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Alien: Isolation

wildone106
Honored Guest
So reviews are coming out and it seems quite good, wonder if anyone will be able to hack it to work with the Rift? I only wanted to play with it this and wont buy it unless I can!
32 REPLIES 32

willste
Explorer
"Sharpfish" wrote:
"willste" wrote:
"wildone106" wrote:
So reviews are coming out and it seems quite good, wonder if anyone will be able to hack it to work with the Rift? I only wanted to play with it this and wont buy it unless I can!



IGN gave it a pretty weak review. Its not the best gaming review site but usually their critiques are pretty on point. Better than the last alien game but it sounds like it has too many problems to be worth a purchase. Games costing what they do now a days.


Yeah well it's kinda niche when you think about it, in this day and age of all guns blazing. It may also fall short on long term enjoyment when the novelty wears off.

However it's right up my street as an 'experience' more than a game, especially if it can work well in VR. I love alien(s).

So to me it (newt voice on) "mostly looks great... mostly" 😉


I think in VR it would be well worth the experience. The experience from the review is that you will die hundreds of times for reasons beyond your control. I think they liked the atmosphere and what the game was trying to do. But gotcha deaths suck hard pretty quick. That resulted in their primary complaint being the game was too long and the gotcha deaths sucked the fun out of the game past the 5 hour mark.

May be worth a bargain pickup later on, but I don't think I want to pay $60 to get mauled by an alien due to weak game mechanics.

willste
Explorer
"Otreum" wrote:
Refer to this thread to get your Oculus working with the game.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=15432&p=203466#p203466

Seems creative assembly left code in the game to enable Rift mode.

I have confirmed it does work, albeit, with bugs, but holy crap, if you wish to have a heart attack, or 6 pack abs, get it working with your Oculus Rift. I only did a quick test and let myself get attacked by the Alien...it was genuinely terrifying....I actually feel like a wuss now :S


Okay I eat my words, 20 minutes of solid game play in the rift is worth $60 dollars to me. They should really clean up the code and get this running natively. It could save their games from bad reviews and make it a hit with VR enthusiasts, maybe even get them some sales down the road by releasing a VR edition along side the CV1.

Sharpfish
Heroic Explorer
My post from the other thread on this - a dupe but not sure which thread will end up being THE alien isolation one once everyone gets to try this out!

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Caved in and got this earlier today (wouldn't have without the Rift working on it as mentioned above, I'm spoiled now and a game has to be terrific to get my attention outside of VR these days). As I said I played it at a friend's yesterday and thought it was OK, looked nice, convincing alien universe etc (as expected) but could not escape this feeling that it felt extremely flat and "2D" 🙂 - It's the first new game I've played outside of VR dev, the only traditional game I've been playing at the same time is BF4 which I've been used to for ages, since it came out, so I never had this effect till now. Yes the rift has ruined me for traditional games!

So, My mini review after approx 2 hours of game play, in the form of easier to digest bullet points - not reviewing the game only the VR aspect: :lol:

.It works very well in the rift considering it's not official, even better than many things released on Oculus Share specifically for the rift.

.A number of minor flaws and bugs to bear in mind, such as models clipping through the spacesuit helmet (Not sure if that does that in non VR but you just can't tell), positional tracking works but is a touch erratic (needs a lot of resets with gamepad shoulder buttons as seems to drift a lot?)

.Using wireless 360 controller mainly due to the shoulder buttons re-setting orientation, if anyone knows if there is a key press for this would be handy, though as there's no shooting etc the gamepad feels fine + I sit a few feet from the desk for tracking / space reasons anyway

.Running it on it's best settings (everything on best/ultra/high) on an overclocked GTX780 (non Ti) and it was mostly smooth and zero frame rate problems, seems very well optimised in general considering it has very decent graphics, shaders, materials, lots of particle effects etc. Anyone on a card like this or above should be fine! Occasionally I will get minor judder as frames drop below 75 (or whatever it is causing it).

.Graphically alleviates some of the DK2's flaws, unlike much of the ported DK1 demos out there or 'indie' experiences. This looks far more inline with what I've been seeing from UE4 (my prototypes and tests) concerning materials/textures/shaders and why I've remained positive about DK2 while others have only pointed out it's "low" res, SDE etc. With a game as good looking as this, aliasing aside, you tend to focus on the world rather than the pixels. Black smear is very obvious in this game, but it never was a deal breaker for me - this should be able to be fixed by upping your RGB in the usual ways...?

