Alien: Isolation Preview

Alien: Isolation is almost upon us, but we managed to play a quick demo in London that took us through a Survival Mode challenge. Separate from the main game, we were put in the shoes of Amanda Ripley, given a goal to reach, a timer and a flamethrower, and sent out on our way.

Within seconds the fear set in. Entering the dark grey hallways of the Ridley Scott Alien-verse with only the footsteps of the titular Alien thundering into your ears is an intense experience, and there is clear evidence that Creative Assembly are trying to add to and improve upon the horror conventions established in Amnesia and Slender.

Take for example the tried-and-true locker hiding scenario. In most horror games, you simply wait in the locker for your enemy to leave, but in Alien there are a few mechanics which add to the tension greatly. When you’re in the locker and the xenomorph comes to investigate, you’re prompted to hold L2 which makes Amanda hold her breath. After a few seconds, the alien is still staring right at you through the bars, and you have to pull back on the analog stick. At this point the screen is flashing red as Amanda starts suffocating, and with the creature now staring you down, real tension finds you as it finally moves on, allowing you to let go and exhale (both in-game and in real life).

The motion tracker from the first Alien film and its crude representation of your surroundings is also the perfect fit for a horror video game. Holding R1 brings up the tracker (there was a bonus objective which was to complete the mission without using it), which has a limited battery life, so the idea that it could run out at any moment was always with me during the playthrough. The screen’s depth-of-field effects take over when you hold up the tracker, blurring everything on screen but it. This simultaneously draws your attention to the tracker and makes it so that you can’t just constantly use it. This limitation falls perfectly in line with the horror theme as the odds are stacked against you, allowing only brief glimpses of the tracker.

Turning a corner to see something like this is filled with tension. Then of course it turns around gives chase.

Seeing the blinking light on the screen but nothing in front of you terrified the Nostromo crew, and to experience the fear that those characters went through is an amazing thing. Alien: Isolation also captured its namesake very well, as isolation is exactly what you feel when exploring the cold corridors of the game.

The sheer level of unease and anxiety you get when playing Alien: Isolation is through the roof. Even in the brief challenge we played, there were some hair-raising moments that emerged naturally from the mechanics and level design, as opposed to being scripted. Once, when the alien spotted me, I naturally turned tail and ran, but the panic was too great and I lost all sense of spacial perception. I ran through a door, then through another (both of which had the genius inclusion of a 1-second opening time for maximum panic), then through another… until I opened one more door and there it was; staring me right in the face. Game over, man. Game over.

Sound played a big part in the creating the atmosphere. There was in fact very little in the way of sound, save for the ambience of the space station, but when the alien was near, screeching violins and the sound of its breathing and footsteps combined to truly unsettling effect. Even when the xenomorph wasn’t on screen it had presence due to a combination the sound design and motion tracker. This achieves the same thing the movie did: making the monster scary even when it wasn’t seen.

Use of the flamethrower managed to get of the alien to disappear for a bit, but not from the motion tracker. Using the ventilation to escape, it’s still around up there, somewhere, so you still have to vacate the area and move on or hide before it shows up again. Crucially, it was unkillable. Alien: Isolation lives or dies by its ability to keep the tension high and the scares potent, but not necessarily frequent. Being able to kill the alien would cheapen this idea, and it’s commendable that the developers are pitting you against an invincible enemy, simply tasking you to survive.

Alien: Isolation is so far looking like the best Alien game we’ve ever seen. An emphasis on horror, and of de-powering the player as opposed to empowering them, allows Isolation to reach levels of fear that could be a huge leap forward – not just in the genre, but in how immersed you can become in videogames.

FIFA Bans Luis Suarez in FIFA 15

Football fans all over the world tuned in to watch the world cup this summer. 

One of the more memorable and probably the most controversial moment was during the event when Uruguay striker Luis Suárez took a bite out of Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini. Resulting in a 4 month ban from all football activity, which was later softened down to just the competition matches after he attempted to appeal the ban at the court of arbitration for sport. 

FIFA has now implemented this ban in great detail for the release of their FIFA '15 title. 

