A great Alien game CAN be made and already has. (Spoilers?)

#1 Posted by BBAlpert (665 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

The only caveat is that it isn't actually based on the movie Alien. The game I'm talking about is 7 Days a Skeptic, the second game in the Chzo Mythos series. I'll try to avoid any spoilers where I can, but some things I will say might be in a bit of a gray area. Also note that I'm talking about an Alien game, not an Aliens (or Alien 3) game.

These are some of the key traits of Alien that I think 7 Days a Skeptic happens to nail.

  1. Setting: They're both set on isolated/derelict ships being manned by a bare minimum of crew members.
  2. The antagonist/creature: Both 7 Days and Alien involve a single elusive, powerful, seemingly invincible monster loose on the ship, hunting down the crew. Both entities can show up and attack from out of pretty much nowhere, and run back into hiding just as quickly. And even though both creatures probably have the strength to be able to kill the entire crew all at once if the situation presented itself, they prefer to pick off the stragglers. On top of all that, both creatures were unknowingly/unintentionally brought on board by the ships' crews.
  3. Both ships, as mentioned before, are being run by skeleton crews. Every person has some crucial, unique role on the ship (none of them particularly qualified to fight back against a crazy killing machine), so shit starts going downhill quickly each time someone gets iced.

I feel like there are some other similarities, but those are the big ones I can think of right now.

#2 Edited by Nilazz (515 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

So...There hasn't been a great Alien game then?

#3 Posted by BeachThunder (8916 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago
#4 Posted by Pr1mus (2443 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago
#5 Posted by believer258 (7895 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

If you want to say "a great Alien game has been made in everything but name" then, well, you can just name a haunted house game. Or the parts in the first Dead Space where the regenerating, unkillable Hunter stalks you.

Meanwhile I hear that

is pretty decent. There's also those old AvP games that were supposed to be all right.

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#6 Posted by Svenzon (552 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

Aliens Vs Predator 2's marine campaign is pretty damn good. Captures the feel brilliantly. The aliens are actually a threat and there's a couple of cool scares in there, too.

#7 Posted by GunstarRed (4036 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago
#8 Posted by PandaBear (612 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

@nilazz said:

So...There hasn't been a great Alien game then?

I'm glad you said this. It's like saying "They made a good Fast & Furious game, it's Need for Speed!!!!"...

#9 Edited by BBAlpert (665 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

@nilazz said:

So...There hasn't been a great Alien game then?

I'm glad you said this. It's like saying "They made a good Fast & Furious game, it's Need for Speed!!!!"...

A fair point. What I meant was that 7 Days was a great Alien game in the same sense that Asura's Wrath and Darksiders were awesome DBZ and Zelda games, respectively.

#10 Posted by TheHT (8151 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

Oh cool, those are made by Yahtzee.

#11 Posted by BBAlpert (665 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

@theht said:

Oh cool, those are made by Yahtzee.

They're actually really good, too. The first few games (5 Days a Stranger and 7 Days a Skeptic), at least. I don't remember as much about the later games, but I don't recall being quite as thrilled by them. I think they were still pretty good though.

#12 Posted by cloudnineboya (310 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago
#13 Posted by Laivasse (424 posts) - 3 months, 7 days ago

The marines campaign in the first AvP was actually a fantastic recreation of the atmosphere of the Alien films. Predators only really enter into it as a kind of late game mid-boss, so it's mostly just Aliens all the way. Great use of the tracker, great weaponry, great behaviour and damage modelling on the aliens. When they re-released it as AvP Gold, though, the dev team re-recorded all the in-game speech themselves and it turned out awful.

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#14 Posted by Rebel_Scum (357 posts) - 3 months, 6 days ago

Alien 3 on the Sega Master System was and now I guess still is the best Alien game imo.

#15 Posted by Cold_Wolven (1694 posts) - 3 months, 6 days ago

Even though it's not great I liked the last entry in the AVP series.

#16 Posted by Pr1mus (2443 posts) - 3 months, 6 days ago

Wouldn't a game that tries to stick really close the existing fiction like Colonial Marines always be boring anyway? There's basically the regular Xenomorph, a bunch of headcrab thing and one Queen.

Plus the variety of weapons in the movie isn't exactly great. It's fine for a movie but games have to be a bit more substantial and varied to keep interesting for the duration of the game.

I think that's why the AvP games were infinitely superior.

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