.Positional tracking (aside from minor inconsistencies and a sense of it being a bit off at times) generally works very well, and I've experienced some 'firsts' in this game concerning lifting myself up to look over things, hitting swinging inspection lamps with my head and seeing them push out the way, leaning in to look at objects on a table and my head actually pushes them over. Generally very well done and super immersive (though I wouldn't say 'Presence' just yet)

.Text is easy to read in general, but using the in game computers is a bit harsh on the eyes 🙂 - very close to the eyes so you have to kinda get used to that - closing one eye can help a little. I found myself staring up and reading signs, noticeboards etc, things I really would have mostly ignored in NON VR. It feels natural to just look at them and take them in.

.Atmosphere is great, though after an hour and half (my first play - no alien met yet) the lovingly crafted SCi Fi rooms and corridors do start to feel a bit samey, reminds me of DOOM 3 here which I loved nonetheless and is a small price to pay for a consistent theme and world. Very nice attention to detail, though sound isn't quite as good as it could be (imo) as there is a lack of 'space' (reverb) to many sounds or it's quite subtly applied and I think a good reverb can really help back up the space you are in, it aids in general atmosphere where we lack the ability to feel temperature etc - a game like this is crying out for "Atmosphere simulation" whatever that could become, where your body feels like you are there and not just your eyes, maybe this would come with 'presence' in CV1? I would love some kind of temperature simulation and other things to really make me feel there.

.VR is implemented very nicely, robust considering it wasn't really supported. Fading to black rapidly if you go outside the camera tracking OR if you clip your head through walls (though not all objects), fade to black works fine here and doesn't break any immersion, a topic discussed way before we had our DK2s and glad to see most of us were right about this while some were trying to concoct fairly ridiculous 'solutions' to keep us in the world... now we see fade to black is elegant and really only a problem if you make it one, far better than pushing the player back (!!!) if they hit a wall, sorry but let me know how that worked out for you and who is the dense one after all. *ahem* 🙂

.I played for just over an hour and a half on my first VR go and felt fine right up till the last 10 minutes when I started feeling a little queasy (and this lasted for about 30 minutes after leaving the game). I imagined this above all else would be why they didn't support it officially. Considering it's an FPS (minus the 'S') though it's much better than most I've tried in the Rift, esp if you walk as slowly as you can (I crouched a lot as it auto slows movement). You will feel sick if you play it for a long time and move around quickly but it's not TOO bad.

.I haven't felt any presence yet, maybe a minor flicker where I was in a vent and instead of climbing out with 'A' I actually stood up from sitting and poked my head out of the top and looked around 🙂 great feeling. Also at one point where I thought I was going to hit my head on a ceiling I actually recoiled in real life on instinct. :mrgreen: Immersive, very, but no presence as such (yet). This is a downside of the DK2 and hardware I imagine as I can't really fault the software as it goes all out to make you feel there, this on CV1 would feel amazing I'm sure.

.Bringing up the in-game map looks really cool in VR - using the same method as cut scenes it maps it to a virtual screen, it's 'made' for VR. Cut scenes look flat and pretty terrible after the proper VR/3D but at least they don't make you sick. They have gone a long way to making this GOOD for VR so you can see a lot of thought was put in, but there are still some flaws that wouldn't cut it if officially supported.

.I noticed with many objects, especially the small yellow reel to reel tape decks in the game, that up close they look pretty stunning. When the tape deck fills most of the rift's screen it really does get hard to see any pixels, it looks sharp and almost real!! I was listening to the first one I came across (in a soft of cafe) over and over and leaning with my arms resting on my knees like I was leaning on the counter, and just staring at the tape deck. It looked great, felt great and is another hint at where good VR is going and how compelling simple things can be in it (if done right).


As I play more I'll update my already too large essay if anything stands out good/bad - alien confrontation hasn't happened yet 🙂 I Don't scare TOO easily so we'll see how terrifying it is in VR (or not).

Overall - probably the best thing I've tried on DK2 and definitely worth checking out even as a developer to see how to do (most) things solidly, these are the level of graphics I personally enjoy (or even better lol) and are my kind of thing (actually some of them remind me of stuff I've started working on ... oops - though I'm not nor ever will make an FPS).


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I think with the work they have clearly put in already to making it VR compatible that they did plan on it officially but due to the few flaws and sickness from moving in an FPS they disabled it, for now. Perhaps oculus told them about new input that could help, maybe they are taking their time to address movement in a proper VR mode... or maybe neither of these 🙂 But, I do think they would want to do something with this when CV1 was released, it was probably not the right time to shout about an unfinished VR implementation when the only rifts out there are dev kits (even if loads of gamers own them), but for CV1 if they can nail the few flaws and perhaps slow movement down without killing the game they may well go for it then. In which case I wonder if they are gonna be annoyed that thousands of people will have already played it in VR before CV1/VR polishing.
EX DK2/VIVE/PSVR/CV1/Q2/PSVR2 | Currently Quest Pro (PCVR) | VR developer
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