Players starting the "career mode" as FC Barcelona, the new owners of Suárez after his transfer from Liverpool, will get a message from the Chief Executive saying: "Please be aware that Luis Suárez is currently serving a suspension and will not be available for selection until 26 October 2014." 

Players looking for Luis on the transfer market of FIFA Ultimate Team will get no results for their enquiry. 

Lots of football players are big fans of the FIFA games themselves. Belgian striker Eden Hazard for example as a fan of the FIFA series is extremely proud to be on the cover of the '15 release, together with Lionel Messi. So, whether this measure to ban Luis is just for accuracy, or meant as a stab from FIFA to Luis Suarez is unsure.

Pro Evolution Soccer Looks To Dethrone Fifa This Year With a Much Better Product

Year after year Fifa has dominated the market when it comes to soccer, or football, games around the world. This year is different though, it looks like a much better game is on the horizon and should give Fifa a run for its money.

Pro Evolution Soccer, or PES for short, has been around for some time. PES has been hanging back in shadows known only by hardcore gamers as the better experience, with controls that are detailed and very complex. A lot of emphasis has always been put on the overly complicated controls that PES has put into its games, while Fifa has catered to a more simplistic control scheme that doesn’t make the gamer feel overwhelmed. I remember the first time I picked up a controller and tried out PES I was confused right away. Simple one two passing took several different combinations of buttons and joysticks as well as precision timing. Most of the time my efforts were in vain to do even the most basic tactic to advance the ball down the field. After a while I found myself playing boom ball and simply kicking the ball down field and running after it. After that experience I wrote off PES as a game that was just trying to hard to be complicated for no real reason. So naturally I turned to Fifa and stayed with Fifa up until this year.

PES 2015 looks like a whole different game compared to Fifa 15. The graphics are the first thing you will notice with a much more detailed pitch and more attention to detail with the players on field. Check out the video below.

You can clearly see the difference between the two games graphically. Here’s the kicker, PES 2015 is promising 1080p at 60FPS on the PS4 which matches Fifa 15.

Now graphics are great and everything, but what about the controls? Thankfully after spending a few hours with the demo and playing countless matches I can safely say that the game is much more approachable now. Gone is the reliance on skill moves to win and now the emphasis is much more on keeping possession and setting up teammates for through balls. Defense plays much better as well since the skill moves don’t hold the same weight, it’s much easier to defend against a single attacker if you are smart about defending the pass lanes and playing containment.

Fifa will still sell more copies, it’s only natural since Fifa is still held in high regard among gamers and it’s what they know. Despite Fifa’s popularity, I hope gamers give PES 2015 a shot, I think Konami did a really good job with making the experience better with smoother controls and much more realistic graphics. PES 2015 is due out November 11 for Sony and Microsoft systems as well as PC.

Battlefield Hardline "Will Work" at Launch, Says Visceral

At the Tokyo Game Show, I had a chat with Ian Milham, creative director for Visceral Games, makers of the upcoming Battlefield: Hardline.

I expressed concern over the game's ability to fully function at launch, as it seems every big launch these days comes with problems, shooters among the most common offenders (including the most recentBattlefield game, though that was developed by DICE).

My question about the launch stability didn't surprise Milham. He readily answered:

"What you're basically asking is, 'Is you're game going to work?' and the answer is yes, it's gonna work. We actually started on this more than a year before Battlefield 4 came out. We've been working with the DICE guys for a long time; some of our engineering work is actually in Battlefield 4 and things they've been doing since then. It's in pretty great shape now and all that work is gonna come into what we're doing.
We already had one very successful beta, we're going to have another beta on every platform we ship on. We take shipping a working game pretty seriously. So, yes, the game will work."

He added that there will likely be some hiccups, because the game is large and will appear on five platforms, but overall he and his team are very confident in Hardline's ability to avoid major problems at launch. He pointed to the many hours the game has been running at trade shows without crashing as fuel for his confidence. At TGS, the game was being played in rounds of eight-versus-eight multiplayer matchups. While I was run over in cars being driven by my teammates more often than I would have liked, I can't really blame the programming for any of that.

