Alien Isolation Game Review

Released: 7th October 2014

Developer: Creative Assembly

Publisher: SEGA

Certificate: 18

Formats: Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4 and PC

Format played: PS3

Horror games could be considered a dying breed; many of the industry’s biggest franchises have devolved into action romps in a bid to obtain as wide an audience as possible. After the disaster of Aliens: Colonial Marines in 2013, SEGA commissioned Creative Assembly to design a whole-hearted apology a year later. The result was one of the best Alien licensed games produced.

Slotting in-between Alien and Aliens, Isolation follows the adult Amanda Ripley who is approached by the Weyland-Yutani corporation with news that the Nostromo’s flight recorder has been recovered; wanting to find out what happened to her mother fifteen years earlier, she heads with a small band of employees the Sevastapol station. But on arrival it’s clear that something catastrophic has occurred; The place is a mess with human survivors breaking off into small bands that shoot anyone on sight, not to mention a unit of malfunctioning “working joe” androids going around throttling the fragile humans. Ripley and her companions are stranded aboard the station with a hulking Xenomorph lurking about the corridors and air shafts and resolve to escape the station while also uncovering the nature of the infestation and what caused it. You’ll definitely be buying into the central focus on Ellen Ripley’s daughter and the way it fits into canon, but the other characters are fairly pedestrian by comparison, not doing enough to make their characteristics clear. As Ripley traverses the station, she’ll come across a few survivors and occasionally work with them to complete tasks such as gathering medical supplies or breaking into computer systems. Some characters such as the solemn company representative Samuels have their moments but the story is kept almost entirely within Amanda’s perspective.

The experience offered by Alien Isolation is a mixture of linear objectives and careful exploration. After a few opening missions, you’re let loose into multi-levelled, multi-faceted environments and tasked with moving back and forth along them to complete various objectives, all the while being stalked the Xenomorph (and other threats) along the way. While each mission is broken up by relatively short loading screens, the game maintains its immersion. Amanda acquires a motion tracker early on which points the way to your destination and gives a faint idea of enemies moving around you; she’ll also find a range of crafting blueprints and materials to assist her survival. In the early missions, things are easily their most intense as you have no means of defending yourself against the creature. The crafting system (which is done in a menu without pausing the action) allows for the creation of all sorts of items but unlike games with similar systems such as The Last of Us, some inventions in Isolation will go by underused. Using the flashbangs and smoke bombs will do little other than alert the Alien to your presence and I found myself barely using them. You’re often better off using flares and noisemakers or making use of the rewire systems to create further misdirection. Alien Isolation has you pressing all kinds of buttons, pulling levers and interacting with the environment to push onwards, often having a few short mini-games to fill in the time. Switching up the pacing a bit, the game see fit to layer in a whole section of androids for Ripley to fight as well as more atmospheric levels that go beyond tributing its 1979 inspiration. Later down the road, Amanda will receive further upgrades to her tools, allowing for locked-off parts of the station to be accessed; this encourages backtracking to find all the collectables which include logs from the Nostromo and crew dog tags among other things; though many players may end up skipping over these, wanting to push through and overcome the creature itself. Isolation is a longer game than most, coming in at around twelve hours on the first playthrough and its slow, methodical nature makes it a good game to put away for a time then come back to later. After you’re done, there’s a survival mode with timed challenges alongside two DLC packs which are direct adaptations of Alien itself. It’s a great tribute though keeping that content locked into new copies of the game is questionable.

Played from a first person perspective, Alien Isolation often comes down to creating distractions and slowly but surely, moving on by the obstacles in your way. This could mean crawling through vents, hiding under desks and cowering in lockers, holding your breath as the alien passes by. It is extremely challenging and this comes down to two systems; the alien’s intelligent artificial intelligence and save stations. You’ll die a lot in Alien Isolation and sometimes it can be frustrating; the latter mechanic is very stringent on its checkpointing, you must activate a station, then wait a few seconds before your progress is saved. It’s nerve-wreaking and then again so is the entire experience; knowing that the Alien can strike at any time but the effect the mechanics have on the scares can vary. Are you fearful of the creature itself or the fact that you may have to redo the last fifteen minutes of gameplay? On the other hand, Creative Assembly has absolutely nailed the Alien’s AI system; it’s extremely unpredictable, shifting back and forth through the levels at random; it will instantly sense any noise the player makes and come running, making the stealthily approach essential throughout the game. On the easy and medium settings, it’s a bit more lenient but on hard and nightmare, the Xenomorph fulfils its full potential as one of the deadliest adversaries in modern gaming. Unless you have some fire handy, it’s a one hit kill which really does hammer home that feeling of vulnerability that permeates the entire game. While not as advanced in their intelligence, the working joe androids are also creepy, slowly wandering about the station with their cold dead eyes; outside of a brief interlude the game does a decent job of balancing out the two enemies while also sprinkling in a few terrified, trigger-happy humans to mix things up.

The tributes to the film don’t end at the DLC; Alien Isolation embodies the retro, analogue style of presentation that made it so unique; it’s pure fan service and from the moment Amanda wakes up in the cryo-tubes to the industrialised look of the station, every aspect of the environment is a perfect fit with the franchise. Graphically the game is quite good, although playing on the last generation of consoles does come with a fair bit of blurriness throughout the game. The sound is amazing, really enhancing the game’s creepiness; often you’ll hear the Xenomorph in the distance as it devours an unfortunate victim, making you dread its presence even more. The beeps from the motion tracker will leave you unsure of just where the creature is, keeping the tension piling on thick alongside the music. The voice acting is good too with everyone capturing the futility of their situation aboard the station. Outside of its look and feel though, Isolation does have trouble running effectively; the PlayStation 3 version can be very unstable with some severe slow-down in more hectic environments later in the game. There was also a strange bug where the game booted up in odd, untextured rooms rather than returning to the main menu. Facial animations can also be pretty poor at times, taking away from the game’s more immersive qualities. With these blemishes, the PS3 version does sit below its fellow versions on the PS4, Xbox One and PC but it still achieves a serious immersion and scare factor.

It has some gaps in its design and performance, but Alien Isolation is far and away the best game based on the license in years, beautifully capturing the look and feel of the 1979 classic. Games as unforgiving and challenging as this one are rare but you owe it yourself to give it a go, especially if you’re into the Alien franchise.

Rating: 7/10 (Good)