Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to side Quest. This is our weekly
video game show here at Geekverse. I'm your host, Still Muss,
and I have with me the Sevastopol Taylor Field. How
are you doing, my friend, I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Good, happy to be here, very excited for this topic
of discussion.
Speaker 1: M hmm too. This episode, you could say, is in
collaboration with the Alien retrospective that we've been doing, because
today we are talking all about Alien Isolation, the twenty
fourteen survival horror game from Creative Assembly, and this be
it should be fun. I think it's kind of a
long time coming. This is a game that I've definitely
had in my radar for years and years but never
played it. And I know this is a game that
you are a fan of, so it should be a
fun discussion. And that's really all we're talking about today.
I think I'll just keep it short here with the
plugs and just say that, as I mentioned, like, Alien
Romulus is coming out, and so we have gone through
doune retrospectives of every Alien movie that exists, including the
two AVP movies, and this is kind of the I
don't know, I don't think this is the last thing
I'm releasing on the main feeds. Everything's out on Patreon
right now. But this is at least the last thing
that me and you are recording prior to Romulus coming
out in a couple weeks here, So it's kind of
a nice cap on the end of this thing. So
it should be a good time. So let's just get
right into it. So, as I said, this game came
out in twenty fourteen. Creative Assembly is the developer who
is kind of most known for all the Total War
games that exist and all the millions spinoffs and DLCs.
So it's you know, right up Kirkland's Alley in that way.
But they're an interesting studio, Like they just have so
many games. If you go on their Wikipedia page, it's
insane how many things they've worked on over the years.
I also see that they worked on Halo Wars two.
I don't know if they did the first one.
Speaker 3: I don't think they did the first one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting there. They've done some sports games and
also I found this interesting that in nineteen ninety for
the MS daw it's really really old. Back in the day,
they worked on a game called Infestation, which I've never
heard anyone talk about. But if you go and look
into that game, it's just described as, you know, a
science fiction scenario type thing based on alien and aliens
and that kind of some of the I don't know,
I guess the stuff from those movies. So it's interesting
that way back in the nineties, this studio and they're
first starting out, probably just a handful of people at
the studio at that time, made a game that's kind
of inspired by alien and then what is that twenty
four years later they get the opportunity to make an
actual alien game that is, you know, Kenon and in
the Universe and all that. So it's pretty interesting about that.
It's hard to find any information on this game because
there's other games called Infestation and they've totally consumed them.
In the search engine optimization. I can see a couple
images here, but it's really hard to find any info.
Even the Wikipedia page for that doesn't even list Creative
Assembly as a developer, But then on Creative Assemblies Wikipedia
shows that they made this game. So it's very strange
and I don't know much about that one, but otherwise, yeah,
it's really just all these hundreds of total war games
that they've made, so I bring that up just to
say that it's interesting that they made this game in general.
Obviously it seems like there was some interest there from
the developers. Even Halo Wars is kind of an interesting,
Oh look at that, kind of some comparisons there in
terms of the sci fi and the aliens that exist
in that game, the Covenant. But they've never really made,
as far as I can tell, a game similar to
this prior in their history, and since then, they haven't
really made anything quite like it since, just back onto
the Total War and Halo Wars stuff. So it's kind
of a weird pocket that exists for the studio, but
it's interesting. Nonetheless. Tell me about your history with this game.
Did you play it when it came out in twenty fourteen,
were you a late bloomer, did you come to it later?
What's your history with it?
Speaker 2: Oh, I was their day one when this game came out.
I remember I didn't move to town here yet, so
I remember just getting it, playing the daylights out of it,
loving it. It was just such a good time, and
I can't believe it's actually been a decade now that
I think about it now.
Speaker 3: When I moved here, started working at target.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure this is one of the reasons me
and Kirkland's friendship started, because because we'd be in electronics
and we'd be talking about.
Speaker 3: Oh, what was the other one called? No, it was
the oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: Dying Light the zombie parkour game, So that was the
one we talk about all the time.
Speaker 3: An Alien Isolation was.
Speaker 2: The other we would just be chatting about all all
morning and it was just such a such a great
just ah, it's a great thing to discuss.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the game does not disappoint.
Speaker 2: It's something that I find that I'll go back every
few I wouldn't say months, but every year I'll indulge
in this game just to put myself in the stressful situation.
It's just it. It holds up so well for me,
and it's just such a it to me. It's a
no brainer like this just it's such a great setting
and a great kind of ode to the original, and
just a great kind of concept to just put Alien
and just this kind of like stealth sneaking around kind
of gameplay mechanic.
Speaker 3: And just pile it all together.
Speaker 2: So to have this and I'll just say it, to
not have a sequel to me, it's a shame.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it's interesting that you say that because
just looking into development of this game and some other
things like apparently one of the earlier prototypes of this
game was as a third person game as well. But
I think, as you mentioned, like this is I feel
like the perfect formula for a game like this, So
I think it's good what they ended up going with
first person in the end, and I'm sure even the
third person gameplay would have been quite similar and all
that to what they ended up doing here. When you
say that you kind of revisit it, I'm guessing that
means you, like you'll just jump in for a mission
or too, just revisit parts of it, or are you
replaying the whole game because it is that was I
think maybe the biggest surprise for me when I actually
played through this is that this game is a lot
longer than I would expect.
Speaker 2: I think I should be missions or something, right, Yeah,
it's I think it's a eighteen nineteen missions how long
to beat?
Speaker 1: Puts it around like eighteen to twenty hours. I ended
up beating it quicker than that, But I also did
after first couple hours play like drop it down like
the easiest difficulty, So I'm sure I was cruising through
it quicker than maybe the average playtime in that way.
But yeah, for like a survival horror game, and also
when that's like a very cinematic experience that's trying to
make you feel like an alien movie. I think it
is a very long game. So yeah, when you're revisiting it,
are you doing have you ever played through the full
game again or are you more just kind of revisiting
sections something.
Speaker 2: I haven't played through the full game again, but there's
just there's certain sections and I mostly just I like
to replay the Crew Expendable DLC.
Speaker 3: That's just I just like it.
Speaker 1: It's just is that the Ripley one.
Speaker 2: Is that the Ripley one? Yeah, where you're on the
Ellen Ripley one, the Ellen Ripley one. Yeah, I just
really like it. It's just it's such a fun, fun thing.
But there's there's certain things that I like to experience
from the actual the game. There's certain missions I like
to do, like I mean, just being able to do
the we'll talk more about it, but that there like ship, like,
oh my.
Speaker 1: Great, It's just it's fun. Yeah, So as you meant
like you you're kind of playing this game every every
once in a while, and I think for this episode,
you haven't played through the whole game again, being played
through like sections of it again. Did you have any
new or different takes, especially since we've been going through
the Onlien movies when you played through it this time,
any anything kind of different come up that you weren't expecting.
Speaker 2: The main thing, I mean different, No, not necessarily. It
just kind of sticks like more questions.
Speaker 3: In my mind.
Speaker 2: And when you go through the movies, you get answers
to certain things and you get no answers to other things.
But the main thing that I just wonder with the story.
And I appreciate that this takes place between the first
two movies, and I appreciate that this character essentially is
just manifested out of a extended deleted scene from the
second Alien movie. Right. It's crazy to think about when
you tie it all together, but I really just.
Speaker 3: Wonder where all the eggs came from.
Speaker 2: And I've looked into people talking about it, and it
just comes down to like, well, there must be a
queen somewhere, but we never see it because the station
gets blown up or whatever. Even then we know that Okay,
well the one person got infected with an embryo and
then was brought back and yeah that was the end
of it. But then where did all the eggs come from?
So that's just and we know there's multiple hives. Yeah,
yeaha It's just that's the only thing that always kind
of like leaves me curious every time I go through
those missions trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3: But it's just one of those things.
Speaker 2: As for anything that really stands out and is different,
I mean, it's maybe just ways that I'm evading the alien,
ways that I think it's fun to kind of deal
with humans, whether it's like I'm running and I fire
off shots and obviously the alien's going to hear you,
and all of a sudden, like I'm in a locker
and I know that two humans are like stalking like
mooning around with their guns, and then you wait like
forty seconds to a minute, and then you just hear
the alien charge out and the alien kills them, and
then Saunders obviously like, okay, you know.
Speaker 3: That the alien me are on a team. Now we're
working together.
Speaker 1: The only game that lets you team up with the
with the ami that's funny. Yeah, I have a different
backstory history with this one. I can't remember when the
first time I kind of experienced or saw this game was,
but this is one of Briggs's favorite games, and so
I've just watched Briggs play it many times through certain sequences,
and I think the biggest thing that started in my
memory was just a lot of events in this game,
and then I remember just how scary the Xenomorph can be,
and those are kind of my two preconceptions going in.
But it is a game that I feel weirdly doesn't
get talked about a lot, even though I feel like
it is a very well made, very like high budget,
polished experience. So it was fun to go through it,
and I, yeah, finally went through and play through the
whole thing. I did not have time to play through
the the Nostromo DLC things, so you'll have to tell
me more about that. I saw that, I saw that
it's pretty short, but I just didn't have time unfortunately.
So I'll bring it up on side quest when I
because I did buy it recently on this Team Summer sale,
but I'll bring that up when I have played it
in the future. But yeah, playing through it, and it
was it was a weird experience for me, Taylor. I
can't remember the last time I've been both so hot
and so cold on a game at the same time.
There are things I absolutely love about this game and
I think are so impressive, and then there's so many
things that I drive me freaking crazy as well, So
I'm excited to get into all of it. But I
think for me, like the prose, like the biggest of
the pros would just be the aesthetics of this game.
This game is so beautiful. The lighting is unreal, the
sound effects and sound design and music are all just perfect.
Like the commitment to the source material without it being
just derivative of the things that it's based on is
so so great. Like I can't think of the last
time I've played a license game like this that feels
like it has so much of its own identity while
still being based within the world of something that is
pre existing. It's just really impressive in that way. And
then like the Xenomorph, I think is such a big
success in this game, and even looking into it even
more than my just one play through, because I feel
like there's so much going on that you'll never know
everything that the x Anymorper is capable of and all
the things that's doing in one playthrough, But I watched
some some videos and just reading up on what all
the AI tech that is input into that thing is
so interesting as well. So I'm excited to break down
some of that and I think there, yes, some of
these sequences in this game are truly fantastic, and I
just I just love all the tech in here. There's
so much little, so many little details that are so
very impressive. I think as far as the story goes,
like this story is like as good as any alien movie.
For the most part, it's it's not really it's more
about the vibes and the place and the setting than
it is like the actual plot that's going on in
these movies. Maybe with the exception of Prometheus, which is
doing a lot more in terms of the story, and
maybe you could say Covenant, but execution is not quite
as good there so, but I think it kind of
gets the job done. And it's interesting what you're saying there.
How it's kind of based off a character that is
mentioned in Yeah, a scene that doesn't even end up
in the theatrical release, and they kind of take that
and go in a whole bunch of different directions with it.
