Feature, Horror, Sci-Fi

Alien in Gaming 0 4568

The Alien franchise has inspired many pieces of art form throughout the years, especially movies and video games. HR Giger is a Swiss artist whose work has created one of the most iconic monsters of our time. The creature’s design for Ridley Scott’s first Alien movie was inspired by one of Giger’s artwork called Necronom IV. Following the movies release, the creature gained popularity in the mainstream and soon after, many sequels to the first movie where created.

Action Over Horror

Among the sequels, the movie has also inspired many other forms of media, the most obvious being a number of video games. Many attempts were made in recreating the feeling and atmosphere of the movie in video game format. However, no video game company could nail the intense horror that the first movie provided. The games were mostly inspired by the second movie in the franchise called Aliens, which was directed by James Cameron and was very well received.

The movie was very ambitious for its time. It was more action oriented with a lot of overlapping themes. Most video game adaptations used Aliens as the main inspiration. With the release of Doom in 1993, first person shooters were becoming very popular and many first person shooter games in the Alien franchise soon followed.

One game, which is considered a cult classic is Alien vs Predator, released in 1999. The game was very well received and it was praised for its three distinct campaigns. You can play either as the Alien, the Predator or the Marine. Each one of them having a unique play style. Compared to the other two, the alien campaign was not so well received. Many believed that it was too simple in its implementation and had way more potential.

The next installment in the series soon followed and was released in 2001 as Aliens vs Predator 2. The game featured the same 3 distinct campaigns, but the gameplay was more polished. It did not bring anything new to the table and the Alien campaign was still considered too simplistic. Plans for a third installment were never considered and soon after, the game series was abandoned.

What followed was one of the biggest gaming controversies in gaming history. The release of Aliens Colonial Marines. This subject matter deserves an article on its own and there are many others that have explored this topic. In 2010, the developers of the first Alien vs Predator have rebooted the franchise and was simply titled Alien vs Predator.

Finding the Horror Element

All of the games were action oriented with little emphasis on horror. They were released in a time where horror games were lacking an identity. Few games where truly considered horror games, like Amnesia the Dark Descent, a game which focused more on the psychological aspect. The game uses a sanity meter and if the players spends too much time in darkness, the character starts to hallucinate. The player had no weapons to defend themselves and relied on hiding and avoiding the monsters. This game could be considered an inspiration for what is to come to the Alien franchise.

In 2014, after 35 years since the original Alien was released, fans finally got what they were asking for. The most horrific and true to form Alien experience in gaming. Instead of taking its inspiration from Aliens, like that other games have done in the past, the developers looked at the original movie which started it all, Alien, and the game was called Alien Isolation. The game followed the events of the first movie and you play as Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley’s daughter. What makes this game truly horrifying is that the Alien (singular) cannot be killed in any conventional way. The player uses a motion tracker to detect the Alien’s position and can hide in lockers or under tables in order to avoid it.

Other Gaming Adaptations

Besides the regular video games, there are also many Alien themed casino games that have been developed. There is a large variety of slot games that are inspired by the Alien franchise. The slots are made in such a way that try to mimic the unique atmosphere of the movies. Instead of the classic fruit symbols, the reels feature the characters from the movie or the aliens themselves. Additionally, some of the other elements of the movies are present in these online casino games, such as the well known Weyland-Yutani symbol, as well as other forms of the Aliens, such as the Facehugger or the Alien egg.

These slot games were never made with the intention to be scary in any way, but they cleverly make use of the elements found in the movies and the slots themselves look like they belong in that particular universe.

Best Adaptation

When it comes to the many attempts of porting the Alien into video games, Alien Isolation may be the best incarnation of the famous extraterrestrial lifeform. Not being able to kill the creature results the player having to focus on avoiding it and making use of the hiding mechanics of the game. Also, a lot of parise has been given to the Alien’s AI which made the creature’s actions unpredictable.

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I'm a freelance film reviewer and blogger with over 10 years of experience writing for various different reputable online and print publications. In addition to my running, editing and writing for Thoughts On Film, I am also the film critic for The National, the newspaper that supports an independent Scotland, covering the weekly film releases, film festivals and film-related features. I have a passion for all types of cinema, and have a particular love for foreign language film, especially South Korean and Japanese cinema. Favourite films include The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Competition: Win King of Thieves on DVD *CLOSED* 0 3882

***This competition is now closed. Thanks to all who entered! The two winners will be contacted soon!

This coming Monday sees the DVD and Blu-ray release of King of Thieves, the latest film from acclaimed director James Marsh (Man on Wire, The Theory of Everything), which features a cavalcade of legendary British actors including Michael Caine, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Michael Gambon and Paul Whitehouse who team up to pull off a brazen heist. You may know the job from our own headlines as “The Hatton Garden Heist,” described as the biggest and most daring heist in British history.

