The New Difficulty setting,"Nightmare", is a bunch of bull.

[Colt]

Recently, after the time I beat the game (on hard), I came back today to replay the game for the survivor mode, which I missed, and found two new difficulty settings: Novice and Nightmare. I didn't take much notice of Novice, I didn't like it easy, which is why I went to hard mode in the first place, but this new "Nightmare" mode... holy hell, why?

At first, I thought, "YUS, MOAR SCURY, I MUST BEAT IT." However, I then looked up what was difficult about Nightmare difficulty to find some really stupid (at least in my opinion) "take-a-ways."

Firstly, the motion tracker now has "unreliable information", meaning people might not show up or something that is not there will show up, and then, along with that, it has a distorted signal. MT= Useless.

Your flamethrower fuel now burns faster and there is less of it to go around, which I thought was an okay idea, actually. Makes you rely less upon it to save you, making things quite a bit more intense.

No longer do survivors drop ammo, and items are much harder to find, and no longer is there a HUD (No health bar showing, ammo counter, and flashlight indicator, and also, no map). Ammo, I can deal with, as I only ever fired my revolver, and shotgun, three, maybe four times each throughout the whole game... but items? Cmon, I had to make a few things to get through, and finding ♥♥♥♥ with the Alien on your ass was hard enough. Speaking of which...

The Alien is officially bull. It is now more aggresive and finds you much quicker, not to mention once you're spotted, it's over. It no longer gives a short hiss when it sees you for a quick second, it will just straight up charge at you, which, as you know, means that's it. GG, Alien. GG.

I honestly find this new mode to be "somewhat there", it sounds cool... but the motion tracker being broken, flamethrower fuel and other items being scarce, and the Alien being god-like just throws me off a bit... I think the perfect mode of survival is SO CLOSE, but it misses it by just a smidge, with the game stomping out what little power you have in the game into nothingness...

What do you guys think?

[burivuh]

Originally posted by TRIT0N:

Is there anything about normal, easy or novice mode that makes it worth playing?

Only if you want to explore all the Sevastopol as tourist.
I would recommend you to play on hard without using any fire - flamethrower, molotov, flashbang. Don't use flamethrower even as "flashlight" in vents. I made it, and it was as cool as my very first walkthrough.

[LukeTheSp00k]

I must be pro at this game.

Nightmare feels too tacked on (map updates still in the game, but you can't see the map, healthbar disappears meaning you can't know whether you're wasting a medkit, escaping the reactor is basically impossible if you don't have any ammo left to kill the Joes and basically requires you to not fire a shot before getting to the reactor to have enough ammo) so I played the game again on Hard and it was too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy, I breezed right through it, it wasn't a challenge. I have to use Nightmare.

[PCgamerbydefault]

Originally posted by TheFilthyCasual:

I must be pro at this game.

Nightmare feels too tacked on (map updates still in the game, but you can't see the map, healthbar disappears meaning you can't know whether you're wasting a medkit, escaping the reactor is basically impossible if you don't have any ammo left to kill the Joes and basically requires you to not fire a shot before getting to the reactor to have enough ammo) so I played the game again on Hard and it was too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy, I breezed right through it, it wasn't a challenge. I have to use Nightmare.

If you are a pro then I am a GOD at this game :) (Looks at profile and sees 265 hours of Alien Isolation) Yep, other than the first playthough (Hard) everything has been Nightmare. Only reasons being is because Nightmare wasnt implemented yet.

[ImSexyAndiNOED]

Cool story ,bro.

The mode is called NIGHTMARE ,then you complain about it being too hard?

[Zefnoly]

For some reason i did it allot better on hard than i did on my gameplay on normal... Not sure why. I almost regret i didn't choose nightmare instead. But the damn androids detects me faster than the alien. wtf?

[bulldog0890]

I'd play nightmare if they left the map, that was a stupid removal

[Cato]

If you don't like Nightmare don't play it - I for one like something that is a challenge for my skills.

