These "Alien" Games...

Hello

So I want to hear what you think about these two games...

Aliens: Fireteam Elite
Alien: Isolation

I can play either of these with my Xbox Game Pass for PC... but not sure which to play first (not both at once)....

I get the impression Aliens: Fireteam Elite is more a run and gun like Doom/Wolfenstein?
Whereas, Alien: Isolation is more of a Dead Space spooky occasionally enemies try to kill you vibe? (not played Dead Space -but familiar ish with it?)

So - am I about right or way off?
Fill me in; suggestions?


Thank you for your help
 
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Aliens: fire team is a more a coop based shooter with 3 players or 2 bots doing various missions. Not played it myself but it got middling scores at best. But then again its free so...

Aliens isolation has more in common with amnesia the dark descent then dead space. You spend much of your time sneaking and hiding away from the big bad alien. Got good reviews and the lore and authenticity is top notch (from what i heard Fox pretty much gave the devs a look at the movie props, the design docs, costumes etc). Wasn't my cup of tea but it got good scores. I believe PCG gave it GOTY at one point.
 
It depends on your personal preference of game type. As mentioned Isolation is more survival horror, and FTE is more action shooter coop. I thought Isolation was good first play through, but I was disappointed on hardest difficulty mode. It's too easy to figure out how to hide from and sneak past the Alien, as it's scripted to only go part way into rooms, and not look into nooks and crannies. I was ducking into rooms and merely crouching by a wall in an alcove off of it because the dumb thing would walk straight past me without looking left or right, then do the same thing when it left. And it stomps loudly so is easy to hear coming.

There are only one or two places where it is kind of scripted to find you behind a vent, but even there if you time it right, it might detect you're there but won't catch you. Once I figured out the Alien's behavior, which was before my first play through ended, I was able to beat the game on hardest mode without using distraction devices or the flamethrower. The Working Joes are actually harder to sneak past than the Alien. It's still a good game, it just could have been MUCH better (especially on harder difficulty modes) if the AI wasn't so simply and predictably scripted. The level design and authenticity however is very good.

If you want a more challenging survival horror game, try The Evil Within. The original though, not the 2nd one. Also, ANY of the Dead Space games are good, and IMO have FAR better replay value than Alien Isolation. They are not really in the same exact genre as Alien Isolation though, because you have to not only survive but KILL many necromorphs in Dead Space, whereas in Isolation, the main theme is to evade, not kill.
 
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McStabStab

Community Contributor
It depends on your personal preference of game type. As mentioned Isolation is more survival horror, and FTE is more action shooter coop. I thought Isolation was good first play through, but I was disappointed on hardest difficulty mode. It's too easy to figure out how to hide from and sneak past the Alien, as it's scripted to only go part way into rooms, and not look into nooks and crannies. I was ducking into rooms and merely crouching by a wall in an alcove off of it because the dumb thing would walk straight past me without looking left or right, then do the same thing when it left. And it stomps loudly so is easy to hear coming.

There are only one or two places where it is kind of scripted to find you behind a vent, but even there if you time it right, it might detect you're there but won't catch you. Once I figured out the Alien's behavior, which was before my first play through ended, I was able to beat the game on hardest mode without using distraction devices or the flamethrower. The Working Joes are actually harder to sneak past than the Alien. It's still a good game, it just could have been MUCH better (especially on harder difficulty modes) if the AI wasn't so simply and predictably scripted. The level design and authenticity however is very good.

If you want a more challenging survival horror game, try The Evil Within. The original though, not the 2nd one. Also, ANY of the Dead Space games are good, and IMO have FAR better replay value than Alien Isolation. They are not really in the same exact genre as Alien Isolation though, because you have to not only survive but KILL many necromorphs in Dead Space, whereas in Isolation, the main theme is to evade, not kill.

Man I loved A:I but did not like the first Evil Within and loved the second one. I guess it just boils down to personal preference. I also beat A:I on nightmare difficulty and had a blast doing it!
 

McStabStab

Community Contributor
Not surprising, as like I said, it's an easy game to beat really. What did you not like about the first Evil Within?

