Summary [8.0 out of 10]

The answer to anyone who asked why we couldn’t just have a scary Alien game after Aliens Colonial Marines, Alien Isolation takes things back to the feel of the first movie with one Alien and very few resources on hand to deal with it. What it amounts to is a tense cat and mouse game in which your character, Amanda Ripley, the daughter of the films’ protagonist, finds herself stalked by a Xenomorph while attempting to recover the Nostromo’s flight recorder. This is not a fast paced action game but it is a true stealth game in which giving away your position is a quick trip to a reload and, probably, nightmares. The game isn’t perfect with some pacing issues and redundant tasks as well as gameplay that is certainly not for everyone but if you are in the market for reliving the horror elements of Alien and are up for one of the most tense and nerve racking experiences on a console then Alien Isolation is the game for you.

What it’s Like

Playing hide and go seek as a child: You spend roughly as much time crouched behind something or in something as you did on the play ground. The difference here is that if you fuck it up you will be killed in a really gruesome way.

Your post Alien nightmares: I saw Aliens first as a kid so I thought that the Marines and killing shit was what the series was all about. The next night I watched Alien and spent the next month being scared of ventilation ducts. This game definitely invokes the fear and tension from the first movie but does it by putting you in it…much like nightmares after watching Alien at far too young an age.

The Great

Aesthetic: Alien really nailed the ‘used future’ aesthetic and while CRT monitors and other then current tech are no longer current, Isolation keeps the designs from the movies intact in the game. It is interesting and refreshing to see the game honor the design when even the Alien prequel Prometheus couldn’t be bothered to do so. This goes a long way toward nailing the next bullet point and the level of commitment to the original design really elevates the experience.

Immersion: By keeping everything true to the classic designs and feels of the films, Alien Isolation puts you right in the thick of it and with everything in the game so committed and consistent it really drives home the feeling that you are really there in this world. The fact that you are, in fact, isolated for the majority of the game keeps you from letting your mind wander out of the game. You are very rooted in the reality of the game here and things are set up to keep you immersed and invested.

Tension: Holy shit but this game is tense. There is very little strolling around collecting things to be had here. You don’t really get to casually walk around as if everything is okay. Even before the Xenomorph shows up there are androids and humans to worry about. You can deal with them a little more easily with guns and melee weapons but even before the alien shows up you are wondering where it is and when it will pop up. And once it does, all bets are off. I have never in my life been so cautious when playing a game and everything I did here dripped with tension and anticipation. The game also knows when not to throw the alien at you because the longer you go without a sighting the more you start to worry about where it is and when it is going to strike. This may be the most tense and scary game I have ever played.

Graphics: Even with relatively low tech environments, this game looks amazing. The character models and animations are right on and everything looks gorgeous.

The Good

Controls: When you are dealing with a game like this with success coming down to your ability to do what you need to do with just the right timing controls are very important. Obviously controls in a game are always important but here it is more necessary to be able to do what you need to do when you need to do it without fumbling around. Here we have very good controls that could be a bit better. Where I felt they stumbled is some of the item management and implementation. I had a few instances in which the proper item didn’t map to the controls or I fumbled the wrong button. My own tension filled clumsiness aside, there were moments when I felt hamstrung by the controls but it was never anything that broke the game for me or took me too far out of the experience.

Story: The story piggy backs on the story from Alien and takes place between the first two films and unfolds without particularly retconning anything major, unlike Colonial Marines. This makes it feel both connected and inconsequential in a way because we know that nothing is really going to come of it that has any real relevance to the series but it also anchors it into the story of the films in a way that means something in terms of setting up the feel and tension of the game. While the story isn’t particularly intriguing on its own it does set the stage for what really matters here which is the experience of having to figure out how to deal with the alien. What we get is good enough to keep the player moving and doing things and it does so without breaking the mythology of the series and frankly, for this experience, that is all we need.

Game Play: There are some inherent issues with the gameplay but for the most part this is the experience I have been wanting out of an Alien game. There isn’t a ton of variety but this is not a game to come to for that anyway. It offers a singular experience and it does that experience very well. It is also not an experience that is for everyone so know going in that you are going to be doing pretty much just stealth for the majority of the game. The meat of the experience is the tension that derives from the setting and game play and if you are on board and invested it is awesome. If you aren’t then you are not going to have a great time. At the end, though, the game play works well for the specific intent of the game and does not try to cater to any play style outside of that.

The Bad

Repetition: As good as the overall experience is here, it is really hard to get over how often you are doing the same things over and over again. I will get into the mission variety next but within missions you are pretty much doing the same sorts of things again and again. I am not really sure how to get around this given that hiding from the alien monster that is stalking you is pretty much the point of the game but there can be some fatigue involved in spending so much time hiding in lockers and behind desks.

Mission Variety: Again there is only so much you are going to find yourself doing in this game and the flow of the missions usually follows a set formula of getting the mission, finding someone or something, a set back when you lose that thing or the alien kills who you were looking for rendering the whole mission pointless, and then trying to salvage the mission on your own afterward. A bit more variety in this structure could have gone a long way toward making this a more engaging experience.

Saves: I appreciate the old school save systems of classic survival horror games and I was initially pretty excited to see it return here but the fact that there is so much distance between save points and the lockout on a save point once you have saved  really makes for frustrating moments when you take a wrong turn or hide in the wrong place. The scarcity of save points and resources are definitely there to up the tension and that works very well but I would have preferred the save system to be just a little more forgiving so I wouldn’t have to repeat menial bullshit so often when I invariably have to load a save after being gored by a Xenomorph tail. I get the need for consequences when building stakes but the save system takes it from being tense to being frustrating.

Conclusion [8.0 out of 10]

Alien Isolation is not a game for everyone. If you aren’t into stealth and you don’t deal well with this kind of heightened intensity then you aren’t going to be a fan.  If, on the other hand, you have always wanted to feel like you are in Alien and go through all the fear and tension involved I that then it is pretty much perfect for you. There are things here that could be improved upon to smooth out the experience but in terms of the goal of providing a tense and scary experience in the world of the movie Alien Isolation absolutely nails it.