This is easily my “I know it’s a much better game than my feelings about it are game” game. I wanted to love it. I see why people love it. At times I did love it and times I thought it may click to where I kept loving it. But in the end it ended up being a game I think it brilliant but simply and disappointingly not for me. But before we get into that, side note, this game may have my favorite box art of all time.

Being a big horror game fan but a huge stealth game hater I knew going in that I would be conflicted but hoped the horror would win out. This last sentence is probably the biggest reason this game didn’t work for me as the stealth won out. See, the thing is this game is brilliant in that you need to do these varied task across a vast spaceship while being quite and hide from the alien. At first it is super tense as you can almost always hear the alien as it’s surprisingly good AI roams around you both in the level with you and above you in the vents. You never know when you may make a wrong turn or make to much noise drawing attention to yourself and before you know what to do your dead. At first I loved this as the horror was easily the star of the show. However the longer I went through the game it got less and less scary and more and more a game of walking extremely slow and if I made a noise changing into a game of hide and seek. I no longer cared about the horror of the game, I just wanted to progress the story without waiting under a desk or in a locker for what felt like 5 minutes at a time so I didn’t get caught sending me way back to the last checkpoint, which are typically spaced good distances out. It became an annoyance and not horror.

I understand why people love it. The atmosphere is fantastic, the game is tense and the horror at the beginning is great. I know many enjoy the stealth aspect and with the good AI of the alien even for me it was fun at first. There just wasn’t enough in the gameplay loop to keep me wanting more and once the tense scare factor turned into a “ugh here we go again, a wait and hide montage” I just lost all interest.

Even though it wasn’t for me I’m still giving it a 3 star because I know I’m in the minority here and do respect it as a good game because it is. I also still recommend people play this because I think most people won’t have the same feelings I have towards the stealth “hide and seek” moments.

Also this may be and probably will be the last game I finish in 2023 as we are now a week away from 2024, as well as it’s Christmas time, as well as me and my wife are having our second child very soon. So I went ahead and made my Games I played in 2023 ranked list so if you’re interested check it out!


https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2023-ranked/

Essa foi uma maravilhosa experiencia de tensão e solidão no espaço, não tenho com não dizer que o jogo consegue fazer jus a frase que vende o filme, realmente, a todo momento se sente que "ninguém pode te ouvir gritando no espaço"

O Xenomoforfo é opressivamente implacável, e consegue te deixar com medo dele, de fato, não apenas pela fera imparável, mas a ambientação, consegue passar a sensação de solidão e claustrofobia que te esmagam junto com os barulhos da nave que deixam paranoico com a presença do alien.

A única coisa que me faz remover uma estrela é a ultima parte que parece arrastada e longa de mais.

Wonderfully atmospheric and intense. One of the best horror games made in the last decade.

This was a crazy game. A sequel to Alien starring Ripley's daughter Amanda as she looks for her mother running into an alien encounter on a space station. The story is surprisingly good but what makes the game really great is the Alien AI as it travels around through ducts and corridors. It's actions aren't predictable making every moment tense, even hiding isn't always safe. Though it has them occasionally this isn't a game full of cheap jump scares, it builds on atmosphere and pressure to cause fear and it works perfectly.

None of this would be as effective if Creative Assembly hadn't absolutely nailed the alien aesthetic. Using the retro future design of the original movie so it feels like a 70's sci-fi film in some ways but it's perfect in everyway. I came to this 4 years after release and thought the visuals were better than most games released at the time.

Though a little long in the tooth in the middle overall this is an intense, gorgeous game and it feels like Creative Assembly were ahead of their time with many aspects of it's design and visuals. The best alien game in years.

+ Genuinely tense and scary.
+ Sublime aesthetic and visuals.
+ The characters and lore are surprisingly good.

Arguably one of the best horror games ever made. I'm still in shock of how well this game holds up both visually and mechanically today. Graphics look like they were made for a game released today. Lighting and audio design are impecable. The alien itself is really intimidating and you never adapt to its behaviour making it a really imposing enemy, added to the fact that you cant really kill him. I love how all the actions in this game are purposely made extremely slow to add to the tense and thrilling experience. All guns feel really nice though I did feel that some of the tools you could craft were a bit too expensive to build for what they actually gave you in return. Level design in this game is extremely well made, everything you do feels immersive and intuitive at the same time. If you want to indulge in the xtra information the game gives you, you can and you'll be rewarded for it. Characters are all solid, I really liked Ripley. Story itself is nothing extremely new but it serves its purpose. I love the music in this game, it really adds up to the horror experience, though I do think that for its default setting it is a bit too loud. I love the saving mechanic in this game, it makes you really think your actions and planning. I do feel that the story get a bit too long and repetitive, especially towards the ending where the cycle of: do this, oh you cant you have to activate this first, wait you cant you have to go here to get this key, wait the key is in another room... I feel itt gets a bit repetitive. Also story in general carries on for a bit too long.