But I think where my issues coming with this game
are in a few ways. One, as I mentioned, is
way too long, and I think for the way this
game is designed, and like the kind of mastery of
those systems that I think you would get the more
you play it, and how interesting that Xenomorph is, I
feel like this game would do a lot better if
it was a lot shorter, and this would be a
game that I'd want to replay and kind of master it.
But after playing one play through, I'm like so burnt
out on the gameplay of it that I don't want
to do that again because there are a lot of
sequences that are really dull. Whenever you have a space
suit on in this game and you move so freaking
slow and you're not doing anything, and then just other
sequences where I like the backtracking element of it. I
like kind of going through the space station again and
kind of feeling interconnected, but yeah, some of these sequences
are just really slow paced. And then you know, the
save system is visually cool, and I think I like
some elements of it, but I think because it isn't
a free say system, and some of these sequences, like
you're just hiding a lot for sometimes like twenty minutes
or something, and if you just die, then you just
have to go back because there is auto saving this game,
but I found it never really auto saved when I
needed it too, when I felt like I went through
a long story sequence. I feel like it doesn't auto
save in some of those sequences, which is really surprising
to me. I feel like a lot of the mechanics
in here are kind of half baked, Like there's really
cool ideas, there are inklings, there's strings to pull on,
but then when you do pull on them, they kind
of unravel. And then I think, you know, one thing
that is both a great commitment to its source material
in terms of how strong the xenomorph is, but also
how strong the face Huggers are translates to really bad
gameplay at times where the face Huggers of these tiny
little bastards that are really hard to hit, really hard
to shoot, but then they instaicuted you even on the
easiest difficulties, Like, yes, it makes sense that they would
do that, but at some points you have to decide
what's better for a video game versus what's better for
a movie, and I feel like this game kind of
gets lost in that a lot in terms of not
like it. It's not really committing to full on being
just like an interactive movie and not committing to being
more of like a lot of times, the game feels
a kind of like an immersive sim type game in
terms of like a like it feels like a dishonored
or a prey in terms of how much freedom you
have with all the mechanics given to you. But then
it gets stuck between those two things, between the story
and the immersive sim element of it that I feel
like it kind of gets lost in the shuffle at
times too so. But but I think truly one of
the biggest compliments I can say is that I am
just so fascinated by this game. I think it's such
a wonder that it exists, and like it just feels
like one of the most expensive games ever. It's ten
years old, but it still looks like a modern Triple
A game, with the exception of maybe like some face
some mo cap on like faces, or like a couple
character movements, but otherwise, like the game still looks top notch,
and after it was done I just went and consumed
a bunch of YouTube videos seeing like people's different thoughts
on are learning more about the mechanics that I missed,
because it is just such a fascinating game. So I'm
really glad it exists. I'm glad that I finally have
played it because it's been on that it's been a big,
big on the backlog there for a long time. So
I'm glad I finally did it. But just because of
how long it is, I don't know how much it's
one I would revisit other than going to check out
that Nostromo DLC that you mentioned. I think that's like
maybe a nice bite because that's like less than an
hour long, right.
Speaker 3: It's super super short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's it's not like the whole events of
Alien one. It's just no, it's because that would be
crazy if they made the whole events of Alien one
like the random BLC. Yeah, it's just like the ending sequence.
Speaker 2: Right, that's exactly, and you're dropped in some people have died,
and uh, yeah, you just gotta you gotta arm, get
the bombs armed whatnot and get to the escape patch.
And it's I find it very difficult because the Nostromo
is very narrow, and the alien just gets in.
Speaker 3: The freaking way so easily, and it's so hard to.
Speaker 2: Get around him and out maneuver him, which is again
one of the problems that I would say I have
with the base game is the alien can be really annoying,
and I can appreciate how you're very limited and how
different things that you craft can and basically work to
get rid of it. And the flame once you get
the flamethrower, the flame throw is like a big game changer, yes,
because everything before that, it's like, your gun's not gonna
do much. I mean, the stun baton just used it
on yourself. I'm pulling my hair out with the alien
comes up with that thing.
Speaker 1: So one thing that I didn't I mean, I didn't
experience it, but I also didn't feel like I was
pushing it to the limits is that it's just there's
no possible way to kill a xenomore from this game, right,
Like all you can do is scare them off. Yeah,
and you can kill like face huggers, of course, but yeah,
that's an interesting choice. Let's let's yeah, get right into it.
I think we're gonna break over the spoiler gates here.
We're not gonna hold back on anything. You know, this
game's ten years ault, so we haven't played it yet.
I think we'd both recommend to go play it if
you're a fan of Alien. And apparently the switch port
is really good for this game. I've I think I
read that somewhere. So that's pretty sweet because normally a
game that looks as good as this, I would not
expect that to be the case. But I don't know.
I played on PC, and I'm always worried when I'm
playing a game on PC, is it gonna run very well?
But this game ran perfectly. I mean, it's ten years old,
but it's still. Like I said, it looks so good,
so I expected it to run worse than it did.
How about we talk about the xenomore first year, talk
more about these mechanics. I had a funny. I'm glad
you brought up the flamethrower there. I had a kind
of funny. I had like a bit of the RPG problem.
You know, when you're playing an RPG and you're you're,
you know, getting all these health potions in your inventory,
but then you never want to use them because you
want to like save them for when you like most
truly need them, and then by the end of the game,
you like just have hundreds of health potions because you
never ended up using any of them. I kind of
had a lot of that experience playing through this game,
where I'm like, Okay, I can only have three noise
makers in my pocket at any given time. I'm just gonna
save them from when I need them. And then I
found by the time the game was over, I barely
used a lot of that kind of extra a lot
of extra equipment that I had. But the flamethrower is
one that I was really using a lot in the
end of the game. And the reason I wasn't using
it earlier when I first got it is the first
time I used it, I wasn't planning on using it.
But the alien he heard me, saw me whatever it was,
so he was running after me. So I whipped out
the flamethrower and just blasted them, and I guess I
either was too far away when I was shooting, or
I didn't, you know, put enough fire into him, but
he just came up to me and killed me, and
I was like, Okay, I guess the flamethrower is not
you should be used on the Zemo war for maybe
I didn't didn't do it right or something, so I
kind of scared me off of using him, like that's
not very useful tool, I guess, So I didn't use
it for like three or four hours. But then in
the end of the game, I was using it a
ton because I finally used it correctly and realized that, yeah,
if you're still really close to him, it won't work.
He because he got to get a good amount of
fuel blasted into him there. But yeah, that was like
a very good jet get out of jail free car
to just blast them with some flames, send him into
the events there as he backs away, and then he'll
usually come back pretty quick. But at least it gives
you buys you a little bit of time. But one
thing that I found interesting that I didn't really experience,
and maybe it's more if you'd be playing the game
on nightmare difficulty, is just how much the alien will
adapt to the things you're doing. And one thing I
saw is that apparently the X anymore does straight up
get like evolves to fight to be like fire repellent. Essentially,
if you use the flamethrower too much, it'll get to
a point where he can just resist the flames of it.
Like they'll I guess in theory if it's not always
the same zeno more, but it's like different ones that
are growing and evolving over time as the course of
your on this ship. Yeah, they can like get to
the point where they're just fully heat resistance. You can't
really do any damage with the flamethrow if you're overusing that,
which is such a cool idea. I think it's really
smart and interesting, and.
Speaker 2: I think people just can kind of become maybe overly
reliant on it, and it's you don't want when you
introduce a flamethrower. Yes, it's a game changer at the start,
but you don't want people to be reliant on it.
You don't want it to ruin everything moving forward because
you want to keep that danger factor and that stress
factor with dealing with the zeno. But I would agree
with you, there's a lot of things that I found
that I just really don't end up using. My best
tool I have is hiding on a locker, and I
utilize that more than anything else. Obviously, you got health
packs and stuff you can use too, But I mean
you're not doing that. You're not using health when you're
dealing with this the zeno. When the zeno finds you,
you're dead, So you're really only dealing it when you're
dealing with the ad the synthetics which are a pain
in the butt, and humans with guns.
Speaker 3: Switch.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to close the locker quietly? Because
I feel like, no matter why, I hate that door,
even when you're getting out, smash it open.
Speaker 3: Jesus. Yeah, that bothers me.
Speaker 2: So much because every time I get in there, I
just feel like, oh, I've been had. I like he's
gonna know where I am. But no, it's when you're
running then that gives it away. But no, slamming a
locker door, the alien does not hear anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was another thing that I saw too that
apparently if the alien and a point sees you enter
a locker from that point on, they will really like
open locker doors and like hunt for you in there.
So if you're using like I guess that's the point
no matter what it is, but it's equipment, whether it's
a hiding spot some other tool. If you just use
the same thing over and over again, they'll really start
to kind of work around it. And so I don't know,
how has that happened to you where an alien's gone
up and opened a locker that you have have been
hiding in, or have you been pretty stealthy with it,
or they're not quite sure if you ever ever entered
that locker in the first place.
Speaker 2: No, I've I've been found many a time in a locker,
and it drives me nuts because, at least from my experience,
and maybe I was just misreading it, but when I'm
in the locker, you can hold your breath, and I
swear it doubles down like, oh, you can hold left
trigger or you can hold a click in the left stick,
because the alien will get up close and put its
head like right up against the grade of the locker,
and it's like, okay, it'll prompt you hold your breath,
and so you do that, and then your character starts
to flash out like they're bleeding out because he can't
hold your breath forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but if you let go too.
Speaker 2: Soon, the alien like instant rips the door off and
just like grabs you. You know, nice, have you been
have you not been caught not from a locker, but
I didn't use a lot.
Speaker 1: I was more of an under the desk kind of guy.
Speaker 3: Oh it treaks me out. I feel like, how does
he not see?
Speaker 1: I know there was a couple of times where where
he looked at me and then just looked away. I
did get caught a couple times under under a desk
or something. But yeah, even just like because when you're
out there not in a locker, and you see when
they walk by you and then just that long slithery
tail is kind of it's almost like smacking into you
or something, right, it gets pretty terrifying. But yeah, I
didn't use a ton of lockers, probably because it was
just so loud that I felt like if I was
trying to run away from him, I did not want
to go on a locker because he would definitely hear me,
and so instead I'd prefer to go for a under
a counter, and I just felt like it give me
a bit more maneuverability that way too, rather than kind
of committing to in or out of a locker. But yeah,
I don't think I ever got caught inside a locker, thankfully,
But yeah, apparently other things too, like throwing like a
noise maker machine will work, but then eventually, if you
use too many of them, the xenomorpha will kind of
start to like triangulate your location and determine like, Okay,
where was this thing thrown from? I'm gonna go in
that room, or just sometimes sometimes they just really hunt
your room for like two or three or five minutes
at a time before they leave. And then sometimes they'll
do like a fake out where they go to the door,
leave and then like come right back.
