izigame.me

*SPOILERS for some game mechanics and the whole story.

*RECOMMENDATION FOR FIRST PLAY-THROUGH: Turn off the music and it will remove the awful stingers that constantly annoy when a creature hears you or jumps into frame. It becomes much more immersive.

After 1st play-through on Easy difficulty: Finally finished the game and it's ALRIGHT, I'd give it a 6/10, but it's overpriced for the bare-bones amount of game-play you get (for the first 3 hours), has almost zero replay value besides collecting toy ships to unlock concept / character art, and the quality of the story, dialogue and characters ranges from extremely middling to poor.

Pros
+ Sound design.
+ Sound-mechanics (dust, setting down planks, asthma management, etc...)
+ Environments are well lit, detailed and suitably atmospheric.
+ Mic detection.
+ The structure of the game is solid (flipping between 1st day and current day).

Issues with the game-mechanics, atmosphere and death animations
- Sound mechanics are introduced too slowly.
- Death animations jarringly cut from game-play to animation. A better way to have done this would have been to do what Alien: Isolation did. Let you be in control until the Alien reaches you and then blur the background to make the Violent (Key Word - Violent) death stand out more.
- Sometimes you make noise / the monster gets alerted even though you can be below the area's sound level or not even moving or looking around AT ALL. It's incredibly annoying.
- The stinger that lets you know when you have made too much noise is overly loud / dramatic and takes me out of the experience more than immersing me in it.
^ SOLUTION: Turn off music and it will remove the stinger effects. To know how alert enemies are without the stingers, turn on phonometer assistance in settings.
- Multiple notes are strewn about the opening chapter noting the obvious. "Don't make noise." It comes off extremely condescending given that based off of how the character's act, one would figure out that you have to be quiet to survive. The tagline of the first movie is even painted in white on the wall of the lounge area.
- Yellow & Red paint (can be disabled though, thankfully)
- You can run around nonstop in the ranch and hospital (pre-monster) levels and you won't get killed. It makes sense why (to teach the player about base mechanics) but when you know there is no threat and start to run, it ruins the immersion. I understand that it's raining in the ranch level but come on, a monster would hear someone running. You can also run inside the hospital at no risk of death, which also makes sense game-wise so you can take the environment in. But it doesn't make sense with the mechanics presented in the world. Running doesn't attract a monster but a stupid shove does (to be fair, the dad was shoved through a door and into some supplies).
- You aren't able to pick up cans or bottles lying around as a distraction until the FOREST LEVEL. There are clearly so many bins, bottles and cans lying around (with red paint on them) but they are just locked off from being useful until a certain section of the game.
- The creature can bump and walk into / over cans or objects but it doesn't react to the noise they make.
- The animation for when the creature rams through the wired fence looks jank.
- The bear-trap death animation when climbing in through the warehouse window looks laughable due to 1. Your leg doesn't look injured at all and 2. The creature leaps out of nowhere (even though it would have no space to do so since there is a fence behind the window) and clips through the side of the window before killing you.
- You can sprint to the pump station (which takes a solid 10-ish seconds) and you won't get caught by the super-fast, leaping creature. I know the movies do this sometimes (running to the hole in Part 2 and running through the building in Day One) but those were enclosed environments with multiple objects that would trip up / confuse the creatures. Why don't any of the creatures just go on top of the train and then leap? I know, I know, it's cool to have a chase sequence but you can't really have one without breaking the immersion.
- Just like with the paint and notes in the ranch chapter, multiple notes are placed by you when a new feature is introduced. "Hey ... we can use sand to cover our tracks, neat huh!" or "Hey ... I don't think standing still will cut it." It breaks the immersion and suspension of disbelief.
- Flares disappear mysteriously out of your inventory after the pump station level.
- Throwables in the pump station glow blue which looks goofy. I know it's to help players see if a throwable is nearby but why in the world would a brick glow blue?
- You can hear the creatures clicking in places they shouldn't be, specifically in the town segment (creatures click through the wall when turning the sprinklers back on & they move through shrubs which you wouldn't be able to hear when it's behind a building).
- There should've been less inhalers lying around in exchange for them being able to be used multiple times. This would make the world and the capacity of inhalers more believable (inhalers wouldn't be lying around everywhere and they wouldn't all be on their last use).

Story issues
- Dialogue & story are written poorly.
- People have guns in the forest chapter, why? So one of them shoots and can start a tedious monster sequence.
- Mark shoves Alex's dad so we can have a stupid way to have a monster come to the hospital.
- Alex gets her leg stuck in a tree trunk somehow, did she put her leg directly on the trunk?
- Martin's death looks comical and it comes far too early, just to attempt shock value and possibly pay homage to the 1st movie's opening. The problem is that we don't even know or care that much (if at all) about either character yet.
- Alex falls asleep with her pregnancy test in her hand. Illogical nonsense that only occurs because the writers couldn't have figured out a better way to cause drama between the main character and Laura.
- Alex writes in her notes post Laura-gun-roof cut-scene that she wouldn't hurt her, so why did she back off and cause herself to fall off the roof?
- Why do Mark and Laura have guns? Don't they know by now (119 days in) that shooting one is a death sentence?
- Maybe I missed how the TV's turned on in the electronics store but from what I got out of that short cut-scene, the door closes which causes the TV's to turn on? Not necessarily a negative but it just confused me.
- First of all, how did Laura survive getting hit by a creature and being flung against a cabin? And then how did she catch up to you (while wounded) even though you had to go through trains and pump stations and towns? You pass out and she just drags you (through water) to a safe place. Sure, that's believable.
- Ending was fine but a bit anticlimactic. I didn't hate it, didn't love it but it felt like all of the characters were forgotten about. Past the camp segment you're just alone. Doesn't help I totally forgot the dad died like an hour after he got shot.