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.