Best difficulty for new game?

[Bearington]

I was thinking of playing on Hard as it says "The recommended way to experience the game" Is it the best mode? I'm definitely not going to play on Nightmare.

[sanslogique]

Have you ever played before? I did hard on my first runthrough, and it was *brutal* until I learned how to deal with the alien. Major learning curve. But I prefer hard. I think it's the best balance for being terrified by the alien but not so frustrated that you give up. If it's your first run, there's no shame in a lower difficulty!

[[COS]Puff|)r@g0nZ]

always play on normal or hard, easy is for scrubs.

[sENoZ]

nightmare

[Dayve]

Medium, without a doubt. With medium you're still in danger from the alien - it still kills you if it grabs hold of you, but it isn't constantly stomping around on the ground looking for you. It spends a fair amount of time in the vents and a fair amount of time searching for you.

Also human and android enemies on medium aren't frustrating to deal with.

[sENoZ]

even in nightmare the alien still stupid so ....

go for nightmare

[burivuh]

I think hard is the best for the first run. Besides, you can lower the difficulty at any moment.

[JamaicanDave]

Originally posted by Dayve:

Medium, without a doubt. With medium you're still in danger from the alien - it still kills you if it grabs hold of you, but it isn't constantly stomping around on the ground looking for you. It spends a fair amount of time in the vents and a fair amount of time searching for you.

Also human and android enemies on medium aren't frustrating to deal with.

Agreed, Medium is the way to go. It's probably a more tense experience because the Alien spends less time visibly stomping around right on top of your current position and more time lurking nearby. What you can't see but know is out there is far more terrifying.

[Larry]

Rofl, this talk of medium. Medium is not the way to experience this game at all. Those who say so either do not know the game mechanics or just can't cope with the slower and intended pace of the game.

Hard or Nightmare is the only way you should play but keep in mind it will be a lot slower than medium difficulty. On lower difficulties you're free to make much more noise, walk around in your leisure and simply not care about the alien at all as well as sprint more freely where in Hard or Nightmare difficulty sprinting is practically never allowed unless you want to attract the alien and die shortly after.

The only time you need to care about the alien is when it makes noise in the vents or is on it's feet stalking the ground floors. When he goes into the vents he won't come out or make any attempt to get you for the first couple of seconds he enters. The only time he will come out if you make noise is when you hear him in the vents hissing and moving around, otherwise you can run around and not give a damn. Nightmare/Hard basically makes it so the alien will stalk much more and be highly aggressive thus the added time to beat the game. It adds to the atmosphere and the horror. If you play on anything lower than medium the game will be boring. It will be easy and the alien will not be aggressive or see you unless you're right on front of it.

Then there's the fact that on medium difficulty the alien is literally blind. It has blinkers on and suffers from tunnel vision in medium or lower. It also doesn't learn. In Hard/Nightmare it learns from your attacks so if you spray fire at it to scare it away it might run away the first few times but then it will learn and start to charge you or simply not give a damn and try kill you outright.

Hard or Nightmare is the only way to play this game unless you're squeemish or simply only want to beat the game without experiencing the atmosphere and horror.

[Suburban Killbot]

Hard. It's the perfect balance.

[sENoZ]

Nightmare only for real gamer.

[sENoZ]

I did alien iso in nightmare one time, even in nightmare the alien is stupid as fI_Ickt.
You have some tools to help you and escape the alien or those stupid Joe.

Sound grenade and thing else, also the red flare is a very good one for the alien especially...
Playing in noob difficulty is not interesting at all ( my opinion may buey x) )

If you really love a game, you better get some good challenge no ? ........

[Dayve]

Originally posted by Dr.Larry:

Rofl, this talk of medium. Medium is not the way to experience this game at all. Those who say so either do not know the game mechanics or just can't cope with the slower and intended pace of the game.

I speak as someone who enjoys the slow pace of the game (in fact the reason I don't play the DLC's very often is because you're forced to go fast due to the time limit on certain objectives, and there's no reason to go slow because there's nothing fun to find, such as messages on computer terminals). I also speak as someone who has completed the game on hard and also currently playing through on nightmare - just finished the nest. Haven't died one single time in this nightmare game, haven't used any exploits, only used the flamethrower twice to kill annoying facehuggers in the nest, only used one pipe bomb and haven't even crafted any molotov cocktails.

I still recommend medium for newbies and their first playthrough though. New players won't know the layout of the maps, they won't know the best strategies for avoiding the alien and Working Joes. If they play on anything higher than medium there's a damn good chance they're going to quit because dying over and over and over again on the same part just isn't fun.

And like someone else said, this game is at its best when you know the alien is nearby but you can't SEE it. Or in other words, when the alien is in the vents. If he plays on hard the alien is going to be on the ground almost all the time, it's going to be killing him over and over and over whilst he gets used to the mechanics, and so on.

[Jarl Axel Svarrson]

Video Sage did quite a good playthrough on hard, seemed quite well balanced.

[zorlag]

Chapter 5 is pretty hellish if you are on Hard or Nightmare on your first playthrough and are doing it blind with no help / guides. I´ve seen some people get massacred over and over and over again, because the xeno won´t leave them to be. :)

But in case you want to dive right in with Hard: You can practice beforehand with the "Basement" map. Survivor mode Xeno is about equal to Hard level alien that is on aggressive mood. That can let you learn how to deal with the paralyzing tension that this game deals out like candy on xeno sections.

[Dayve]

Originally posted by zorlag:

Chapter 5 is pretty hellish if you are on Hard or Nightmare on your first playthrough and are doing it blind with no help / guides. I´ve seen some people get massacred over and over and over again, because the xeno won´t leave them to be. :)

But in case you want to dive right in with Hard: You can practice beforehand with the "Basement" map. Survivor mode Xeno is about equal to Hard level alien that is on aggressive mood. That can let you learn how to deal with the paralyzing tension that this game deals out like candy on xeno sections.

Haha, I definitely wouldn't recommend newbies to go in to the basement survivor mode. The alien is absolutely relentless on those survivor challenges. They'll die even more then mission 5!