It’s a good slice of old-fashioned heist movie fun which morphs in its latter half into something with surprising touches of the dangerous and sinister as suspicions and loyalties start to inevitably turn.

To celebrate the film’s release, we have two copies of it on DVD to give away, thanks to the lovely folk at Studio Canal.

thoughts-on-film-king-of-thieves-competition

To enter the competition simply answer the following question: in which classic British film does Michael Caine famously say the line, “you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”?

a) Alfie
b) The Italian Job
c) The Ipcress File

Please email your answer to rosstmiller@thoughtsonfilm.co.uk with the subject heading “King of Thieves competition.” Please also include your delivery address details so we can easily send the prize out if you win.

Now for the technical part:

  • UK residents only
  • Entrants must be 18 or over
  • Winners will be chosen at random
  • The prize for each entrant is one DVD copy of King of Thieves
  • Prize is non-transferable
  • Competition ends on Sunday January 27th at 11:59pm GMT
  • Prize will be sent from PR/studio

King of Thieves is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray from January 21st. You can already rent/buy the film digitally.

Best of luck on the competition!

Movie Review: Monsters and Men 0 6466

A spate of films have appeared on our screens as of late that feel like they only really could have been made now, as a sort of culmination of what has come before, a breaking point, explored in ways that hold a mirror up to how the situation is presently, whether set modern day (Assassination Nation, The Hate U Give) or in the past (BlacKkKlansman).

The latest is Monsters and Men, a thoughtful, ambitious and keenly-judged feature debut from writer-director Reinaldo Marcus Green that deals with the ricocheting effect of a black man being gunned down by police officers who purportedly perceived he was a threat to them, despite a videotaping witness suggesting he didn’t have a gun in his hand as the cops attested.

It’s a film of three distinct parts threaded together by how one event ripples through individual lives, evoking the Oscar-winning Moonlight in form at least with its three-tier structure as each of the character-driven pieces present us with their own angle on the specific situation that drives the plot and the societal themes at large. As it starts out it makes you believe you’re only going to see things from one perspective before revealing a really well-played contrasting and complimenting set-up that’s both narratively and thematically satisfying.

There’s the key witness filming the event, Manny (Anthony Ramos) who has just started a new job to provide for his wife and young daughter who has to weigh up the negative effect uploading the video to the web will have on his family’s life against his need to let the world see what actually happened. There’s the strong-willed black police officer, Dennis (John David Washington, who also starred in the aforementioned BlacKkKlansman), within the system who wasn’t directly involved with the shooting but who is colleagues with the officers responsible and with a family of his own to think about every time he heads out to patrol the city streets. And finally a young baseball star-in-the-making, Zyrick (Kevin Harrison Jr.), who is inspired to take protesting action after watching the footage.

In the middle police-focused segment, it refreshingly touches on the idea of the danger cops put themselves in every day as much as it lends vital weight to the argument that there is really no excuse for a group of officers to gun down an unarmed black man. “One cop’s mistake and now we’re all to blame,” explains Dennis when a dinner date turns sour once conversation turns to the shooting. “I thought you were different, that maybe you were part of the solution” retorts the family friends who brought the topic up. Both lines ring in your ears.

John David Washington as Officer Dennis Williams in “Monsters and Men”

It’s the film’s strongest and most thought-provoking segment, evoking the likes of Rampart (directed by one of this film’s executive producers, Oren Moverman) and even TV’s The Shield, if not in visceral immediacy then certainly in the ways it explores interdepartmental attitudes, procedures and loyalty in the face of intense, albeit sadly all-too-common occurrences on the street.

As a whole it’s a bit more of a studied, comparatively subdued experience than the far more rambunctious, fired-up The Hate U Give. Nevertheless, in its own quietly powerful way, it explores the micro and macro effects of violence and killing at the hands of police officer that are an unfortunate regular occurrence in America, asking difficult and necessary questions that really stay with you.

Is this an inevitability of modern day life in America? Is there a solution? Why should it be allowed to continue? Where does police protecting themselves end and police brutality begin? The words “Black Lives Matter” never actually cross the lips of anyone in the film but it nevertheless pulses through every scene. In the wake of Charlottesville in particular, it’s a film that takes on more weight, making you think as it compels with its story filled with excellent performances, involving soundscape (the amplified sounds of the New York City streets is brilliantly achieved) and memorable score by Kris Bowers that’s at once sorrowful and hopeful, encapsulating the film’s ethos that these terrible things happen but there’s light at the end of the tunnel that things might some day change.

Monsters and Men is in UK cinemas from Friday January 18th.

8 out of 10