Alien: Isolation and Driveclub have received a wide range of reactions across the industry, which has in turn generated plenty of healthy discussion.
In this day and age, it’s rare we experience a warm fuzzy feeling when we boot up X (formerly known as Twitter, of course).
But the past few days have been lovely: our feed is full of people talking about DriveClub again.
The discussion started when someone posted a clip of the game and its infamous rain effects. The caption reads: “Still can’t believe this is a 12 year old game.”
This was one I was hoping would have some kind of boost from the PS5. The devs locked that sucker so tight...
I play the PSVR one even though it doesn't look as good, because that one is 60fps.
I interviewed them twice back in my gaming journalist days... Once at E3 2006 and again on a podcast about a year later. Really nice folks.
The guy we interviewed both times' name was Simon, I can't remember his last name, it was 20 years ago, but he was a really nice guy, and was very passionate about his job. It broke my heart when I saw Sony shuttered Evolution. I do hope they bring some of those folks back, but I remember another studio ended up hiring most of them back in those days, and they've been releasing new games since under that studio... Codemasters, maybe? I forgot which....
But the amount of talent that Sony has shut down over the years, it's disturbing. Psygnosis, Evolution, Zipper... just those three studios produced some of the most innovative games that PlayStation has ever seen... and those games need to be brought back.
If they were to release that game on the PlayStation 5, there would be absolutely no need for a remaster or a remake. The whole appeal of the original game was that it consistently exceeded people's expectations.
Higher rendering res and textures, higher framerate, maybe toss in some global illumination/ray tracing, but other than that, they could keep every polygon the same and it would still look absolutely incredible as a current gen title.
Sony should reassemble the team and make Driveclub 2. Driveclub was so ahead of its time it’s crazy.
This is what I hate about gamers sometimes
There is a segment of gaming communities that always want an old game to come back. But when the game(s) were in their prime, nobody supported them or not enough people supported them. Driveclub, Killzone, Resistance, etc all fit that profile.
I want Driveclub, Killzone, Resistence, and etc all back too. But I say that as someone that bought into, played, and own those games.
Too many people like to talk but not put up the money to support when it's needed. I even lump two of my own personal friends into that. I remember how one of them constantly said "I always wanted to play the Resistance games", yet never made an effort to buy any of them. No way that's an isolated event.
There are certainly games that fit that description, but I'm not sure these are a good fit:
- Driveclub infamously launched in a truly terrible state. It had a central focus on online & social features, and those were broken for about 6+ months before people could reliably play it as intended. It was so bad that the PS Plus Edition was delayed, along with its companion app. It also released less than a year after the PS4 launch, so it had to deal with a smaller total of launch PS4 owners to sell to, and Driveclub's rough launch certainly did it no favors.
- Resistance got 3 main console entries, and one handheld title for the PSP and PS Vita. Killzone got 5 main console entries across 3 generations, and one handheld title for PSP and PS Vita. This was also the era of millions of shooters, especially of the First Person variety, & genre fatigue was getting heavier by the year. So I feel these did pretty good at 5 and 7 titles respectively, pointing to enough people showing up for at least a while.
I'm not saying people don't exist who fit that criteria for these games, but I also don't think they were the primary issue. I think after a solid break from the IPs, as well as a lessening of shooter oversaturation, these titles could find healthy audiences if they came out with new entries at this point.
Killzone on the PS4 had the graphics, but the gameplay was tragic, I only rated Killzone 3, although the first game on the PS2 was decent. The Getaway was another game Sony canned, the sequel was so bad. Plenty of games need a sequel, the likes of Ridge Racer, Wipeout, Project Gotham, Wave Race and F-Zero have been retired. The racing genre these days, I'm sick of Turismo and Forza due to the same tracks and any other clones.
I think the original Motorstorm was the game that convinced me to buy a ps3. Way ahead of its time.
Surprised Sony didn't release a collectio, but all they seem to do these days is release God of War and Uncharted collections. It kills me that I no longer have a PS3, so a collection would be awesome.
An opinion piece on the best Alien games. From arcade Alien vs Predator action to a terrifying Xenomorph stalker, these are the best Alien video games starring Ridley Scott’s chestbursting, acid-blooded nightmare.
My favorite Aliens game also, having the three campaigns to play was great. Scaling walls as an alien waiting to ambush anyone that came too close.
Only played a little of the horde mode but was still fun.
Aliens Fireteam Elite was my GotY in 2021, single player was kinda bad but playing that game 3 player with friends was so good and really challenging on higher difficulties
Massive shout out to Aliens Vs predator 2 (2001), a dialup lag filled fun mess in multiplayer and 3 great campaigns
Alien Isolation Grand Mother VR is an all new virtual reality experience for Creative Assembly’s best ever horror game.
I played through most of the PS4 version of the game but stopped because another game came out. I bought it last year for PC with the intention of using the VR mod but haven't gotten around to setting it up. I am glad I waited.
Great game, even better in VR. A little drawn out by the end, but I hope we see CA do something a little different with the sequel.
Sweet. I also rebought this game on Steam for the purpose of VR. I'll have to give it another shot w full immersive controls. I had only tried it out briefly before.
It's funny this was never officially released at retail as a VR game, bc it feels so perfect for it!
Once again.. Though at times the systems actual reviewers can get things totally wrong, these games are sitting about exactly where they should be. Those scores of a 72 for DC and 78 for Aliens are pretty spot on.
Most of the time if you toss out the biased reviews on the top and bottom... Metacritic scores are not as bad as we think.
I think we need some background info on the reviewer and their equipment setup before they start the review writeup. Things like what games the reviewer has liked in the past, their favourite games, games they currently personally own, etc. This will enable the reader to see if they are like minds with the reviewer otherwise the review will not be compatible to them. Everyone has their likes and dislikes so it makes no sense whatsoever to read a review, for example, from a reviewer who loves cars to death from the perspective of a gamer who is more in to FPS games and is just considering a new car game. The gamer might not get the same insane level of excitement that a car nut reviewer would have.
Additionally, playing a game on a projector is different from a 'normal' flatscreen. This also helps the reader associate with the reviewers feeling on a game. I've played the same game a few times, once on a projector and once on a flatscreen. Funnily enough, the experience is noticeably different.
All this helps the reader better identify with the reviewer or just move on to read a review from a like minded reviewer to see if they too would like to spend their hard earned money on a game. As it stands now, reviews are for the most part, becoming quite useless.