Um Survival Horror que depende intimamente de mecânicas de stealth não é pra qualquer um, não importa o quão bom ele seja.
Alien: Isolation me parece ser um excelente exemplo disso.

Sobre aspectos técnicos eu não tenho do que reclamar, o jogo é bem competente, suas mecânicas combinam com a proposta do jogo e, até onde joguei, a história sabe nos manter na ponta da cadeira bem o bastante.
Todavia, eu ainda notei alguns NPCs sofrendo de flickering e me cansei rapidamente de alguns QTEs que eu honestamente preferiria não ser obrigado a realizar, especialmente pelo tempo que eles tomam.
Visualmente o jogo me deixou bem satisfeito, embora o constante efeito de lens flare usado seja bem distrativo.
E claro, não poderia deixar de citar a dublagem e tradução pro nosso querido PT-BR, que na maior parte do tempo me deixou satisfeito, apesar da sincronia nas cutscenes ser pavorosa de ruim.

Dito isso, eu não sou capaz de negar que assim como foi pra muita gente, o ritmo do jogo me venceu.
Embora o horror do jogo se beneficie bastante da atmosfera de tensão que se constrói com a espera por um inimigo ou por um encontro com o temido Alien, cada longa sessão andando de um ponto até outro tende a se tornar entediante no momento em que o jogo deixa de causar medo.
Eventualmente, o jogo se resumiu a um ciclo enfadonho de correr, me esconder, distrair e reiniciar quando a IA decidia usar o sexto sentido pra me achar.
Que fique claro: o jogo possui uma respeitável variedade de ferramentas pra garantir que o jogador pode se defender ou escapar e delas, eu não tenho do que reclamar.

Em questão de história, o jogo segue um andamento que eu poderia definir como uma queima lenta, expondo apenas o que é importante e deixando o cenário e arquivos que encontramos contarem o resto da história.
Amanda Ripley enquanto protagonista me agradou bastante, demonstrando medo e coragem de maneira equilibrada e crível, sem perder sua postura contundente (por vezes impaciente) e decidida.

No fim, Alien: Isolation é um daqueles jogos que tem meu respeito, mesmo que eu reconheça que não sou realmente o melhor público para ele.
O jogo tem seus defeitos, mas suas qualidades os superam e garantem uma experiência interessante.

wowwwwww i loved this so much. definitely the best movie tie-in i've ever played by an incredibly, inexhaustibly huge margin. the gameplay is exhilarating and addicting, if at times frustrating (though i was playing on nightmare difficulty, so that may be on me). however, i never got discouraged, even when i got stuck on some difficult sections for rather lengthy amounts of time.

however what really made me adore alien: isolation is the way in which it captures those things which make the og film so special--and not only in regards to its dense, tense atmospherics and sci-fi world-building, but also in its themes. the monstrous xenomorph is not the actual villain of the film, but the faceless corporations completely disregarding the safety and health of their employees, only craving the accumulation of capital--even when that comes at a great, great human expense. obviously no parallels to the real world to be gleamed there lol.

dammit i would love play more games like this.

Every "Metroid" game ends with Samus sprinting out of an exploding facility so it's only fitting for the franchise that influenced Nintendo to replicate that feeling again and again. Perfectly captures the central give-and-take between the clanging industrial setting and perfect predatory instincts in the movie. What an incredibly scary game about how long it takes to turn levers and open doors, how tight the walls of corridors are so thrown objects ricochet again and again. Perhaps a little bloated on a mechanical and narrative level; I only needed about half the tools and characters don't make nearly as strong of an impression like the movies. But that's small potatoes because this nails that essential fear and never lets up. Never once got used to navigating around the Xenomorph and that's really an achievement. Incredible sound design too!

I played through this game around the time of its release, and I had the same complaint as everyone else: it’s just too long and drawn out. Later parts should have been cut, and the plot should have ended at one of the earlier opportunities instead. However, replaying it years later, I found that I didn’t feel the same fatigue, even though none of the content was new to me. For most games, the opposite happens, where a second playthrough leads to boredom with repeated sections, but Alien: Isolation’s problem is more a function of its narrative structure than its gameplay. As alluded to earlier, the plot has multiple moments where it seems to be wrapping up with one big plan to capture the alien, but it fails and the chase begins again. It’s common for events like these to happen in movies, so it makes sense for a game based on a film franchise to replicate the same techniques, but these story beats feel completely different to the audience of a movie versus a game. In the original Alien, each failure taught the crew about the xenomorph’s abilities, and their ignorance of what they were up against reflected that of the viewers. It wasn’t frustrating to see their struggles, but fascinating and tense, and this is the difference that separates it from Isolation. Being personally involved in the story, and having to power through the exhausting fear and tension for many more hours, means that any failure feels personal, like you were denied the release you were fighting for. To make matters worse, the subsequent drop in tension is marked by the filler objectives which games inspired by System Shock always seem to have, running around collecting parts and repairing subsystems rather than making real narrative progress. That’s why the replay ended up feeling so much better, I didn’t feel like victory was constantly being snatched away from me so I could go fix elevators, I knew how events would turn out and I could enjoy them as a spectator. I could appreciate the quieter moments for the time they gave to enjoy all the details, and not feel the impulse to rush so I could get the alien for real this time. It makes me wonder if the poor pacing was caused by this same effect on behalf of the developers, who consciously laid out the plot to function like a movie, but cognizance of that tempo blinded them to the audience psychology unique to games. In turn, Alien: Isolation is unique in how I could recommend people to play it once, as long as that time is their second playthrough. That makes no sense, but trust me, us Alien fans are used to that feeling of confusion, enjoyment, and tinge of disappointment.

