Alien: Isolation is rad. I don’t necessarily think it’s my favourite survival horror game but I can’t deny that it at least contends for the title. And this is as someone who… didn’t have a lot of experience with the Alien film series, at least beyond what’s been absorbed into pop culture. I remember reading an interview made to hype up Aliens: Colonial Marines where the devs talk about how painstakingly they attempted to make environments look exactly like they were in the original film all for the purpose of fanservice, and stuff I’ve read up on gives the impression that a lot of effort on that front was made here as well but even without that level of devotion to the series I was easily able to understand most of what was going on, plot-wise. I maybe don’t really have the viewpoint to say whether this game appeals to longtime fans — though from what knowledge I’ve absorbed it most certainly does — as someone new to the Alien franchise myself, I found this as good of an entry point as any.
The story follows Amanda Ripley, an engineer who joined the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in order to search for answers to her mother’s disappearance. When she heads to the space station Sevastopol in order to pursue a lead on the Nostromo, her mother’s ship, she finds the place in ruins and most of the crew dead — and the being that caused the destruction is now on the hunt for her. Now she has to scavenge her way through the desolation, hide from the alien, fight through all the other factions vying for her blood, and try and find a way to get off the ship.
And it works. Really well. In terms of gameplay, the closest thing I’d maybe compare it to would be Resident Evil VII: you explore/puzzle your way through a first-person environment, find quite a bit of lore to read through and figure out, craft items to take down unfriendly humans and androids… and then the Xenomorph comes in. It’s always on your ass. Nothing you do hurts it. If it sees you, and you don’t have the tools to get away from it, you’re dead. When it shows up, which it frequently does, it's like life-or-death hide-and-seek — you’ve got to figure out where to go, you’ve got to figure out where exactly the alien is, and you’ve got to figure out how to get from A to B without the alien seeing you. Even when you start getting tools that make getting caught no longer instant death, the alien never stops being a threat. Fuel and ammo are limited by what you can find, and eventually — if you start using one thing too many times — the alien will stop giving a shit and gun for you anyway. Anything you do is only temporary, and nothing will ever keep the Xenomorph down, from the first moment it appears right up until the very end of the game.
It’s not so oppressive all the time, though, and I think that’s something to the game’s benefit. For every moment, like the Medbay, where the alien is a constant threat and you’ve got to think out your every move, you then proceed to get an area like Seegson Synthetics where the only significant threats are looters and you’re given a lot more room to breathe. And just when you’ve gone through a bunch of low-intensity areas just like it… suddenly the alien’s back and you start to realize that all the shiny new tools you picked up only work to show it down. The game knows that constant tension will only leave the player exhausted, and does a really great job at mixing the intensity up and using its best aspects sparingly. I know that there’s been a lot of criticism about how the story goes longer than deemed necessary, but that was never a problem for me? There was never really a point where I was particularly waiting for the ride to be over, and — rather surprising for a survival horror game — I felt like some of the best (and scariest!) setpieces were located closer to the end of the experience more than anything, which I think speaks to how well the game manages to pace itself out.
Another thing I’d like to shout out is the game’s AI. I think most people already know about the wonders of the Xenomorph AI — such as how the game keeps track of the strategies you use to successfully get away from it and slowly makes the AI smart enough to start counteracting them — but something I’m also really into is how the AI for the looters and other regular humans on the ship plays out. They’re super variable in this flawed and human way, and it's clear even though they oppose you they’re mostly just dudes trapped in the same situation as you are. They’ll stop trying to shoot you the moment they see the alien, and some of the little interactions before they inevitably get gored often see you as unlikely comrades trying to survive against a mutual enemy. I’ve heard friends tell their stories about their experiences playing this game, and all their super memorable interactions with the human NPCs, and while most of mine were them being stupid and/or them getting themselves killed by the alien, I think its rad that just one part of the whole experience can inspire so many different stories.
There are other parts that maybe knock the experience down, though. The music is… obnoxious, honestly. In a game where diegetic sound is so important, and listening out for footsteps is the best way to know where the alien is, having generic orchestra cues blare over nearly everything at the slightest hint of the alien got in the way and felt cheap, especially considering the atmosphere that’d already been built without it. Using manual save stations, while it does really help to create tension… I wouldn’t have minded some auto-checkpoints, especially in some of the more difficult sections — oftentimes those sections would stop giving you save stations as frequently and it slowly became very frustrating to tread ground you’d already trodden over and over again when oftentimes the section you actually ran the risk of dying on was at least two minutes worth of traversal ahead. I… also feel like maybe the game could’ve done a bit more to signpost things to the player? Maybe it could be that I’m the actual problem, but there were… way more points than I could count where I just kind of didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and the tools the game uses to point a direction for the player (the map, the motion tracker) didn’t exactly do much to help.