Speaker 2: In and they fast walk back into the room and
be like yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And I found too, like the xenomorph can sometimes just
be like this huge lumbering presence, like making so much
noise walking around. But then sometimes they're just so freaking
quiet that you really have no idea unless you're using
your motion tracker. But even then, if they're like standing
still for a bit, they might not pop up on
the on the motion tracker, so it can be pretty
difficult to determine them.
Speaker 2: Have you been caught because you say you use mostly
tables vents above your head, walk in and all of
a sudden, just it pops down and you're like, instad dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had that happen early on and I couldn't
tell if it was like a scripted sequence or not.
It felt like it was kind of because I feel
like the game there was like a hallway in front
of me that had the event above it and like
the jew striping down right, and then there was like
the door just to the right that had like a
working Joe in it, and so I think I could
it seemed like a script because sometimes there are scripted
scenarios where an alien is supposed to pop out at
a given time, usually I think earlier on, but then
there are other times where it is like not random,
but it's just being fed that kind of you know,
information of what it knows from you in the past
to try and hunt you. And so it's kind of
hard to tell by the end of the game, like
what was a scripted scenario other than like if it
popped a cut scene of course. But yeah, I definitely
had that sequence where I saw the juice and I
think I even saw him go in there. I'll probably
be safe here, but no, he got me a big ten.
I think even the first time I saw him, I
was like running for one of the tram station doors
and I couldn't I couldn't see him, but I could
hear him chase him behind me, and that I mean,
it's terrifying for sure, because in that moment when he's
behind me, my characters looks down and like the claw
or the tails like through my chest right in front
of me.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: The scare factor of the alien was ten out of ten,
and I think the only time it really dropped below
that were some of these situations were early on in
the game. I was playing on forget what the difficulty
was called, but it's the one that's like, this is
the intended experience intended difficulty. So I was like, okay,
well I'll start on that one. And then I just
found with the lack of checkpoints and some of how
smart this alien, it was just getting a bit frustrating
because I also found too, like if I'm in a
sequence and let's say it's a long sequence where I'm
hiding for minutes at a time, sometimes under one desk
for like five minutes, waiting for this guy to move
slowly back and forth. Eventually, Okay, I'm gonna creep around
the corner. I think I have a bit of space
if I'm doing that, and I've been alive for like
twenty twenty five minutes trying to get through this one
sequence to just like hit some dial on the other
side of this area and then I die. To me,
like it takes all of the tension out of that
whole sequence when I have to do it again, And
so I feel like that's like the perfect It's almost
like surfing or something like. That's like the perfect balance
that a horror game needs is like to keep your
rate on the edge of the whole time, but for
the bad guy to never actually kill you, but to
always just feel like you're about to die. And I
just feel like sometimes this game is a bit too
hard for me, and that's where I dropped it down
on the difficulty scale, and that's where it was a
bit more. It was still very intense, but it was
just way less annoying having to redo sequences, I guess,
because yeah, sometimes just with how slow you're crawling, and
it feels like the only way to get through a
scenario is to like slowly crawl under a desk, wait
for five minutes for them to walk away, go under
another desk, wait another five minutes. It's like that kind
of thing. Becomes annoying when you don't have a quick
save button and you just have to rely on the
save machines. I don't know, have you. Have you kind
of found that in your time as all at all?
Or am I kind of no?
Speaker 2: I've I've found that a few times, and I completely agree.
I think that when you're yeah, when you're trying to
get from point A to point B and then get
back like, it's so aggravating when there's no proper pattern
like other games and bosses have, and so all you're
really doing is if you try to get to your destination,
you die, and you do it again, Well, the scenario
is completely different, and you could spend it, maybe not
as long, maybe longer, And that's what really is annoying,
I would say. And I can appreciate the fact that
if you go back into when you're trying to do
it again, the situation has completely changed, it's not the
same as before, and that stress factor comes back. But
I don't like the idea that it is just yeah,
twenty five minutes goes by and then your last save
is at one of those consoles, which I think it's
a very clever way of implementing like a save feature.
I think it could be a little more refined, but
just the concept just going up to this key card
thing and like punching out and that's your save.
Speaker 3: I just like how that that is. I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that idea because it's contextualized within the world,
which I always like when things like that are happening.
When One thing I love in general about this game
is like there's very little UI. Like obviously you can
pull up like your equipment thing, or you can pull
up your map and your menu, but other than that's
like it's just your health bar at the bottom, Like
that's pretty much it. So I like that it's pre minimalist.
I actually tried to go and turn that off even
because I just wanted to, like just it's such a
beautiful game. I just want an empty screen, like I
do that usually when I'm playing like Dishonored or other
immersive games like this. Apparently Nightmare Difficulty does remove all
of that UI stuff completely. So it's weird that there
isn't an option to just manually turn off the health
bar visual because like you don't really need it, like
usually you're dead or alive, Like it doesn't matter if
you have half health there or not. But yeah, I
agree with you. I think the save machines are really
great visually. I love that they have like a five
second delay for all the times that I wish this
game was quicker or you know, taking less time out
of the day just to do a basic thing. I
love that that takes like three to five seconds wait
for that low's lights to click down before it officially saves,
because that's feeling of tension is often there, and it
means that you can't just like we're up to a
save station quickly cheese it. If an alien's in the room,
you like, if he'll kill you in that amount of time.
And I love that has the little warning there too,
of like hostiles nearby. I was like, you know what,
I don't even care most of the time, I'm just
gonna go for it anyway, even if I've made a
bad save point here. It never bit me in the boat, thankfully.
But I could see a scenario where you saved at
the wrong time where whenever time you would load back in,
there would be a guy like right behind you or
something like that. But I got pretty lucky in that way.
Speaker 2: There's a few situations where it would be reloading back in,
and I just get so far straighted, like okay, well
you know what, I know where the alien is in
the situation, so I'm just not gonna run, but I'm
gonna just walk straight to where I gotta go and
just kind of like unfortunately, I guess not fortunately unfortunately
because I'm not indulging in how the game is supposed
to be played because I'm getting frustrated. But I still
got to enjoy it the first time until I died,
and the second time until I die, and so now
it's just like, Okay, I'm just gonna like cut and
run or cutting fast walk to where I got to go.
Speaker 3: And it sucks that the.
Speaker 2: Game kind of can push you to that point. I
shouldn't have to. It should be able to be.
Speaker 3: Replayable and still enjoyable.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing I didn't realize really until like very
late in to play through, and then when I was
watching some YouTube videos that confirmed it is that in
most games like this, if you want to be completely
silent as you move, you gotta crawl or crouch whatever.
But in this game, like walking is completely quiet. As
far as I can tell, it doesn't make any more
noise then croaching. It's just if you're sprinting or you know,
throwing equipment, shooting bullets. Obviously those things all make sound,
but like sprinting is the obvious thing, but like, truly
that can be the difference sometimes is just walking from
one like hiding area to a next rather than just
relying on that crouch. That was something that took me
a while to realize because I'm just so conditioned by
like every other horror survival horror game like this, like
the crouch is the only reliable way to be like
one hundred percent quiet. So that was something I had
to learn too, and I'm sure that would have helped
me a lot in some of those sequences when I
was really like really tight on timing. But it's because
I was literally for the first five or six hours
of this game, I was probably crouched ninety percent of
that because I was so terrified. Even like before that
the xenomorph was introduced, I was still just so terrified
knowing that it's out there somewhere.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's moments where you think you're clear and
you will be crouching and you're going out into the hallway.
And this is something that bothers me because if that
alien is super far away doesn't see you, but you
see him, and then I think, okay, well now I
got to crouch back.
Speaker 3: You can't even walk.
Speaker 2: I mean, if that alien decides to do his little
fast walk spur thing, he's got you, And that really
bothers me because you could be in a hallway where
there's no accessible hiding spot nearby and you just got
to crouch because you hope he doesn't hear you, but.
Speaker 3: He does his fast walk.
Speaker 2: He hasn't seen you, but he does his fast walk
down the hallway and then he just happens to see you,
and then you're dead. Like it's it's tricky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've yeah, I don't know. I found the if
I was ever caught by the alien, like visually spotted,
and I didn't flamethrower him, I was dead. That was
the only possible way. I never I'm trying to think
if I even ever ran to a elevator when he
was after me and was able to hit the button.
Other than like, I think there's like a scripted sequence
or two that have a situation like that. I find so, yeah,
but like otherwise if I if I was spotted, I
was dead for sure. So I don't know. I never
got to a seque where I was able to run
away into a room, like maybe I made a sound
and he started to coming from with you, but like
he never actually spotted me. But I found like, yeah,
if I was visually spotted, I was, I was. Is
that what you're saying though, Like the like walking you're
more visible than crouching. I guess would that be maybe
a difference between those.
Speaker 2: Two then well, not even being spotted, because like you're
moving down the corridor and all of a sudden you
just see him down down the ways down the corridor,
you see you poke around the corner and he's down there,
but he doesn't see you.
Speaker 3: So you do a U turn.
Speaker 2: You're going back, and you're crouching or you're walking, you're
not making sound. Is the main thing is you're trying
to get to a hiding spot because you got to
go down this corridor and he's blocking it. Yes, but
he does his fast walk and just walks up to you,
but he doesn't know you're there. He's just doing his
random fast walk thing. But then he sees you and
then you try to run, but he's gonna get you.
Speaker 3: So there's there's that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that'll happen. Let's talk about a little more
of the because you're talking about the save stations there,
which are cool. I think in general, like the tech
in this game, I love it visually because you know,
it's very much set in that all the alien tech
in general is like very bulky tech, very old school,
really like you know, what the seventies thought the future
would look like. But I feel like this game, you know,
since there's so many tools, more tools that you're using,
I feel like the like visual style of it is
like really really interesting. I love the motion tracker, which
you know I had in my hands so much of
this game, you know, because that's like all all the
only way you can truly know what's around the next corner.
But even just like the computers, the terminals, like scrolling
through them, the different buttons, I really enjoyed that stuff.
It was like very tactile, uh, the like the torch
that you're using, the different the like wrench that you're
using to crack those like locks off the door. Uh.
And then even just down to like all the all
the equipment that you're using. Just like the visual design
of it. I thought all that stuff was like absolutely
perfect and so cool and both like it really cool
in compact but also like bulky and clunky at the
same time. It has that like there's the perfect needle
on that mm hmm.
Speaker 2: I think that they've been able to really examine the
the tech that existed in the A I guess Alien
One and Alien specifically, while obviously the other films are
around at this point. I'm glad that they didn't really
focus on all that other stuff. They just kept it
pretty pretty simple, and there's just something settling, I guess
about seeing this advanced technology. But it's it's like a
few decades old at the same time and how it appears,
and I can really it's comforting. I like looking at
it and utilizing that tech. It's it's nice and I
can just appreciate the attention to detail, because Yeah, when
you're walking into certain rooms, like you got the what
was it the room where you're talking to mother an alien,
they got the same thing here, Like that room is
super cool. Yeah, using every one of like the sevastopool
U link stations is always cool. Going through the different messages.