Good lord, talk about overstaying your welcome. Revisiting the sights and sounds of Alien in a modern video game is neat, but unfortunately it's all in service of mediocre gameplay and a completely pointless and overwrought rehash of the movie's plot.

It's clear that the developers had a lot of love for the source material, and what's there is extremely faithful, but they just don't bring anything new to the table. Early on I enjoyed exploring the accurate recreations of the Alien sets, but by the end I was rolling my eyes as the game repeatedly recycled visuals and plot beats from the movie in their original order. What isn't pulled from the movie is a mishmash of objectives like "turn on the generator", "find a way to open the door", "fix this broken thing", and lots of backtracking.

Combine that with painfully tedious and dated hide-and-seek stealth gameplay, boilerplate immersive sim elements (lots of audio logs, and you punch 0451 into a keypad!), and you've got one of the more disappointing licensed games in a long time. If this had been a focused experience delivering an original story vignette over a few hours, it could've been something much better.

Alien: Isolation é o típico jogo que vai muito além do susto, preocupando-se muito mais com uma construção sólida de tensão e medo para atingir seus ideais de desespero. Contando com um trabalho impecável na criação dos ambientes abandonados de Sevastopol, um design de som invejável e um assassino feroz e desalmado para aterrorizar o jogador, o jogo consegue traduzir com maestria o sentimento de isolação em uma instalação espacial tomada pelo caos. Cada objetivo era acompanhado de uma insegurança enorme, me deixando cada vez mais amedrontado em prosseguir na minha missão. E mesmo com eventuais deslizes, como uma repetição exagerada de tarefas bem parecidas, taxa de quadros baixa em cutscenes ou a inteligência artificial dos inimigos desligando simplesmente do nada, eu não consigo não ver esse jogo como um clássico do terror moderno. Para alguém que estava afastado há tanto tempo do gênero, Alien: Isolation me puxou com tudo para dentro desse espiral de pavor e receio!

This is easily one of the best horror games to come out in the last 10 years. The feeling of dread even though on some level you knew the alien wasn't anywhere near by or in some cases it's hiding nearby.

At one point I was rather carelessly walking down a corridor when out of the vent above the alien popped out and dragged me through it. The second time around in a different corridor I clocked the vent and the saliva dripping out of it and slowly went around it.

Nothing quite beats the moment when I finally got the flamethrower. The alien popped out of a vent, stood tall and intimidating... Right up until I brandished the flamethrower. After the first burst of flame it about turned and leapt back into the vent. I repeated this on numerous occasions. It's moments like this that made the game.

The story is a surprisingly strong offering as well given how up and down a narrative for anything Alien related can be. You can get a good sense of the characters and their motivations, some of which can be surprising.

I'd also like to include a shout out to the Dev team and the ridiculous but much appreciated level of detail this game has. Even to the extent of the CRT monitors of the time being copied and studied so that the monitors in game were as accurate as possible. The AI is also just amazing and so complex to the point I don't think I know of a game AI that rivals it.

Excellent adaptation of a film setting into a video game.
Alien Isolation is probably the scariest game i have ever played, the game is so tense that kept me at the edge of my seat.
The Alien has to be the best horror Stalker imo, its A.I is terrifying and its as swift as its deadly.
The atmosphere is spot on and androids, ship design and music all compliments it.
The only issue is its pacing, which make later sections a bit of a slog, but aside from that this game is a must play for any horror fan and Especially Alien 1979 fans.

There's some good stuff going on here but it's just stretched so thin. It's overlong, it's janky, the plot is nonsense, all of the characters are useless. But whatever, what people really praise this game for is the Alien AI.

I don't get the hype. Not sure what's so impressive about the Alien inexplicably always knowing where you are and showing up nearby. Not trying to sound cool, plenty of games scare the hell out of me, but I don't think I found it scary once. There are plenty of tense moments for sure, but all that tension is gone once you get the flamethrower and are then no longer helpless. Not to mention I played on hard difficulty and still always had near maxed out supplies and ammo at all times.