Hooray, now I can get murdered by the Alien again.
If you’re playing Alien: Isolation and have experienced the game freezing when you load a new level, we might be able to help.
Yes, I’m still playing Alien: Isolation, and I’m still working on a review. I’m sorry. It’s a very long game and I have millions of other things to do, but it’s as much of a constant presence in my life as the Alien itself is a constant presence on Sevastopol. My efforts were somewhat stymied when I finished a level yesterday and, instead of loading the next level, the game went to the loading screen and then stopped dead. I tried finishing the level again earlier tonight, and once again, the game froze on loading the new level. I tried once more. It froze once more.
If this has suddenly been a problem for you, then it’s likely a problem caused by new Nvidia drivers… which, yes, I updated yesterday. That’s the common denominator noticed by players on the Alien: Isolation official forums, anyway, and rolling back the drivers to the previous version worked wonders for me. I’m now back to being stalked by an unkillable monster! Hooray!
You can have a look at the forum to see for yourself (although, while I haven’t seen any real spoilers, I’d recommend a bit of caution with regards to people saying where the game is freezing for them) but it doesn’t seem to be tied to any specific level or map change. It’s pretty much just that, if you’ve installed the latest Nvidia drivers, then the game has a really hard time changing from one map to another.
It doesn’t look like you have to rollback your drivers, though, if you really need the latest ones for some reason. A few users are reporting success if they just wait a few minutes, though I lost patience after about 60 seconds so I can’t say if that works.
Nvidia’s page on how to roll back your drivers can be found here. Our review of Alien: Isolation will turn up at some point, too! Probably as unexpectedly as the Alien suddenly appearing and OH GOD WHAT’S THAT BEHIND YOU