There's just so many neat little things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was even a great touch that
the computers the terminals on Sevastopol are slightly different, at
least visually from like what is the name what is
the name of that dear elect ship that you go
on to with Marlowe and Taylor the other tailor alien
isolation Taylor, I forget the name of it. It's like
the I probably wrote it down somewhere in my notes here,
but you have to go to that dear elect ship,
and the terminals on there have like different loading screens
because they're a different brand of computer, right, or a
different operating software because they're not from that they're not
part of Sevastopol, the Sevastilink thing. So I thought it
was just like that attention to detail too. I probably
probably wouldn't have caught if they had just used the
same terminals, but the fact that they did something different
did stand out to me. It was a good, like
little detail there that they decided to do something like that.
I don't think too like the the hacker that you have.
You're doing all sorts of hacking in this game, and
I like that there's like five or six different hacking
micro game minigames that you're doing just to like mix
it up, and all of them are pretty simple. I
like that not a single one of them is tutorialized,
and so the first time you see any particular one,
it's like, what am I supposed to do here? But
then you eventually just kind of figured it out intuitively.
I thought that was really well designed, and I like
that there's just just enough variety there for it to work,
even though this game is quite long and you're seeing
a lot of these things. But it was the the.
Speaker 2: Hacking one where you have the uh you have to
pick where you put the corner around the square of
the screen, and then you got to pick the three
symbols when there's enemies nearby. It is the most stressful
freaking thing ye too.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is definitely a game where some I feel like,
even in BioShock, if you're hacking, maybe it would like
pause the world around you, you know, while you're like
in that minigame, but not here. Everything is still happening
in real time, even when you're like crafting and stuff.
It's like one of the tooltips that will pop up
is if you don't do some crafting, go find a
quiet corner to do it there too. I like, I
like the crafting in this game is very simple. It's
really just like, you know, there's like seven or eight
materials that you're collecting through through the UH space station,
and you just got to kind of them into place.
But one thing I really liked about it is that
you know, once you're you have to fill in like
maybe five five pieces hit craft. But even if you
let's say you have the maximum amount, you can still
fill in all those things. You can like preload them
in and that way, it's like it almost gives you
like bonus inventory space so that when you have used
your other ones, you can rebuild that next one with
like the materials that you've already preloaded in there. I
thought it was a pretty cool idea. So I don't know,
I liked I liked the crafting. That's not really minigame,
but I like that system. I think it worked well.
Even if once again I was not using a lot
of things that I was crafting, I pretty much always
had I don't know if I ever threw a ma
Ali tall cocktail in this game. I always just had
the maximum mount in my inventory, I was using the
the EMP blast to slow down if I was ever,
you know, too many working joes around me here. That
was kind of my my go to technique. But yeah,
I don't I don't think I threw a noisemaker either,
to be honest, So I definitely cheaped out on some
of those resources, but that was cool. I don't know
about you, Taylor, but I think maybe the scariest thing
for me in this game was fucking doors and vents
auto opening and just that sound effect that plays whenever
you get like somewhat near a door and it begins
to auto open. It would just jump scared me so
many times because it's crouching, being super slow, there's no sounds,
no music going on, and then just like a huge
blast noise as the door is opening in front of me,
because you never know, like maybe there's an alien on
the other side of that. Did I get close enough
to open it? Or is there a guy or working
Joe and alien whatever it is, coming in through that
door on the other side.
Speaker 3: M hmm, yeah, I know that.
Speaker 2: I think the events are very, very freaky, and I
love how too. It's just like then strummles vents from
the movie, just how it's like s opens up and yeah,
those are tricky.
Speaker 3: And the fact that they blended into the walls. You
can just walk by them, don't even know that they're there.
Speaker 2: And half the time with some vents, I just overlook
them where the alien can come through. I've spent so
much time in this one room doing something, and I
can see my track are the the you can hear
the alien bump around the vents, but he's what's.
Speaker 1: On the track, or they're still visible even if they're
not actually physically in the space, but in like the imaginary.
Speaker 2: Events, yes, exactly, And they may not even be a
part of this this mission. They may not even appear,
but they're just they're always just lurking around. So I
thought that was just the case here, and I was
just doing what I was doing and gonna get to
the next area where these these synthetics were. And so
I leave my room and then go into the other room.
And while I'm in the other room, you just hear
that or that like thud and then that like that
that hissing, and I turn around like holy shit, Like
I didn't know that he could come into that room
for the ceiling so you hide and whatnot. So I
can appreciate all the different spots that they've they've placed vents,
access points and stuff.
Speaker 1: Can can the aliens go through the because they have
their like vertical events in the roof and you can't
go in those vents. But can they go through like
those circular door vents that you crawl around in.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've I've like, if you.
Speaker 1: Go into one, do they chase you? Like what? I
never actually had that scenario pop up. I thought they
could go through those ones, and I'm pretty sure I played,
but I might have made that up.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I've encountered one in there before and
I had to flame them out of my way.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, interesting, Yeah, I never never quite encountered that.
Speaker 2: There's certain ones that I don't think they can go in. Obviously,
it's for like story reasons. You know, you're you're not
gonna encounter one in a certain area if you're going
to a ladder and then you're in tight little like
ventilation system and up another ladder through the floor or whatnot.
But I think those ones with the yeah, the specifically
the circular ones that open up, I'm pretty sure that
you can get in there, right.
Speaker 1: Cool. Okay, let's take our first break here. We're gonna
go into those circular events. We'll be right back after
this break. Okay, we are back. Do you want to
talk more game plan out? Do you want to jump
into story? Do you want to talk Where do you
want to go next?
Speaker 3: I'd love to get into some story.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's do it. So this game, I guess, takes
place in between would it be between alien and Aliens
or between Aliens and three? It would be between those
two one and two? Yeah, yeah, And so the story here.
You play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley.
You are an engineer on a ship that is going
to retrieve a they call it a black box, which
has some information from the Nostromo about pretty much just
what happened, and that's where you're going and that that
black box is there at Sevastopol. You get invited along
to go to Sevastopol, and then as you're going there,
you realize that shit has gone down at Sevastole. This
place is not in good shape, and that's what leads
into the whole setting of the game. So, yeah, what
do you think about I guess playing as this character
kind of that being the choice the setup for the story,
and I don't know, what do you think about the
location in general of Sevastopol being the kind of setting here.
Speaker 3: I love it, I really really do.
Speaker 2: I love how big the space and I love how
no words it's huge, no war is really safe, and
it just feels like a it's a space city essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any space station that needs a tram system to
get around, you know, is pretty freaking huge.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And even though it is so huge, the fact
that it gets in the name, you feel isolated, you
feel confined, And I really like that it takes some
of the best parts of Alien and just throws it
in here. And I think that's again why I'm looking
forward to Romulus, because Romulus feels like it's got this
kind of similar situation where yeah, you're this person's going
to the space station and it's not good on the
space station. And to pull Amenda Ripley as a character,
I think that's great. It's something that is new. People
are unfamiliar with this character, but the character has major
ties to our former character that everyone loves and has
followed along.
Speaker 3: So that's great.
Speaker 2: Keeps the fans and the community kind of attached and
have some stake in it, so I can appreciate that.
And yeah, I just love how she's called upon just
to go and like get some information from her mom
and then the Stromo. I think that's awesome because no
one knows what happened to this ship in the fifty seven.
Speaker 3: Years, I think it is.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of time to play with and I'm
just I'm glad that they did, and I think it's
cool that they took advantage of going to Like that
was a big surprise. When I was playing the game.
I did not think that was gonna happen. I thought,
we're just getting an alien on a ship and we're
just gonna be trying to evade and survive and that's
all it's gonna be. But that that definitely was a
big surprise. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know who it would be, like
on the rights holder side of it, who like own
the IP for this, whose decision would be to say, here,
we're gonna give like because I guess this game is canon,
I don't know if that's really been established by you know,
like the studios, like.
Speaker 3: You could canon it.
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's there's Yeah, there's nothing that would
make me feel like it's not can It's not like
any of these like all of the character here are
new for this, and there's obviously mentions of Whale and
New Tani, as there always is in these things. But yeah,
like to me, it totally feels like a cannon experience
and just going through here too, Like when they were
making this game, they were given just huge hard drives
fuld of terabytes of information that had like original concept
art and footage, information about everything like creation of like
all those other movies. So they had so much to
work with there. And so but I wonder going into
this if it was like the studio pitching like here's
the setting we want to go time era, or if
it was like the rights holder of like here's where
you should maybe go with it. Here's like a good
good spot to be and the kind of way like
Star Wars has like that period where they're just like, oh, yeah,
we'll just put all our shows and movies in that
kind of dark period between these movies. Right. So I
think it's an interesting choice, but I think it's cool
to play as Amanda Ripley in here. I guess it's
maybe jump into the end a little bit, but it's
it's a little weird the way it's it's left off,
and maybe we'll save that for later in terms of
like what could have been for a squel or what
could be. It's never never too late, you know, like
they've gone on to make other things.
Speaker 2: But I can really appreciate that they got Sigourney we
were to come back actually in voice.
Speaker 3: Her lines couldn't.
Speaker 1: Tell if it was actually her, honestly, Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: She she did the DLC stuff and then yeah her
the whole voice message like to Amanda.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was just that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I think Savestipol's a really fun location.
It's something different too, Like we've we've had various ground locations,
We've had a lot of space ships, but to have
like just a massive space station like this is kind
of a new, unique thing. And I think it makes
sense for a video game where you're gonna be spending
a lot more time here and you kind of need
larger areas to go through, and I think it is
it is cool that you are doing a lot of
backtracking through areas over and over again, so it feels
like you're kind of know, you're seeing locations at different
points in time, especially at the end, you're going through
some areas that you were at near the start of
the game and just seeing them kind of like burning down,
like just deteriorating as the events of the game have
been going on. Is pretty cool. But I think maybe
the most interesting part for me about the space station
is that it's like a differ and company that created
and owned this ship, because we're so used to like
a lot of our stuff being oh yeah, this is
like a Whalen Utani piece, or it's you know, a
sponsored project being sent out by Whaling Utani, so it's
always geared with that tech or the Whaling new Tani androids.
So I think it's especially cool that this ship is
owned by siegsin is that company, and so that's where
you get like it explains why their tech can look
different than some of the stuff in the movies, while
still of course being inspired and having that same era
generally speaking, but in terms of like the user interface
or the existence of the working Joe's and being such
a different type of Android than we're used to where
in the movies it's always like we're trying to make
these things as lifelike as possible, and then maybe even
like by Covenant, like okay, we made them to life,
Like let's go back and make them unlifelike again, as
like take away some of that free will, you know,
that's a big part of that movie. And how that's
always like a thing in the movies is like ooh
that ca It's like a huge reveal when someone you
find out that they're an android for the first time,
but in here it's like obvious because they just look freaky.
They look like they're not intentionally trying to hide that
they are humans. They all look you know, the same
as well. They have kind of the creepy eyes that
blare through in the dark dark rooms that you're going through,
and they're just a lot more of like they feel
like a rumba, you know, like a really complex room,
like they're just going around doing basic tasks. They have
their pre program lines that don't sound very human, like
they sound like they're generated by a computer and all that.
