Grave Gamer News & Views — sega

First Bits of Alien: Isolation Footage

Okay, so we’ve been here before. The months and weeks leading up to the turdening that was Aliens: Colonial Marines, I just about posted and gabbed over every shred of media trickled by that game’s superb marketing team (superb because they tricked me into thinking I wouldn’t regret buying that game).

So let us walk with trepidation. That being out of the...

Alien: Isolation Officially Revealed

I’ve been following every space scrap of news on this project for a while now – Alien and its film progeny, Jimmy Cameron’s opus in particular, being my favorite series in the history of the silver screen – but it’s refreshing to have the loading bay doors officially blown off of Alien: Isolation.

Though the game is set in the first-person, don’t expect Isolation to be yet another Hoo-rah-tastic corridor shooter as hollow as the sound of pulse rifle fire. Creative Assembly is seeking to create the Alien game no other developer has tried before: a methodically paced, suffocatingly atmospheric love letter to the bump-in-the-dark horror Ridley Scott famously put to film back in 1979.

Fifteen years after the Nostromo vanished from the star map, Amanda Ripley finds herself aboard the Sevastopol Station, the floating husk of a former trading port. The Company says she may find an answer to her mother’s disappearance there. What she does find is one ruthless, near unstoppable killing machine of an extraterrestrial that will stalk her, find her, and end her unpleasantly unless she uses her wits and what little supplies she can scrounge up to survive. Like mother, like daughter.

As much as I’d love for a team of perfect fans to crack Aliens’ formula and deliver a riveting action game instead of a derivative train wreck, I’m glad we’re not gagging on another space marine shooter. The films are, and always have been, firmly rooted in horror. It’s time video games stopped treating xenomorphs as canon fodder, having you blast apart hordes of them. It’s time to be afraid of them again.

Alien: Isolation, expected for late this year, is releasing for PC, PS3, 360, PS4, and Xbox One.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream Watching This Trailer!

Here’s Your First Contact with Alien: Isolation

I think it’s safe to say this project has broken out of the rumor cage and is now free to prey on any one of us stupidly not named Ripley.

In Sega’s latest attempt to make anything but a frozen space turd out of the Alien IP, they’ve tasked Creative Assembly in restoring dignity to this series’ video game presence not seen since AvP2 for the PC. Feel free to brush up on Alien: Isolation right hereabouts, but I’ll give you the quick lowdown:

Ellen Ripley’s own brood, Amanda, is isolated (bah!) aboard a space station –  that’s a bit misleading, though, because she has plenty of company, found in one vicious xenomorph terrorizing her at every vent and dark corridor.

Given the lack of pluralization in the title, the game’s vibe appropriately borrows from the original film’s claustrophobic brand of horror. More than that, these screens showcase slavish dedication to designs period specific (in canon) to Ridley Scott’s vision of the early 22nd Century. That motion tracker looks like it was ripped right out of Captain Dallas’ hands (if you got the reference immediately, we are lifelong friends now).

Oh, baby, I can feel a reveal coming on real soon. I crave a trailer next.

Sega’s Next Alien Game to Star Ripley’s Daughter?

We’ve been aware of an Alien project being kicked around Creative Assembly’s offices for a decent while now.

The Sega owned studio is most renown for its long-standing RTS franchise Total War, but they have, on occasion, stepped outside their genre comfort zone on certain titles. If Kotaku’s report checks out, they’re leaping way outside of that zone. Enter the very recently trademarked Alien: Isolation, a first-person horror title for both current and next-gen that’s massively informed by games the likes of Bioshock and Dishonored.

Creative Assembly’s take on the mythos draws inspiration from Ridley Scott’s original Alien, placing a greater emphasis on stealth over direct combat. In fact, one studio insider says, besides a multitude of “clones and soldiers” to tackle, the majority of the game has you tangling with a single xenomorph.

Isolation is said to isolate your ass aboard a space station and, interestingly, has you assume the role of Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley – the heroine at the forefront of every Alien film that doesn’t include a Predator or a Fassbender. Before you call shenanigans, yes, Amanda is a canonical character; though she’s only briefly mentioned in a scene found in the extended version of Aliens (the company file didn’t list off run-in’s with galactic space monsters, however)… Okay, fine, I’ll nerd out all over you: That means Isolation is set in the fifty-seven years between the events of Alien and Aliens, with Ellen Ripley still drifting through space in cryo-sleep.

Apparently, Isolation was intended for a public unveiling at E3, but Sega wished to give the team an extension for quality assurance. As in, they want to be assured the quality of the game is nowhere as cavernously low as Aliens: Colonial Marines (aka The Most Disappointed I’ve Ever Been in My Adult Life).

Aliens is my favorite film of all time. Video games are my favorite hobby. Why the two can’t get along is anyone’s guess. I’m loving CA’s direction for the game. Sprinkle on all the atmosphere you want, but mowing down a hundred aliens doesn’t quite land near “horror.” Yet… Colonial Marines left acid burns on my expectations. I want to love you, Isolation. I do. For now, let’s just keep it all business.

9/21/13

This week’s most percolating gaming happenings that you may have missed. If you didn’t miss them, congratulations. You’re better than I am. But now that you’re gloating about it, you’re worse than I am. O, how quickly your vanity carried you to ruin, my former liege. Anyway, welcome back to the Roundup. Leave your shoes anywhere.

In Tech

• Sony is bent on selling five million PS4’s by next March. I’m bringing you one unit closer to your goal, guys. You don’t have to thank me. But you do owe me.
• Fun fact: the PlayStation 4, a console owned and created by a Japanese company, is delaying its Japan launch because there aren’t enough Japanese games for it. A sign that Western developers have overtaken the gaming scene this generation? “Nah,” says Sony figurehead Shuhei Yoshida. Japan is a “portable-heavy” market is all. So you say.

• “The Steam universe is expanding in 2014.” A tease of promises untold or a thinly veiled threat of world dominance? When it comes to Valve, cryptic sentences usually result in both. The Bellevue, WA geek kingdom, a company that has subtly but surely influenced industry sweeping trends, is teasing three announcements for next week, beginning Monday morning. What’s the deal? Gabe “The Man” Newell hinted “hardware opportunities” for bringing Linux to the living room will be revealed soon. Steam Box anyone?
• The RetroN 5 is upon us, old school fiends. Hyperkin, one of the foremost manufacturers of video game clone devices (we’re adults here; I mean “knock-offs), has dated their wondrous, cartridge eating console for December 10th, 2013. The RetroN 5, to those unfamiliar, is a plastic portal to the past that allows you to play NES, SNES, Famicon, Genesis, Mega Drive, Sega Master System (B.Y.O. Power Converter, though) and Game Boy carts all in one machine. Essentially it’s the universal remote off retro consoles. Classic kicks will cost you $99.