The chapters felt all over the place, progression through the story wasn’t super clear, the weapons are pretty over the top for a linear survival horror game (electric crossbow bolts, etc), and my biggest pet peeve of all: moving the goalposts on boss fights. You run into an invincible boss multiple times and for some reason on the third or fourth try you’re able to kill them.

My last gripe: the final boss battle was way too quick-time-event based. Didn’t feel as challenging as the battles before it.

I liked the second one. The open world actually worked great, the boss battles were challenging but fair, and i felt more in touch with the story.
 
Not surprising, as like I said, it's an easy game to beat really. What did you not like about the first Evil Within?
The chapters felt all over the place, progression through the story wasn’t super clear, the weapons are pretty over the top for a linear survival horror game (electric crossbow bolts, etc), and my biggest pet peeve of all: moving the goalposts on boss fights. You run into an invincible boss multiple times and for some reason on the third or fourth try you’re able to kill them.

My last gripe: the final boss battle was way too quick-time-event based. Didn’t feel as challenging as the battles before it.

I liked the second one. The open world actually worked great, the boss battles were challenging but fair, and i felt more in touch with the story.
I have to agree with @McStabStab The first Evil Within was uneven, but Alien Isolation I count as one of the greatest games of all time, not just horror games, but all games. But then again, beating a game is not my goal, as I beat every game I play. I'm more in it for story/atmosphere/level design/mechanics, etc.
 
The stories of both games are heavily based on STEM, which has to be understood to get why the first game is structured the way it is. I felt the flashbacks where you see Ruvik talking to Dr Jimenez, and in some instances STEM agents as well, made it pretty clear what was going on. Also the flashback with Ruvik and his sister Laura in the barn. It's done out of sync obviously to build suspense, so you see the horror of what they are, then the flashbacks show what made them into such monsters, and puts it all in perspective.

There are no invincible then killable enemies though. Only Ruvik himself is invincible. Those other appearances are his Dopplers he cooks up to terrorize and trap you into thinking there's no escaping his world. This is made all the more evident in the place where all other enemies disappear once you kill the Doppler Ruviks.

QTE is something Mikami made popular with RE4, and I don't like it either, but I don't get why you say the final boss fight had too much of it. You're basically running a certain route to avoid it's swats, then shooting it with a turret, then finishing it off with a RPG and a timed pistol shot. Where do you get QTE in all that?

As Zed said, it comes down to what you're looking for in a game. To me, how much challenge a game offers has always been a high priority, and if it can do that with lots of replay value by scaling that challenge well to the hardest mode, all the better. Most games don't bother making enemies quicker and more aware on the hardest mode, TEW did. The wall mines were also better off used to blow enemies up than disarm for scrap, as they had very small disarm windows and the needle moved vey fast.

Just the standard zombie AI in TEW was far more sophisticated than in TEW 2. They could hear where you ran to, and search there, even if you were out of sight by the time they got there, they'd find you hiding in a locker. This meant you had to run until out of sight, then walk to where you wanted to hide. The zombies in TEW 2 stop as soon as you're out of sight, then just return to where they were. And the zombies in TEW were also less predictable, you didn't always know if they were dead after going down. This meant when throwing a match you had to approach them from the head if face up, and from the feet if face down, otherwise they could swat you, which is an instant kill on Akumu. They also had an easy cover takedown skill in TEW 2, which I think is a strange thing to put in a survival horror game.

As far as Alien Isolation, I've always been a HUGE fan of the Alien movie franchise, and was waiting as many were for a game to do it justice, but I felt Isolation fell short of that due to the monster AI being too simply scripted, which made it easy to figure out and evade. So for me, Isolation after the first play through became more of a challenge to evade (and especially kill if you were up to it), the Working Joes. That to me made it feel very much like something other than what we saw in that first epic movie, where the Alien itself was the thing that made you freeze in terror.
 
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Jan 19, 2023
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I don’t know much about these games, but I heard a few things. I can say that both are shooter games, but in Aliens, you play it within a team. Long story short, you hide and sneak from an alien. However, once you figure out the Alien moves, you can pass all the hard stages, and get bored pretty fast. Wasn’t my cup of tea, but was a time killer. I recommend you surf the net to find better games to play. My go-to site is zumroad.com. From time to time I read the news from the gaming world and search for a new game to buy.
 
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