But yeah, just across the board seeing like the different
tech and like a company that is competitor Whaling New Tawny,
but it's clearly not nearly as successful because obviously that's
like the biggest megacorp ever, right, And so to have
like a ship that's kind of breaking down in certain
ways or is not quite as tight and buttoned up
and polished as a Whaling U Tawny one is a
really cool direction to go, and I think they completely
nailed it in that regard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I always get a kick when Amanda finds out
that whaling Town actually bought the station, like I think
the day before she gets there. Yeah, ah, which this
is the cracks me up. I think that was when
she was actually speaking not to mother, but the similar
equivalent scene and she's seeing like the protocol and the
same thing with Alan Or it's like, oh yeah, everything
comes second, protect the Zeno, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Everything else is it's pretty by the book's alien stuff.
It's really the same story that we've seen many times
over because of that element of it.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I think that that was a
cool twist as well. That Yeah, as you mentioned, like
the current state of the ship is that it was
being decommissioned. It was gonna be torn apart, and that's
where like it kind of explains why there's a lot
of doors and things that aren't really operational when you're
playing the game already, and like there's certain sections you
can't go into. But it makes sense because like, Okay,
those areas have already been kind of checked off the list,
so to speak. They've been closed down, they're done, and
it's kind of just the ship the shuttle kind of
slowly being shut down piece by piece, and that's kind
of the state you're in, even if whaling Towny just
purchased it, but they don't really care about maintaining it
or bringing it back to its former glory. They're just
there strictly to get that xenomorph goodness. They just want
to get that that tech down so they can do
whatever they want to do with it. So I think
that's a really cool time period too, and that helps
them make it feel like a more real place, makes
it feel more immersive because it kind of has this
history to it between like these two companies owning it too.
It's kind of an interesting angle to go for because
I can't really recall other companies that you see there's
always like they just refer to it as the company,
right a lot in the Alien franchise. Yes, so it's
cool to just, yeah, see what a competitor's like. And yeah,
what you would you think about the working Joe's You
had an interesting comment about them earlier, so I'm curious
what you think about them, just kind of relative to
the androids were used to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that they make them look
the way they are. I think it's it's fitting because
it helps you because you again, you you're crafting things.
You have different weaponry, and you need to know the situation.
You need to know what you have to use and
what things. In this case, yes, stumpatons are really handy,
but yeah, there's just there's certain situations where it's really stressful.
But I don't find them to be as stressful as aliens.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: These things are much more pattern based, so you can
definitely map yourself out when you're trying to maneuver around them.
Speaker 3: So I can appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't think I've had a situation yet
where like I've had the alien and the synthetics kind
of meat hand in hand.
Speaker 3: Have you?
Speaker 1: I think the alien ignores them? Mm.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: I think they well, I guess they kind of ignore
each other, so to speak, because at that point, especially yeah,
when the robots kind of go rogue and they're trying
to hunt you down and just kill I also can't
think of a time when a robot is directly trying
to kill another human. I guess there's at one point
where like, because.
Speaker 2: What's the character's name, because he, like Samuel s. Yeah,
he beats the shit out of it, right, the.
Speaker 1: Other androids, so he's but that android isn't even trying
to kill him, I think, so. I don't know if
the I don't know, if they're just rope I don't
I don't know. I'm guessing their program to kill everyone
or take anyone out, but specifically your character is on
that list in terms of being a target for them.
But yeah, I can't recall a room that has both
the synthetics and the aliens. They're kind of used in
different sequences, like the robots early on before they go rogue,
but then kind of before you introduce to the xenomorph,
and then the biggest sequence when you're going against them
is in that sequence when you've jettisoned the one Xenomorph
off the station, which is kind of a weird sequence
because like, for that next two hours, even though you
are fighting robots, I've found like there was almost no
tension in the game at that point, and I was
just like, Okay, I know he's gonna come back.
Speaker 3: Oh he thought he's gonna come back.
Speaker 1: Oh. I'm like, I know this game is twenty hours long,
and I know I'm ten hours and i know there's
a zero chance that I've just defeated the alien, so
Corys is gonna come back.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's where I just felt like, Okay, I go
like two hours now of just like mess around finding
the girl, but which you know, there was some interesting
stealth kind of challenges there. I think it was a
bit different in terms of like, Okay, they can have
more of a they can have more of a cloud
video game stealth sequence, Like they have a destination, they
walk from this machine, they stand there for five seconds,
they turn around, they walk to that machine, and like
it has those video game paths, you know, the pathing,
whereas that xenomorph is much more unpredictable with his movements.
But I found that sequence to be like, Okay, I
know what we're doing here. I get it, but like this,
there's no surprise here. There's obviously no chance that the
Xenymorph's obviously completely gone. I mean that one is gone
and doesn't come back. But then you just find out
there are potentially hundreds more line bowl a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I'm sorry, I was just gonna say a
few missions, like before you jettison him. I don't know
if many people catch on to it, but you'll start
to find bodies that are all been like chest bursters.
Speaker 3: Their chests are all popped, and it's like, well, I
know there's more than one alien here.
Speaker 2: So that kind of derails it from when you eject
the one to thinking like, okay, well I did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, that's an interesting way that they connect
this to the original movie. As you mentioned sequence with Marlow.
Marlow's a guy who came from that. I wish I
had the name of that other ship. I know, I
wrote it down somewhere. Oh, the Anissidora. I did write
it down. That's the other ship that had gone down
to give me the name of the planet again for
me fo. Yeah, they went down there because they they
found the distress signal that was being given off. Marlow
is the one I believe that turns off the distress signal.
And as they're going through there, one of the crew
members of the Nissidora get gets hit by a face hugger,
and so it's it's, yeah, it's really cool to play
through that sequence on that planet, and that feels like
a bit of a retread of like, Okay, we're doing
a sequence from the first movie, which is funny that
they did it there in a bit of a different way,
and then like the DLC is literally just replaying a
section from that first movie. But I thought that was
a really really cool sequence other than like, okay, this
spacesuit whenever you're in this thing, you're so freaking slow
and it takes a long time, but the atmosphere was
so strong. They're like really strong gusts of winds you
can barely see. And then like you'll get to certain
sequences when it's like sets up like a very interesting
visual and then you're like going into that into the dungeons,
so to speak, from the first movie. And so that's
how the the alien gets brought back to the space station.
So it's cool that they're kind of following in the
same footsteps of what is set up from that first movie,
and maybe that would be like the only explanation of
how like this alien kind of spread again through this
space station. So I think that was a really cool
way to connect it. I think that really worked for me.
The Anissidora part, the bridge, I guess yeah.
Speaker 3: I everything about that was fantastic.
Speaker 2: I was head over heels and we're going LG four
twenty six. They're like ship and even just the little
nods like, oh, it looks like someone was dragged here
these tracks. Oh, we're not the first ones here. Obviously
the Nostromo was here.
Speaker 3: But they didn't report.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, well they wipe the beacon so that
they can kind of claim it. But then them wiping
the beacon while no one else is gonna find it,
and it makes sense they're taking advantage of.
Speaker 3: They're taking advantage.
Speaker 2: Of something that was pre existing in Aliens, where in
the first Alien movie you have the Nostromo detecting this
signal and going down there to check it out. But
in Aliens you have the colonists on the planet. The
colonists never went to go check out this beacon or
even go there. They weren't going to that location until
they were directed there by the company, and that's something
that's not an adlicient scene that's in the main movie.
Speaker 3: So now it makes sense none of the.
Speaker 2: Colonists knew that it was there because you have this
crew going in and they deactivated the beacon. So it's
fun that they've been able to actually build upon that
pre established lore with this universe.
Speaker 3: I could appreciate that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, once you are going down that repel and
you just get that like panoramic shot, it's like.
Speaker 3: Holy crap, and it looks so cool.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you see your team just like walking in
through the eggs and it's just like, oh god, and yeah,
there's just that classic like id idiot mentality. The egg
opens up and they're like sticking their heads right in
there pretty much like jeez.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when they know that like something bad happened
here already or something unsure, something serious. Yeah, Marlow. Marlow's
an interesting character him, along with everyone else, Like no
one's really in this game a lot other than like
obviously the character you play as. It's just like you'll
get introduced to character, like you know, you have your
team at the start of the game, and then you
very quickly get displaced from them, and then you'll find
them again, but then it's like, Okay, I gotta go
do the next task, so I leave them behind, and
so you end up spending like, I don't know, less
than a half an hour with them across the whole game.
It feels like they don't have a whole lot of
spoken lines, especially when the girl that you're with, Taylor
is like knocked out for half the game do is
You don't really get to interact with her a whole lot.
But Marlowe, I think it's it's cool. It's fun that
he is trying his hardest to prevent the spread of
this thing, and from waylay Newtani getting any of that information.
Speaker 3: He's got the Allen Ripley mentality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I do think that. Like his ending sequence
where he's like, oh, they already took my wife. I
don't care. It's like a bit of like, Okay, you're
just trying to get me to like care for this
guy a little bit more than he gets knocked out,
and that's like the end of his story. It doesn't
really stick to landing, but Honestly, I don't think there's
really any characters that are very successful in this game
for me, even like Amanda, like there's not much to her.
It's nice when she gets the moment where she actually
gets to hear the message from her mom, but I'm
not totally in love with that character after playing this game.
She doesn't really have a ton of voice acting, even
though she is the protagonist of the game. Like most
of the time, it's like maybe she's talking on a
radio with someone, but even then that's like very few
sections of the game where you're actually patched in with
someone over the radio, or maybe you are, but they're
not like actively having conversations. It's more just like, Okay,
Samuel's where it are? I go, now, oh, there should
be a red button with like a blue wire. You
gonna touch that, And it's like very like factual, like
here's what we're gonna do here. But yeah, what did
you think about the other characters? You have Samuels and Taylor,
who are the two that you go on the ship with.
Samuel's being the android. I forget what Taylor's role is
a medical person. I don't think maybe she is because
I remember she gets like injured, and then it's like.
Speaker 3: You gotta go go find the Yeah, you gotta.
Speaker 1: Go find forget what her role was on the on
the ship, and then you're counting a couple other people.
But I don't know, there was no really powerful characters
in here for me.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2: Remember much with with Taylor aside from her her and
Marlowe and then Taylor like freaking out and trying to
like stop Marlow's self destruction thing going on, and then
she just gets struck by lightning bolt and that's the
game over for her. Uh So they they kind of
execute them pretty quickly. I can't remember the name of
the other woman who's she's near the end, she gets killed.
Speaker 1: She's helping you. She's like on the ship and she's
coordinating with you to open up the bridge whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she getting riled off screen by the Zeno.
