switching players and stuff, it actually took us 4 hours to get to the alien, but his introduction to us in VR was one of the most mind blowing VR moments ever, because of how we reacted. See, the alien can actually appear slightly before it's normal cinematic introduction in the game randomly. There is a bit very early on where you have no idea what's going on, other than a lot of chaos, and the alien can appear here before it's proper introduction.
So my friend was playing the game, and gets to this part, and he's walking around all cautiously. Up to this point, all we'd seen were murderous androids, so he assumed more were around. He had his eyes open for androids to avoid. While walking through a corridor, he sees a stream of odd water coming down from a vent ahead of him. This is the first time in the game we'd seen something like this, so he's talking to me as I'm watching his VR view cloned on my TV in front of us. He's like "what in the world is this?" and walks under the stream of water and looks up.
The moment he looks up, he sees the alien, sprawled out in the vent above, drooling down, hissing, it's jaw hinging open. THUNK -- the alien's mouth thingy kills him instantly. It was the most stereotypical movie death you can imagine. You always think you'd be smarter than people in the movie, and he even had the forehand knowledge that he was playing an alien video game, and still got killed in such a stereotypical way. Amazing moment.
Later on, during the first real encounter with the alien, I had put on my haptic feedback vest -- it's a pair of transducers strapped to your chest that mirrors the audio. In many games it works poorly, but the sound design of alien isolation - sparse music, where the alien's walk produces a shitload of bass, makes it perfect for such vests. So the alien is hunting me as I'm in the medical ward. I dove behind a desk with a privacy cover next to a wall, so I'm basically trapped. I can't see out -- the opening to the desk is facing the wall, all I can do is hear the alien walking around the room. And feel him too -- the transducers actually let me feel his footsteps in my chest. I could literally feel him in the room, knew exactly where he was just by the feel of the vibration in my chest. I feel him walk to the left side of the room, then feel him walk to the right side of the room, then feel him walking in the middle of the room. Then I feel the bass getting heavier and heavier. He's moving towards me. In VR, when the game had VR support, they mapped your head tracking to the model's rigging, so that when you moved your head, the model's head moved. The game makes noise when parts of your body knock against items and the alien can hear it. So, IRL, I'm holding my head as still as possible, hoping I don't knock the side of the desk and alert him. I feel him, thud, thud thud, then stop. I slowly looked up, and I can see the bottom of his extended jaw peaking out past the desk. I am directly below the alien. I am looking up at him. He scans left and right but never looks down. It is one of the most tense moments I've ever experienced in a video game. I could feel myself actually holding my breath, making sure not to move. the hairs on my arm stood on end. The alien turns around and walks away. I get my moment to escape and catch my breath.
I have never, ever had a game hit me like that.
Yes, alien isolation is amazing. I really think it loses something now that VR support is gone, but it's still an amazing game.
A few weeks after that, my mother wanted to try some VR, so I threw her into Alien Isolation during a part where I had the alien trapped and ready to come out. I didn't tell her what she was playing. She cursed up a storm, haha.
I have to say, some of the deaths in VR felt really, really uncomfortable. Especially the one where the alien, like, mounts you on all fours and pins you down then very slowly opens his mouth in your face. I mean, that's the point, it's an invasive, very awful death. And boy does it feel like it.
lol, were you *trying* to give yourself a heart attack? Because that seems like a great way to give yourself a heart attack. VR is difficult enough as it is in some games, but I don't think I could deal with Alien in VR and I could *mostly* deal with Jeff.
Doesn't this game have bounce lighting or whatever you call it? I shined a light on a red bin and the surroundings glowed red.
I was thinking about picking this game up for Switch but I wasn't sure if it was for me or not. It gets so much praise though.
Deferred lighting mostly, as I understand it. Same goes for MGSV. In both cases, the engines were designed to support large amounts of dynamic lights and those are what got dialed up on the next gen versions rather than the assets which are relatively low-poly. Alien also uses a ton of DoF and chromatic abberation, which helps both the low res on last gen and the lack of anti aliasing support in the engine.
OP
OP
You're right I believe it had more of it too especially in that underground part where you first get the molotovs and the museum.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 ports were pretty bad. Lots of cross-gen PS4/XB1/360/PS3 games were really next-gen games that got middling ports to the last-gen consoles.
Yup - I think this is why it scaled to Switch so well. I think the PS3/360 versions didn't get a ton of attention when they released but they were definitely present and accounted for. Oddly, this is not the first thread we've had where someone didn't realize that.
That is exactly how I died the first time after installing the unpredictable alien mod (pc, without VR) and I jumped of my chair. It was later on, I had no idea that the alien could do something like that
I actually own both on last-gen, and they aren't that bad. They ran about as well as could be expected for cross-gen releases that released on almost 10-year-old hardware. A lot of "target 30, but hit 25 fps"-itis, but not unplayable. I also have Dragon Age: Inquisition and MGSV on PS3. MSGV in particular ran better than MGS4 and looked amazing on the system, with the lighting in particular standing out.
Yeah, its really crazy and just goes to show that cross gen games really do not matter when it comes to the graphical look of a game
So was Shadow of Mordor
Titanfall
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider 2013
Plus a bunch of others
Titanfall
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider 2013
Plus a bunch of others
Runs at 4K60 maxed pretty easily on PC at least with increased FoV, no CA, no film grain and a mod that adds in proper anti aliasing. It's still one of The best looking games period in my opinion.
I usually play with headphones on. But I could handle Alien Isolation haunting audio design. I mean looking at screen was terrifying enough. I swear I never played any game this close to be shitting my pants. Shame the game dragged on for far too long.
OP
OP
after playing it on PC with a 980 ti i bought the game for friend with a 360 and my jaw was on the floor watching him play it. i had no idea there would be such little disparity, granted i obvs wasn't playing the 360 version on a 27" 1440p monitor right in my face
Completely forgot this. This looks insanely good.
I was shocked at how good it looked on the switch, especially in handheld mode.
I was shocked at how good it looked on the switch, especially in handheld mode.
I'm actually fascinated by last-gen versions of crossgen games. Some are just trainwrecks that are a sight to behold.
And Crysis 3 was a last gen game, that had a PC version that went toe to toe with launch current gen exclusives and even today looks better than like half the current gen library. At the end of the day it's who's making the game that counts and how much resources they have.
I recently started my first playthrough of this (just played up to the section where you dock on the distressed ship) and it did seem dated to me. Not shitting on it or anything, but I could definitely aesthetically tell it was an older game.
The textures and character models.
I'm running it on 1440p. Perhaps that is showing more than originally intended and making it look worse than it does on lower resolution?
I'm still very early on of course, so I should perhaps reserve my judgement until seeing more.
It had very nice technical side as well.
Probe based dynamic GI, texture space shaded particles.. Etc.
You are awful and if you're mother would disown you she would be in the right. :D