But in general… man, this was great. Maybe not my favourite survival horror, but definitely at least a contender. I’ll be fascinated to see how exactly this stacks up compared to all the other games I play this September and October. 8/10.
The story follows Amanda Ripley, an engineer who joined the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in order to search for answers to her mother’s disappearance. When she heads to the space station Sevastopol in order to pursue a lead on the Nostromo, her mother’s ship, she finds the place in ruins and most of the crew dead — and the being that caused the destruction is now on the hunt for her. Now she has to scavenge her way through the desolation, hide from the alien, fight through all the other factions vying for her blood, and try and find a way to get off the ship.
And it works. Really well. In terms of gameplay, the closest thing I’d maybe compare it to would be Resident Evil VII: you explore/puzzle your way through a first-person environment, find quite a bit of lore to read through and figure out, craft items to take down unfriendly humans and androids… and then the Xenomorph comes in. It’s always on your ass. Nothing you do hurts it. If it sees you, and you don’t have the tools to get away from it, you’re dead. When it shows up, which it frequently does, it's like life-or-death hide-and-seek — you’ve got to figure out where to go, you’ve got to figure out where exactly the alien is, and you’ve got to figure out how to get from A to B without the alien seeing you. Even when you start getting tools that make getting caught no longer instant death, the alien never stops being a threat. Fuel and ammo are limited by what you can find, and eventually — if you start using one thing too many times — the alien will stop giving a shit and gun for you anyway. Anything you do is only temporary, and nothing will ever keep the Xenomorph down, from the first moment it appears right up until the very end of the game.
It’s not so oppressive all the time, though, and I think that’s something to the game’s benefit. For every moment, like the Medbay, where the alien is a constant threat and you’ve got to think out your every move, you then proceed to get an area like Seegson Synthetics where the only significant threats are looters and you’re given a lot more room to breathe. And just when you’ve gone through a bunch of low-intensity areas just like it… suddenly the alien’s back and you start to realize that all the shiny new tools you picked up only work to show it down. The game knows that constant tension will only leave the player exhausted, and does a really great job at mixing the intensity up and using its best aspects sparingly. I know that there’s been a lot of criticism about how the story goes longer than deemed necessary, but that was never a problem for me? There was never really a point where I was particularly waiting for the ride to be over, and — rather surprising for a survival horror game — I felt like some of the best (and scariest!) setpieces were located closer to the end of the experience more than anything, which I think speaks to how well the game manages to pace itself out.
Another thing I’d like to shout out is the game’s AI. I think most people already know about the wonders of the Xenomorph AI — such as how the game keeps track of the strategies you use to successfully get away from it and slowly makes the AI smart enough to start counteracting them — but something I’m also really into is how the AI for the looters and other regular humans on the ship plays out. They’re super variable in this flawed and human way, and it's clear even though they oppose you they’re mostly just dudes trapped in the same situation as you are. They’ll stop trying to shoot you the moment they see the alien, and some of the little interactions before they inevitably get gored often see you as unlikely comrades trying to survive against a mutual enemy. I’ve heard friends tell their stories about their experiences playing this game, and all their super memorable interactions with the human NPCs, and while most of mine were them being stupid and/or them getting themselves killed by the alien, I think its rad that just one part of the whole experience can inspire so many different stories.
There are other parts that maybe knock the experience down, though. The music is… obnoxious, honestly. In a game where diegetic sound is so important, and listening out for footsteps is the best way to know where the alien is, having generic orchestra cues blare over nearly everything at the slightest hint of the alien got in the way and felt cheap, especially considering the atmosphere that’d already been built without it. Using manual save stations, while it does really help to create tension… I wouldn’t have minded some auto-checkpoints, especially in some of the more difficult sections — oftentimes those sections would stop giving you save stations as frequently and it slowly became very frustrating to tread ground you’d already trodden over and over again when oftentimes the section you actually ran the risk of dying on was at least two minutes worth of traversal ahead. I… also feel like maybe the game could’ve done a bit more to signpost things to the player? Maybe it could be that I’m the actual problem, but there were… way more points than I could count where I just kind of didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and the tools the game uses to point a direction for the player (the map, the motion tracker) didn’t exactly do much to help.
But in general… man, this was great. Maybe not my favourite survival horror, but definitely at least a contender. I’ll be fascinated to see how exactly this stacks up compared to all the other games I play this September and October. 8/10.