Speaker 1: Similar thing happens to Ricardo, who's another guy who you
kind of encounter when you kind of get like a
part already together. Halfway through the game, when you've reconnected
with Samuels and Taylor, she's still knocked out, but you've
connected with like I think one of the security officers,
and then there's other martial seas, yeah, the Marshall. There's
other random NPCs there, and one of them is Ricardo,
who's like kind of just a random guy. But then
like later on in the game, everyone's killed except for him,
or they're gone. Well they are killed, you just don't
really know specifically. Some of them you do know. And
then he's on the radio with you a lot, helping
you through different sequences. And then he also gets killed
off screen two by a face hugger takes him out
at some point too, So I don't know. I didn't
really care who, like any particular person was taken out,
with the exception of maybe Samuel's. I think he was
the most interesting. He probably had the most dialogue too.
I like the idea of what he was doing there too,
of how he was trying to alter something because obviously
he's an andro He's trying to go into some machine
and like alter his something or rather I don't know
what the science is behind it, so that he could
communicate with Apollo, who is the core of the ship
that runs the system, and therefore could kind of deactivate
the working Joe's from their aggressive state that they're in,
but then he was when he was in that machine,
it just did not work at all, and I'm just
killing him right then and there. So he had a
very unfortunate death as well. But I think he was
probably the most I don't know, top dog, I guess,
most interesting character out of the rest of the crew.
Speaker 2: It's got an alien resurrection vibe sort of when you
have oh, why can't remember her name? Wenona's character thank you, Yes,
that's synthetic, and she basically connected to the ship and
was able to have the ship like change its algorithms,
like change up like locked doors, trap the guy, and
then all that kind of stuff, which her case is
much more successful than than his.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was an interesting part. When you
one of the missions in the game, you're going down
to the the Apollo Core, which is like the brain
of the space station, and just compared to like I'm
sure within like one of those space ships that were
in and like one of the movies, that core is,
you know, it's pretty small room to get the job done,
but here it's like this huge thing and it like
wobbles around and it's like all these layers of security,
which makes sense because it's such a huge space station,
and that's where some of those reveals happen. I believe
that's when the wailing U tawnis well, there's there's terminals
that will say like, oh, whaling new Tony bought the ship.
People are talking about it. But that's when you get
to you know, punch in your questions whatever. I mean,
it's a cut scene, but still that's when you're finding
out more and you get some of those plot twists
kind of happening there too, when you're trying to deactivate
the work in Joe's which of course you don't end
up doing there too. So that was a that was
an interesting sequence as well. Yeah, let's see other story stuff.
So I guess you mentioned this too, where Yeah, at
some point on the Nissidora, on that ship, that one
lady got face hugged, got impregnated, and then she comes
back to the ship. Presumably that from there is what
spreads to everyone else on Sevastopol. And as you were
talking about, eventually you go down to that sequence. I
think it's right after the Apollo sequence. Actually, good timing
on that when you go beneath Apollo down that big
ladder and that's when you see, oh, there is a
huge encampment of your alien eggs everywhere. The walls are
all filled out with the nasty goose stuff, and as
you mentioned, you never actually see the queen, but we
have to assume there is a queen somewhere on this
space station. That sequence is really difficult, really freaky as well.
Every corner, every sound, your motion tracker is near useless
because it's just given you random pings all over the place.
There's people like you know, glued into the walls, and
you can still loot them, which I find a bit dark.
You could be like, oh, I'll take that revolver amm'
off this guy's corpse who's stuck to the wall here. Yeah,
that sequence is really hard because that's also when you're,
i think the first time you're encountering multiple xenomorphs at
the same time. On top of that, there's face huggers
in there, and you have to do a lot of stuff.
You got to hit a lot of computers, hit a
lot of switches, so you have tasks on top of
just trying to evade these things. So I found that
sequence to be really difficult, but it was also of
course really cool because it's just something different, and it's
it's I guess I hadn't really thought about it too
much because to that point, I assume you're fighting multiple xenomorphs,
but it could be that it's just one xenomorph on
the ship. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of tricks to you. I think it's
a it's a really really good sequence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this when you see all the eggs and you
have to think, okay, so.
Speaker 3: What is the set up here?
Speaker 2: Now? Some people have hypothesized that maybe they're just pulling
off remember the deleted scene in the first Alien where
z you know, takes the body, turns the body into
an egg, and then the egg right face huger. People
have thought maybe that's the case, and then other people
are thinking no.
Speaker 3: I think the majority of people.
Speaker 2: Believe that it was a queen, And there might even
been some talk about that from the devs where they
didn't want to include a queen and make it feel
like there's going to be a boss fight, but the
notion of there being a queen, it is a queen
somewhere on the station.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can I can respect they're kind of holding
back there and not not hitting like every trope or
everything that's been done before in an alien movie, and
I guess just like not doing that thing isn't isn't
a whole lot different. But I don't know. For me,
it's like totally fine, like just because of how it's established,
how big this space station is, right if it was
once again a space ship from one of the movies
where it's like, I don't know, even the Prometheus ship,
pretty freaking huge ship, you know, But I would I
still I don't think i'd believe that if you played
through a Prometheus game and you were just on this
one ship the whole time, that you wouldn't bump into
the queen at some point just because of the size
of it. But based on how big this thing is,
I guess you could say too, like you spend a
lot of time down in that reactor core area, and
that's presumably where the queen would be, so maybe you
should should bump into her because you did. I don't
know you were in that sequence of it, but I
don't know. I guess I guess I would subscribe to
the theory that there is a queen somewhere and you
just don't see her. But that is another good interesting
theory too. But I guess is there any any other
alien material that Leada's believed that that's possible, because that is,
of course, as you mentioned, like a deleted scene from
the first one.
Speaker 3: Yes, what do you believe true?
Speaker 1: Do you believe that's possible without a queen for these
things to spread to that you know, vast amount of numbers.
Speaker 3: My last note on the queen. Some people have said that.
Speaker 2: When you are overloading the cores on the hive that
you can actually hear queen sounds, just audio cues of
like queen screeches, which a queen does have a very
significant and like recognizable tone. So it's up to interpretation.
But now if you're talking about other ways that we
can get a queen on here, if we're not going
the pread alien route, the highbred and we're talking just alien.
In the twenty ten Alien versus Preader game, there was
a xenomorph that you know, classic just chess burster, regular alien,
and the queen was eliminated. And so the Hive always
needs a queen, you know, the Dutchman must have a
captain kind of thing. So the Ali whilan Utani captures
the alien because the alien was running around is the
alien's name was six and then it starts to trip
out when the queen dies, and it starts to like
seize up on the ground, and so Wini captures it,
and then this is the alien entering its next life
cycle stage to become a new queen.
Speaker 1: And Okay, yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's many bees do as well.
Speaker 1: But I'm just totally made it up. But I feel
like that's what they would do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that's the case. If the queen dies,
then I think the bees follow suit surely after. I
think that the bean, the bean the queen bee lays
a specific replacement, and I think sometimes they can even
like fight each other for dominance too.
Speaker 3: That's a whole other can of worm.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it's different anatomy on Like it's not
just like one gets a crown on its head and
it's declared queen, like it has different capabilities, right, So,
but that would make sense because considering how quickly these
things go from like a chessburster to a full grown xenomorph,
Like they grow quickly, and you know a lot of
the time, like when they're killing people that we see
in the movies. It's not like they're eating all that
people to get like matter in their bodies. They have
stuff to grow from, like nutrients, Like they're just killing
people because they want to more so, and they can
just naturally grow on their own. So it wouldn't surprise
me if one, if one can go from the face
hugger size to a xenomorph size, and like, I don't know,
a few hours, it wouldn't surprise me that in a
few hours or I don't know, a couple of days,
even which timeline would work here for the Sebastopol stuff
to go from like a regular xenomorph size to a
queen size.
Speaker 2: There's again, there's so many of the books I haven't read,
and we haven't seen Preatorian aliens any of the live
action at least to my knowledge, but they've been featured
in yeah, Alien Versus Predator twenty ten and then Aliens
Colonial Marines. I think Fireteam Elite as well. So there's
a type of alien that's existed for a while. They're
like the royal guards of of the aliens, and so
I think the kind of thought is that some xenomorphs
that are born are part of a caste system, so
they have that DNA pre entered in them for them
to become like the Queen or evolve into like the next.
Speaker 1: Any moment, they can just flip that switch essentially.
Speaker 3: I guess, so yeah, when when needed. Yeah, mhmm.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Let's see, I'm trying to think about other story
stuff that happens here, so I guess, go ahead, you
have something I was just.
Speaker 2: Gonna say, Like, it freaked me out when Amanda got
like strung up onto like the Zeno wall. I thought like, oh,
she impregnated, Like, that's not where you want to be.
You don't want to be unconscious and wake up in
the wall because.
Speaker 1: It's, yeah, that's surrounded by eggs and creepy noises and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, jumping kind of towards the end. Well, actually,
one more thing since we were just talking about like
the reactor core in that area. I think that is
visually one of the most fascinating areas in here because
you go down to the reactor courts, like you have
to go down and down and down through all these
different levels and then it's just like this huge empty
space where it's not outside but it feels like it.
Obviously you can like breathe down there. So it's obviously
inside and has it an atmosphere of some sort, but
it's like these huge electric machines and you yeah, like
I said, it's so big you can't see the walls
or anything, and it's just these massive, like electric explosions happening,
and that's like how it is supposed to function. And
it's like raining in there, so it has like its
own atmosphere and that's like somehow the power system for
the whole ship. I don't understand it, but it's so cool,
and like that area was just so there's just an
epicness table a scale that I found really impressive, and yeah,
it was. It was terrifying in its own right. And
of course you can't like walk through there without just
having to fight one hundred working Joe's at the same time,
so that adds to it. But that that area is
really cool. I like that area.
Speaker 2: Raining inside ships is such a neat thing and it's
so weird to think about, because they even had that
in the first Alien movie. Account his name, but he's
like walk around trying to find the cat and he
takes his hat off because it's like raining in this
one part of the ship.
Speaker 3: It's it's interesting, it's weird but cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, jumping more towards the end of it.
Then obviously you're fighting all sorts of aliens znomorphs. At
this point, everyone's everyone's dead, I guess is safe to say.
I'm trying to think of any human being survives in
this game that we don't.
Speaker 2: Think so, I mean, the ship alone is destroyed and
I think everyone with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your last task is to go fix up
these satellites, adjust these satellites and whatnot in order to
build to escape the ship. And you're outside the ship
and these aliens come after you, you get knocked aboard,
and then I guess, and then you go back into
the ship at some point that's when everything is like
self destructing because you've activated that that function of the ship.
And then it's about a kind of a race to
get to the I guess not the escape pod, but
trying to get to that area where you can escape
with that lady and the other ship that I can't
remember the name of at the end of it. There
and then yeah, like the Vinyl cut scene in this
game is a kind of cliffhangary thing where x anymore's
got you dead to rights. You're doing like a QuickTime sequence,
or you're hitting different buttons left, right, back, you hit
this thing, you escape out. You have your space ship
or your space suit still on, so you can breathe
out in the void. Of course, presumably all the Aliens
die on the ship as it explodes on the space station.