We'll find out everything about the Battlefield: Hardline launch for ourselves in 2015. The game was at first thought to be a title for late 2014, but it was pushed back into 2015, despite publisher EA not being cool with the delay at first.

Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare Could Sell Millions Less Than COD: Ghosts

2014 could be another down year for Call of Duty. Research firm Sterne Agee is projecting Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to sell millions of copies less than 2013 release Call of Duty: Ghosts. 

Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said this week that they expect Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to ship 15% fewer copies than Ghosts in the fourth quarter of the year. That means that they're expecting 17 million shipped instead of 20 million. 

Bhatia cites a few reasons for this pessimism:

• Gamers might be skeptical of Advanced Warfare because they were disappointed by Ghosts. This may lead them not to purchase Advanced Warfare unless word-of-mouth or reviews are strong.
• PS3 and Xbox 360 software sales are down 50% and 46% this year, respectively. This doesn't bode well for a mass-market, cross-gen title like AW.
• Many consumers are still considering whether to upgrade to PS4 or Xbox One. They're not going to buy the game until they decide on a platform.

These factors have resulted in lower pre-orders for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfarecompared to Ghosts. That's a good indication that the game won't sell as well, at least at launch. 

However, Bhatia admits that there's a chance Advanced Warfare could beat the odds. He points out that pre-release buzz has been very positive. This enthusiasm could result in better review scores than Ghosts. 

That's a fair point. A lot of the gamer fatigue with Call of Duty stems from how similar each new game is to the last. The exoskeletons and other futuristic technology available to players, however, make Advanced Warfare look noticeably different than its predecessors. Everyone seems a bit less weary with this game than Ghosts. 

Sterne Agee says that the lack of direct competition for Advanced Warfare may help the game as well. More specifically, there's no Battlefield launching this fall thanks to the Hardline delay. I wouldn't say there's a lack of "direct competition" - Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Destiny could siphon off some potential sales from shooter fans - but the absence of COD's biggest rival will help. 

If Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare sells less than Ghosts, that would be the second year in a row that COD has declined in sales. Activision attributed Ghosts' underperformance to the console transition. We'll have to see whether sales rebound once a majority of console players have switched over to PS4 or Xbox One.

In spite of Call of Duty's recent decline, Sterne Agee is optimistic about Activision in the long run. They point out that the company's software is becoming more diverse thanks to Destiny, Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm. The launch of Call of Duty Online and Diablo 3 in China could be a long-term boost for the company as well. 

"Our point is that Activision, which was primarily known for Call of Duty and World of Warcraft in the past, now has a much stronger and diversified portfolio and has a presence on more platforms (iOS and Android) than ever before." 

Visceral Had to Convince EA to Delay Battlefield Hardline

Believe it or not, it took a bit of convincing for Electronic Arts to delay Visceral Games' upcoming first-person shooter. 

According to Battlefield Hardline creative director Ian Milham, the team really wants to do its fans right and make a quality product, so the studio went to its publisher and worked to get EA to allow them more time. Apparently Visceral's request was met with a bit of friction.

"I mean we just want to make cool games and that's all we care about or want to do. And there is a whole universe of other stuff going on: What other things does EA have coming out? What other games are coming out?" he told IGN.

"Like this had nothing to do with release windows or competition or any of that kind of stuff. But those are things in the world," Milham added. "So of course there was a lot of ‘Grr, well I don’t know we got to figure this out, this is a pretty big deal are you sure?’ But as we talked it out, it became pretty clear that it was the right thing to do, so they were onboard."

Battlefield Hardline was supposed to launch in October, but has since been pushed to 2015.

Review: FIFA 15

Don’t be surprised if this is one of the best-selling FIFA iterations yet. Not because of anything it does, mind you, but simply because in the twelve months since the last entry, football fever has swept the nation. The 2014 World Cup saw record viewership amongst yanks, many clamoring to be involved with the sport like never before. Sure, many of the “fair-weather fans” have likely dropped off since the other football started last month, but there’s undoubtedly a legion of new soccer (which we’ll start referring to it as “soccer” to not confuse our readers more inclined to Madden) fans champing at the bit to get their hands on a video game featuring the best and brightest stars they witnessed in the World Cup. Perfect timing, then, that this also marks the first game in the franchise built from the ground up on current-gen consoles. With practically everything going for it, allFIFA 15 has to accomplish to be a success in our neck of the woods is a solid game of soccer and a retention of the modes that’s made the franchise a winner.