There is Alien behaviour that you don't see below Nightmare - Like it spawning in vents and 'sniffing' you out

[Voxrox]

I played Nightmare recently, without knowing where to go from a prior session it would be quite painful...

But it wasn't all that much more challenging actually, as I hardly ever used stuff on hard, so fewer things to craft weren't such a big deal anyway to me...

[NinthElement]

You can always use the motion tracker to guide you to your next objective, in fact this is even easier than using the map. One reason I prefer nightmare is because on hard you find too much loot and thus feel compelled to craft lots of things you don't really need (although this can be reassuring on a first playthrough). Removing the health bar is a little silly, but at least everyone can see instantly you're playing on nightmare this way :)

[bunny puncher]

Originally posted by Cato:

If you don't like Nightmare don't play it - I for one like something that is a challenge for my skills.

There is Alien behaviour that you don't see below Nightmare - Like it spawning in vents and 'sniffing' you out

I dunno about the sniffing you out thing, but the xenomorph will spawn in vents on Hard if you stay in one for too long in actively dangerous levels. Actually the single most frightening thing that happened to me on my virgin Hard playthrough.

[Magneo]

Originally posted by bunny puncher:

Originally posted by Cato:

If you don't like Nightmare don't play it - I for one like something that is a challenge for my skills.

There is Alien behaviour that you don't see below Nightmare - Like it spawning in vents and 'sniffing' you out

I dunno about the sniffing you out thing, but the xenomorph will spawn in vents on Hard if you stay in one for too long in actively dangerous levels. Actually the single most frightening thing that happened to me on my virgin Hard playthrough.

Yes, & if he sees you climbing into a vent, or watching him from a vent say through a clear plexi-glass wall, etc, you may just see him take off running, then you'll hear him banging / crawling through the duct work to get to you. At least on Nightmare.

[spectre199]

I have zero problems with Nightmare Mode and I don't even use the motion tracker. By the time you play Alien Isolation on Nightmare mode you should not have to use or need to use the map. Why cause by the time you get to nightmare mode you should already have all the map area memorized and know exactly where to go and what to do.

I only play on nightmare mode with close to 300 hours and still keep going back and playing it on nightmare mode. Now I use a mod that makes the alien even more aggressive and smarter which makes it even more dangerous in nightmare mode.

I also use the mods that remove the lens flare and another mod that completely removes the motion tracker. With no motion tracker it adds more difficulty to the game, cause now you have to depend upon the sound and guess where the alien is at

I just think the OP needs to git gud

[Shodan]

I don't understand what's the point of these stupid threads. This difficulty exists only for people who think that every other difficulty is too easy, not for people who don't know how to play the game at the easiest difficulty and still feel like trying the hardest one for some reason. It's meant to be hard and if it's clearly too hard for you, why not simply play at a lower difficulty instead? Is it so hard to understand that no one forces you to play at the highest difficulty?

It's literally the same as saying something like: "Why does my drink get ice cold when I keep it in my freezer for an hour? I don't want it to be that cold, but I still want to keep it in the freezer".

[E c h o]

if you dont understand....
NIGHTMARE mode is supposed to be a nightmare for u.
ever consider that???

[PestMastah]

My first ever run through of this game... was on Nightmare mode.

I absolutely did not want to play a game and get immersed into it (particularly this story) on some lame easy setting. I wanted the Alien to be as monsterous as possible.

Used to daydream (as a kid) about how hard would it be to face off against this thing on the Nostromo if I were there..

Even reality would be harder. The Alien would be smart enough to anticipate where you are going and just go there and wait until you arrive... sitting.. idly .. quiet. Waiting for you to walk under it.

So anyways.. with that frame of mind, I went straight out of the gate into Nightmare mode. Went back later to try the Hard just to see how much stuff I could find to craft since I pretty much had a few lego blocks to make stuff with during the nightmare run.

Then went back and did my ONE SHOT (no deaths) run through on nightmare mode.

Not many people do that.

Just try and have fun with the game. Never use easy mode... never complain about a good thing (this game is the best of all the Alien games) ... and never.. never .. hide in lockers.

heh