And then like the post credit kind of thing, or
the pre credit whatever you want to call a mid
credit situation, is like she's opening her eyes very slowly
and then like a light comes by, presumably a ship
that's coming to scoop her up. So I don't know.
It's a bit of like sequel bait stuff, But what
do you what do you take cap and considering that
we don't have a follow up, a sequel to this yet,
and we don't I guess, I don't know. I'm assuming
another game doesn't address what happened to Amanda Ripley, So
what do you do you take this to me? And
do you think she gets saved by someone at the
end here or is just she just seen some other
random light.
Speaker 2: The only thing I can head Canada as is the
Aliens deleted scene where Burke shows a photo to el
at Ripley and says, yeah, she died as.
Speaker 3: An old lady.
Speaker 2: YadA, YadA, YadA, right, and that sets last we ever
heard of this character. I would love to see some
other game released for this. Maybe there's a comic book,
Maybe there's actually a novel in regards to this. I
am not aware of that, but I would love to
see a follow up. I'm imagining it's a wail Andy
Taani that's finally arrived. They bought the station and they
wanted to get there and see what's going on at
their greedy little fingers on the Zenos. They probably just
arrived to see their prize get just blown up and
find this one lone person floating in space. So that's
kind of what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I'm trying to
see what else here I have in my notes. One
thing that I I thought it was a really interesting
early on, but then it was one of those mechanics that,
as I mentioned, that didn't really seem to go anywhere.
Is the idea of like other NPCs in this game,
other human characters. We're just talking about the like story
relevant ones. And there's actually another guy earlier on. I
can't remember his name. Just how long this game is
that Like I kind of forgot about this earlier sequence
where some guys finds you kind of early on and
you're working with him for like a mission or two. Uh,
and then he eventually gets killed. But I totally forget
the name, but he was in an earlier sequence there.
But yeah, this is something that was like a part
of a tool tip earlier on and then just mentioned
at some point. Is like you'll encounter NPCs across your
journey and you just kind of have to you know,
they have it in a more eloquent wording. I can't
remember the wording is, but it's essentially like you never
know if they're gonna be aggressive or if they're gonna
want to work with you, so you kind of have
to approach those sequences pretty lightly, you know, like slowly
approach without a gun or something like that, and maybe
you can work with them, or maybe they'll just try
and kill you on site. And so I was like,
that's an interesting idea. Throughout this game, I'm gonna bump
into MPCs and I'm gonna have to gauge based on
listening to those conversations based on like their body Uh,
I don't know their body motions, are they holding a gun.
I'll probably be more scared of them there and determine like, okay,
if they're gonna be a friend or foe. But I
kind of feel like that never really went anywhere. Of course,
there's like sequences where you're teaming up with your friends
again and so that makes sense, but whenever you're like,
you'll meet NPCs that are with those friends, and I
was a little disappointed that you can never really talk
to those people, like they'll be in a room, but
you can't like hit e to talk and have a
conversation with them or learning anything from them, And so
it kind of made them like I want to know
their story. I want to know who they are, why
they're here, how they survived, if they have any tips
or tricks for me, that kind of thing. And then
I kind of just found like every other NPC in
the game was instantly hostile and there was really nothing
I could do about that. They're just like gunn to
be down on site. And there's a couple times where
I was like, Okay, I just hit a save point,
so I will go see if I can talk to
these people, and I never could. So maybe I did
it wrong, maybe I missed something, but that was something
that was really kind of set up to me early on,
it was hinted at, and then I kind of feel
like it didn't go anywhere, And because that, I don't
feel like I had any really meaningful NPC fights or
conversations like I I most of those any sequences where
I could tell they were aggressive, I just snuck past
them and they either got killed by the Xenomorph in
that moment or I just never saw them again, and
I didn't even know who they were. So that was
something that was a bit disappointing for me here, and
I think could have helped add too, Like once again,
this is a space station that's absolutely freaking huge. There
are a lot of people aboard the ship and it
is being decommission. I'm sure a lot of people have left,
but there's also there's still a ton of people remaining
as we can see you, and there's dead bodies everywhere.
So that was that was a disappointing part of the
game for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there have been many a time when I'm not
really sure I'm trying to gauge the situation. And I'll
see two like NPCs in this open like area, like okay,
like this must be a safe spot. And I'll walk
right up to one and he turns down and he's like,
oh god, and he pulls his gun and he he'll
kill me.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh fuck, that's annoying. Yeah, so you're right,
you gotta gauge it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh annoying. I guess one thing we've distinctly mentioned,
but like the music and sound, I think for me,
the highlight would definitely be just the The sound effects
in this game are just outstanding, every little beep, bloop,
every sound effect that the ship makes, whether it is
the stuff related to the tech, just like the sound
of the alien bashing through the vent system is so good.
The sound of the tram like as you're waiting for
I love that whenever you hit the button, it's not
just an instant load screen, Like there are times I
want this game to be quicker, and it's way too long,
of course, but I was always happy to wait for
thirty seconds for the tram to show up because just
that tension of like what if something shows upright here
that does happen at one point as like a scripted
sequence where you hit that button and then you hear
people from down the hall and so you have to
hide in a locker or something until they leave. But yeah,
even just the sound and the vibration of like that
tram as it's screeching to a halt to land in
the station, I think is just perfect. And then the music,
it's amazing. A lot of it are like pulling direct
themes from that original movie, and so whenever those propped up,
I'm like, oh, hell yeah, but anything else too, I
think just really said the scene perfectly. So in terms
of like the audit audit audio team here just absolutely
freaking nailed at ten out of ten on that way.
Speaker 3: Oh, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just they do such a good job with
so much familiarity and so much stuff that it's it's
its own thing. But it still just pulls all the
best parts from from that franchise, what was created in
that first Alien, Like there's certain little beats that are
in Aliens, and Aliens has its own very unique distinct score,
especially because it's more of an action heavy film, but
the first one being just a sci Fi horror. I'm
glad that this game pulled mostly from just the first
Alien I think that's where it even Like, again, we
already talked about it, but just aliens through a queen
in there, and this game they chose not to, and
it just it goes to show that, Okay, they really
just pulled heavily from that first film and that's that's
their inspiration. And I'm glad because it's it's so unique.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I did mention this in my in
my brief overallt the beginning, but it's worth mentioning one
more time. Face huggers, What do you do? Taylor? Like
you you want them to be in the game, You
want them to be a gameplay mechanic, but then like,
how do you not have them be just like a
one shot kill on you as the player? Because to
me that was like I just hated the face huggers,
and I guess I should I should hate them, but
them always them being a one hit kill with no
offense or butts and being so small and annoying. I
just I found I found them to be just more
of a chore than anything else where. It was just like, Okay,
I guess I'll do the same situation again. I never
really found them scary either. I just I just didn't
like them. But maybe I'm wrong with that. Would you
would you think of the face huggers.
Speaker 2: HiT's hits, their speed that just kind of pisses me off,
And yeah, you gotta like, depending on what weapon you're using,
you gotta be careful and you gotta time it, like
this stunbaton can bite you in the ass if you
miss and funde that up. But yeah, you really, uh
like it just comes down to timing and just dealing
with it, because yeah, it makes sense for it to
just be like an instant death kind of thing, because
that's what happens with these these creatures.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, like.
Speaker 2: Having them there it fits and it's just gonna be
something that's in alien romulus as well when we look
at that, like it's a huge part of this this theme,
the vibe of the films everything, because it's that life
cycle stage before we get to that xenomorph. So it's
good that they included them, But yeah, they could just
be an absolute pain in the ass, And I guess
I'm happy that they're not like consistently like every single
mission you have to be worried about them, like jumping
out of event because we already got to deal with
the main bad z you know, to begin with.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there's still there's still persistent enough to be
a pain in the ass.
Speaker 1: I kind of forgot about them for a while, honestly,
because it's just so much of this game, like once
again long game. I feel like for the first half
of it at least, is just one xenomorph you'll never
encounter too. At the same time, there's never anything else.
There's like orkin Joes of eventually that are they also
fight against, and you know the odd MPC. But I
kind of didn't like think about like, oh yeah, at
some point they'll be like face huggers in this game,
and how would they be implemented. I think for me,
like part of it is that the once they get you,
like the screen just goes black and then it just
like instantly ends, and it's like would you like to
load your save point? Like I feel like the tension
of it, the scary factor isn't really there either, Like
maybe a way around it, and maybe you could just
make this an easy mode thing rather than like on
Night memory. If you get hit, you're done. But maybe
it would have been And I'm not often gonna, you know,
be in favor of like quick time events, but I
think that could have been a solution here. Or if
you get caught, maybe you have to like hit five
buttons in a specific order real quick and if you
do that just quick enough, you can like rip them
off and make the timing hard, like make it a
hard thing to do, but make it so there's maybe
a bit of something you can do to fight against
some other than just like you hit your shot or
you don't. So I don't know what the workaround would
have been. I just think it's it's kind of weird,
even on easy mode, that that's just what happens. And
they didn't really have a workaround of maybe in the
just like half your health or something like that. But
maybe that would have been too easy. I'm not sure.
I guess we didn't really specifically mention the other weapons.
We just talked about the flamethrower, the pistol, shotgun, the
bold gun in particular. Really really like, I think they're
all solid. They all get the job done. It's not
really a combat action game. You could probably play it
like a combat action game, but it's more. But yeah,
like the guns, they all feel good in terms of
like first person shooter standards and all that. So those
are those are good to go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the pistol, I wish the pistol could do.
Speaker 2: A little bit more with the uh.
Speaker 3: The zo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I never even bothered to shoot this, you know.
I just felt like, it's not gonna do anything. It's
not worth my time. I maybe did early on before
I had the flamethrower, just just to see if I
was like dead to rights already, But that would have
been bold of me, just be like, oh, yeah, my
little pistol's gonna take this guy down. I've only I've
mentioned at the very start of this retro that i'd
played like Alien three. I randomly have that game on
the nes like some really old game, and then this.
Those are the only Alien games I've played. And okay,
and the Alien Versus Predator game on the Xbox thirty six.
You played the demo the hell out of that. I
talk about that. But you've got to play a lot,
if not all, of the Alien games that exist. Is
this the best Alien game for you? Or is or
one of the other ones kind of take the take
the lead for you.
Speaker 3: This is for sure. Uh, I'd say top three. This
is definitely.
Speaker 1: What's in that top three with it.
Speaker 2: The Alien versus preador twenty ten one because the Alien
mechanics are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun in that game.
Speaker 3: Really really fun.
Speaker 2: There's so many cool things where you down a guy
and then you can pick like you can do an
execution on him where like you see a face hugg
or crawl up all of a sudden like.
Speaker 3: Jump on him.
Speaker 2: That game did so many awesome, awesome things, even with
the Predator of the Predator had some awesome highlights in
there too, and you get confirmation that game they talk
about the xenomorphome world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can just say I love that.
Speaker 2: I know there's a big fan base for its predecessor,
I think A versus Preader two thousand.
Speaker 3: It's like a classic. It's got online still support on Steam.