FIFA 15 is all about intelligence. For the first time ever, the emotions of all twenty-two players on the pitch have been modeled, allowing them to recognize situations that trigger an emotional response and react naturally. Situations include decisions, missed chances, goals, bad tackles, injuries and more. There are over six hundred potential emotional reactions that could play out over the course of the game. The emotional intelligence is fairly groundbreaking in that there hasn’t been a sports game that has displayed this level of emotion before. As anybody who’s ever watched a soccer match knows, it’s arguably the most emotional game. If anything, players routinely exaggerate, so seeing a near nervous-breakdown after missing a goal is commonplace. As such, a soccer game devoid of any realistic emotion instantly seems unnatural, so FIFA 15pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on the field adds a whole new layer of believably to the proceedings.

Lending more realism is the dynamic match presentation, which adds region-specific behaviors to arenas, allowing crowds to cheer with specified chants and act unique to their region. Fans of Leeds United at Elland Road will act and look unique to fans at Anfield in Liverpool, for instance, and the commentators will even comment on it. Unfortunately, the Manchester United theme song is not included. Adding more stadium realism are new bench reactions, ball boy animations and ten player goal celebrations.

Back to intelligence, goalkeepers have been rewritten to look, move and think more like their real world counterparts, now better anticipating shots and passes. There are still occasions of funky behavior from keepers, so they don’t yet feel perfect, but there’s noticeable improvements — primarily in responsiveness — that can be seen on both sides of the ball. Another neat addition is that of improved team tactics. Instead of players focusing on simply running up the score, they will now adjust their tactics depending on the situation. For example, if an opposing team is beating you with minutes left to go, one of their players might decide to sit back with the ball and burn down the clock. You’ll see more conservative plays like this when a team is winning and more risks when team is playing from behind.

Thankfully, all of the modes featured in FIFA 14 return this year including FIFA Ultimate Team, Career Mode, Pro Club Seasons, EA Sports Football Club, Skill Games, Match Play, Online Play, Co-op Seasons, Practice Arena and more. Unfortunately, besides some minor tweaks and redone interfaces, they remain practically the same in functionality as FIFA 14. This is because the developers focused their time building and optimizing the game on current-gen consoles, however, and the fact that they weren’t removed à la NHL 15 is cause for praise.

Unlike its American football counterpart, FIFA 15 has consistently featured fantastic soundtracks and this year is no different. Perhaps it’s because it’s a series that appears to a world audience which appreciates more indie-leaning music, but there’s always been a fantastic mix of emerging artists — some of which have been featured in the game before reaching indie circles (for instance, Jungle and Broods have just weeks ago begun to garner attention and I have yet to hear FMLYBND outside of Soundcloud). FIFA 15’s soundtrack is jam-packed with great artists, including Magic Man, Vance Joy, Tune-Yards, Tensnake, Kasabian and many more. There’s a great interface including album cover art to show the full 40+ song soundtrack, allowing players to turn songs off they aren’t partial to.

Closing Comments:

After a serious misstep with NHL 15, FIFA 15 is a leap in the right direction for EA Sports. Shrewdly taking advantage of current-gen’s capabilities with added emotional intelligence and improved animations, this is easily the prettiest EA Sports title this year. Unfortunately, game modes remain relatively unchanged, but if optimizing for current-gen currently means choosing between re-skinning them or omitting them entirely, we’ll gladly take the former. The expansive soundtrack is again of the best licensed ones of the year, crowds are more dynamic than ever and general production values are impressively polished. Thanks to the sport’s sudden increased popularity in the United States, we have a feeling this will be the introduction to the series for many gamers, and it represents it well.

                                     Reviewed By: HardCoreGamer