Speaker 2: I believe, and that's that's just got a it's got
like a cult following. I'd say it's been wish listed
on my Steam for a while and eventually I'll get it.
Speaker 3: It's super super cheap. What else though, you know, not.
Speaker 1: Our team Dark Descent I'm trying to think of other ones,
Like I.
Speaker 2: Was gonna I was gonna slide Dark Descent in there,
which I need to go and play some more of now.
Speaker 3: Fire Team Elite is fun, but.
Speaker 2: I think that community died pretty quick, and some of
the stuff in there was just repetitive and not necessarily
the most exhilarating experiences.
Speaker 3: But it was still very fun and it was cool.
Speaker 2: They introduced the pathogen, so there's a lot of Alien
Prometheus Covenant kind of stuff that was incorporated into that game,
which is very neat for the world building. And then yeah,
you have Clonal Marines, which is super super hated upon the.
Speaker 3: Bane of Alien games when people.
Speaker 1: Did not want that's like a multiplayer like Shooter one right.
Speaker 3: I had it.
Speaker 2: It has single player campaign and then has the multiplayer
aspect as well, which you could play as the aliens
in there and the multiplayer, but it was such a
step down from what we've had in the past.
Speaker 3: It's like third person.
Speaker 2: It's pretty crappy, but it was an okay campaign and
I like that it basically wretconned Alien three in Alien
Resurrection and continued the story. Hicks survives in that game,
and you have a whole different story unfolding, but Dark
Descent having the team based mechanics and just again it
comes down to detail. This one has a lot of
inspiration from aliens, considering you're basically leading the charge with soldiers,
but the fact that you can, just like you're I
think it's called the APC send that and move it
around to different locations in these little towns. You're moving
your squad from building building doing different objectives. While you're
on the ground saving people and civilians, getting them to
your tank. You're all of a sudden, Oh, there's a
wave of aliens that are coming here. You set up
a turret, you gotta hold out while you're doing different objectives.
It's just there's so many different things that are going
on game, and I really like it for what they created,
because I was afraid after Fire Team Elite that we're
going to get another one similar to that, but no.
Dark Descent really kind of changed it up. I should say, actually, oh,
you reminded me.
Speaker 3: Oh, hang on, hang on.
Speaker 1: Take a look. Taylor with the corner of his eye
caught a glimpse of a game on his uh, his
game shelf.
Speaker 3: There, I got this back. Oh, what was it?
Speaker 2: Before I lived here in GameStop as e B games,
I used to check out the used game sections because
I just love seeing what they had. And they had
Alien Versus Prey or Extinction and this is an RTS
game and it is so much freaking fun.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it existed.
Speaker 2: It's not aged well, but you can play as Zeno's queen.
Speaker 1: So you tell me there's more Alien a VP games
than there is movies because you said there's a two
thousand one or is that the two thousand that's not
the two thousand one?
Speaker 3: That even this is not the two thousand and one.
This one came out.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean this is original Xbox This was two
thousand and three.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yes, there is more AVP games than there
are movies.
Speaker 1: So the screenshots not looking the most prime on that one.
Speaker 3: No, this game is.
Speaker 2: It's old and I've wanted so badly for this to
be a remake. It's only Xbox unless people ported it
to PC through their own means you're not gonna be
able to play it anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Dude, that is one to whip out on the twenty
four hour stream. I guess I don't know if because
I don't that's back compat and I don't think we'd
bring an original Xbox, but that is one then I
would love to check out at some point. Wow, that's
made by a rebellion or No, the other one is
maybe not that one, but yeah, sorry the other I
was just looking.
Speaker 3: On the Age Rebellion did the twenty ten one.
Speaker 1: That's cool because they make the Sniper League games. That's
a really cool period. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I should
look more into some of these other ones. That's funny
to me that there's more games than.
Speaker 3: Movies that I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 1: So sorry, What is the top three? Because I feel
like we just talked.
Speaker 2: I forgot about this one, but this one would crack
top five for sure. This probably number This would be
number four because the fact that it's an RTS game
and you're just indulging in different different like units that
you can build. It's it's such a hoot as it
has a campaign for all three classes too.
Speaker 3: And then multiplayer. But I would go Alien versus Spread
of twenty ten because I get my Predator in there.
So that's number one.
Speaker 2: I go Alien Isolation two, and then three would be
Dark Descent.
Speaker 1: Nice, Okay, cool, I love it. Okay. I guess the
maybe the last thing here would be the DLC, which
might be a bit of a shorter conversation here, But
this game does have a lot of DLC, a lot
of different DLC packs. Many of them are these kind
of challenge challenge mode missions or I think you kind
of have like a timer you have to complete these goals.
I don't know if there's randomization to them. I didn't
play these. I'm just kind of more mentioning them. I
think maybe the cool thing to mention here is that
some of these do include locations that didn't end up
making it into the final game, So there are some
unique locations that you'll get from the campaign. I think
some of it is reused as well, so you might
not get exclusively new areas. But then there is that
last I think it's called the Last Survivor DLC, which
is the one where you go through that sequence from
the original Alien movie. I don't know what do you
want to say about that one. Is there anything that
gameplay wise that differs from the core game, or is
it kind of just it's cool that they kind of
picked the sequence from the movie and made it kind
of a playable video game section.
Speaker 2: I just think it's fun to be able to experience
it because I think the crew expendable version, which I forgot,
that you could play as two other characters, not just Ripley.
You can play as Parker or you could play as Dallas.
And so that's where I think it was after No, No,
Parker was the name of the cat.
Speaker 1: What's the.
Speaker 3: Uh jinxy?
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: That's funny. No, I Will Jones Jones, Jones, Jones, Jonesy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Parker was the probably he's one of the
last three to die, right.
Speaker 1: I remember him now that I'm looking at a picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's the one who was ready to just
start boxing this thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh but yeah, so and then you get Dallas obviously
the captain. So there's that, and again it's just it's
cool to experience that. And then you have the Last
Survivor where yeah, you have to activate the self distract
you're playing as Ripley and you basically just got to
get to the the the ship to escape after that,
and that one definitely sent me.
Speaker 3: For a loop. That one was really tricky to pull
off because Neleen just kept getting in the way.
Speaker 2: But again, when you are you're in the you're in
the set piece, like you've you've watched the movie, you
know the movie, and to actually be walking around it's
the same thing from the main game where you're exploring
the Derek space crafting LB four twenty six, but in
here your walk around the Nostromo and it just it
feels different from Sevastopool because this is its own setting,
which is nice. But I can't imagine how much fun
the designers had just watching the movie getting to just
look into the backlog of content, like, Okay, we're gonna
sketch this out, We're gonna just design this three D
world based on the original movie.
Speaker 3: That's such a cool concept.
Speaker 1: There's clearly so much yeah, love for this source material
from the developers here, Like this is definitely a passion
project and not just like, oh, we got the rights
to make a game here, let's just like poop something
out in ten months and see what it's like the
best we can do, Like, this is clearly a really
really well made game, even if I have just a
lot of beefs with the final product of it. But yeah,
I think this, like, all these deal seeds sound interesting
and cool, and I mean, I'll probably go through that
Ripley one. I gotta be specific. I remember that, I
gotta be specific here, the Ellen Ripley one. I'll probably
go through that like pri to Romulus here, and so
I'll I don't know, if I have anything new to
say on it, I'll bring it up on a side
quest here. But I think otherwise those do seem like
maybe you go through the main game one time, you
kind of see what it's like, and then if you
want to go through the game again and really test
those mechanics and your skill set, that's maybe where those
kind of those challenge maps and things could come in,
because once again, like this game is so long that
it's like, I don't know, unless you have just a
ton of free time, you're probably not gonna just keep
replaying through this game and mastering it. But that's what
like a challenge map type thing is kind of perfect
for where it's like a smaller sequence of the game,
less time commitment in that way. So I think it's
cool that those things exist. There's definitely a lot of
to dig into. So whenever I'm feeling the itch for
this game again. I'll definitely go and check check some
of that content out. It's pretty pretty cool that they
had Like maybe, yeah, they clearly didn't make enough or
the team didn't have the interest to go ahead and
make that sequel, but they clearly had enough to do
a bunch of extra content after it was out and
just kind of take like, hey, we made all these mechanics,
what are some other fun things we can do with
this like engine that we've built to make this this
crazy cool game. So anything else that hasn't come.
Speaker 3: Up yet, I don't think so we'll cover a lot
of ground. I'm really happy about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, I'm very happy that I finally
played through this game. I'm glad that you wanted to
discuss it here with the Alien Retrospective, I think I
do some of these the other games in this that
you mentioned, Fire Team Alee or Dark Descent has been
on my raider since it came out, and even going
back to play some of these AVP games. I definitely
want to do that at some point. So I don't
know if we would just do a random retro or
maybe another Alien movies coming out, we would choose to
do another episode for a retrospective or something. But yeah,
there's a lot of other cool games that exist out there,
but I think this was the perfect one to pick
for this circumstance here. Like I said, long long it's
been on the back log, and I'm glad I can
finally check it off that box. So I don't I
think I would give this game like an eight eight
oh ten, seven seven point five somewhere in that pocket,
just because, once again, it is such an impressive game
in terms of just how it's made that even if
I have a lot of beefs with it, it's more just
like I don't have too many major cons. It's just
a bunch of little things and that kind of takes
it down from that that kind of perfect experience for me.
But yeah, really really cool game, really fun time. Do
you want to throw a number on this guy? We
don't really do that on video game stuff, But I don't.
Speaker 2: Know i'd throw down an eight point five out of ten.
I'm docking it because, similar to you, there's a little
bit of fine things around throughout the gameplay that just
kind of like throw me for a loop. Certain things
that I didn't like, Like we talked about the saving
and a couple other things too, But all in all,
it's a really good game. And if you're a fan
of the Alien franchise, I could not recommend this enough.
Like you're just gonna eat it all up, You're gonna
enjoy it, You're gonna really appreciate the time that's been
invested into this this game. It is long, as you said,
and that does detract it a little bit. But yeah,
it's just it's it's nice. It's it feels like a
passion project. And I hope that we get a follow
up or something else built off of this.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe Romulus is huge
at the box office and Disney wants to just push
a ton of money into funding all sorts of alien things.
We've seen that happen before, so I mean, we just
got Dark Descent last year too, so they're still making
games like this. I don't know. I don't know if
this studio would be interested in making another one, because
I feel like, just in general, this game seemed to
get pretty mixed reviews. I don't really know what the
other reviewers issues were with the game. I think I
saw a length was one thing that generally across the
per people were kind of beefing with But I don't know.
I feel like I don't even know. This game sold
very well. I'm not too sure where it exists in
the grand scheme of things. But anyway, this was a
very fun discussion, Very good time, Taylor, thanks for joining
me here. Next week we'll be back for more side quests.
I don't actually know what we're talking about next week,
so a bit of a question mark there, but stay tuned.
Thanks everyone for listening, and we'll see you again next time.
Bye bye sixth