Before we get started, you should check out Eric Layman’s review of this game on the PlayStation 4, especially if you’re interested in the console version. The boy has mad skills on the review side of things. Anyway…on with the show.
At the end of Alien, we see Ellen Ripley blow up the Nostromo and then eject the alien xenomorph from her escape ship. That should have been the end of things. Fast forward a few years, and we have Amanda Ripley, Ellen’s daughter, searching for her missing mother and trying to find any wreckage the Nostromo might have left behind that points her back to her mom. Struggling to accept the possible fact that her mom might be dead, she is alerted by ‘The Company’ that a small space station has recovered some wreckage that contains the ‘black box’ of sorts from the Nostromo, and also recovered something they didn’t expect as well. Pretty easy-peasy, right? Ninja, please. Upon arrival at the space station, Amanda becomes trapped inside and learns that whatever the station has recovered has absolutely decimated the place, as well as its residents.
What a way to start out.
Alien: Isolation is a unique game, as it’s more about the player’s survival than it is about pulling out a gun and going Colonial Marines on things. Using your wits to get you through seemingly impossible situations is a neat concept and it certainly goes against anything you’ve seen in the Alien or Aliens versus Predator gaming universe to this point. The closest previous game in the series that I could compare this to is probably going to be Alien vs. Predator on the Atari Jaguar. That old game played on your senses a bit, while also asking you to run sometimes when the situation called for it. It looks and plays like shit now, but it was terrifying back in the early 90s.
Anyway, the concept of killing is a secondary notion in Alien: Isolation. You are given opportunities, and time (mostly), to find a safe spot when you need to and think about your next move. The game relies on your gaming skills to think on the fly, as you have to handle new and unpredictable situations with the tools around you, including the environment. For example, turning on air vents at the beginning of the game will cause brief moments of fog, which will confuse enemies and allow you to attack people in almost complete stealth. Again, the name of the game is being stealthy and pushing through to get out of the dire situation — at any cost.
With that said, the game isn’t as simple as that paragraph makes it. The Creative Assembly not only throws human elements at you, aliens and other things, but it also throws puzzles and situations that require you to strategize your best moves. In other words, the game isn’t a simple ‘escape with your life’ sort of deal. It’s more than that and that actually might hurt the game more than help it.
First, let me address the human thing. If there was a space station gone awry with a killer alien on the loose, the chances of people turning on each other is probably a lot lower than the game makes it out to be. The way TCA structures the human element in this equation is comparable to the human element in Fallout 3. You get a lawless environment where people shoot first and ask questions later. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but it’s an added piece of intensity that keeps you on your toes. Maybe they couldn’t find enough substance with the xenomorph being the only antagonist in the game, but how they present the human side of things really isn’t conducive to the situation that Alien: Isolation sets up. I think most people would be relieved to have other folks with them in this sort of crisis, as it provides a better chance of survival, but apparently TCA disagrees with that opinion. In other words, you’re not only hunted by the alien in the game, but you’re also hunted by humans. For a game, that makes sense. If you’re trying to punch out a story that could be connected to a movie, this kind of doesn’t fit the usual motif of an Alien film.
Moving along, if humans weren’t enough, you also are required to find tools and work out puzzles/problems to progress in the game. For example, you have to open doors with a jack or unlock doors with a simple security handheld system. The jack isn’t an issue, as you just hold down both mouse buttons and press ‘A’ to unlock doors. The handheld security system provides a little bit of time consumption and required strategy, as you have to unlock security locked doors quite frequently in the game. These are small road bumps on your way to escaping the Alien: Isolation situation. They are minor annoyances, and these annoyances are scattered through out the game.
On top of puzzles and insane-killing-machine humans (and other things), there is a loose xenomorph randomly patterned to follow you, trap you and kill you. That is your main focus and antagonist in Alien: Isolation and it does a great job with mixing it up for you. You have to be on the look out for slime, noises or just a large H.R. Giger built monster around every corner of the game. That is a massive job in this game and one that doesn’t let up for a moment. Even when you’re trying to save, you’ll notice that you have the ability to look left and right. Why? Because of the above reasons. At any given point in the game, even when you’re saving, you can get killed by this thing. That’s quite enough to get scared about and it gets worse when humans and puzzles are added to it. Hiding from the beast is practically the only way to survive in the game. It’s tough to run from it when it finds you, so just have to constantly be on the lookout for it.
Lovely stuff, huh? Well, my main issue, as I said above, is that The Creative Assembly felt the need to throw added annoyances into the title. They do technically fit within the situation, but I would rather not have to fight off rabid humans and then deal with the Xenomorph. I want to only concentrate on getting to my goal of finding proof of survival of Ellen Ripley and survive the trip from the xeno at the same time. Adding more elements such as deadly humans and puzzles to solve when time is of the essence certainly seems a bit counterproductive to the core style the game is trying to accomplish. They act like little pitstops that are required before you can continue the race, which disrupts the overall flow of the adventure.
In addition to the pitstops and rough encounters with non-alien folk, the game also gives an opportunity to craft a little. You can put together medkits and fix things with parts lying around the space station. It’s a neat added element to the game, but sometimes even it can get long in the tooth, especially if you’re desperate for some medical attention. Even so, the way the game is set up is very conducive to this sort of deal. If people have scavenged the shit out of the space station to collect meds and weapons, why wouldn’t there be pieces and parts lying everywhere? And it makes sense that nothing would be together during a crisis like this. It fits within the confines of the story, but because of the other added road bumps to the adventure, this seems to be another. It isn’t in hindsight, but it certainly stutters the action and intensity a bit.
Do these things ruin Alien: Isolation’s gameplay? No, but I feel like the potential one-dimensional nature of Amanda Ripley against the xenomorph, and only Amanda and the xenomorph, might have worked out much better in the long run for Alien: Isolation. The other stuff would have fit in perfectly with this focus, such as unlocking doors, puzzle solving and whatnot. It certainly would have gone smoother than the game ultimately turned out to be. In the end, though, the game still brings the scares and delivers what it promises it would — a wholly other experience than what we’ve seen thus far with the Alien game series. It just needs a bit more room for improving and smoothing out. Maybe a game that focuses on Hicks’ investigating the space station years from now? That would be a good connection.
Moving on…
On the presentation side of things, this is where Alien: Isolation really excels. Whether you know it or not, depending how much of a movie buff you are or, more specifically, a Ridley Scott fan, the first Alien movie played on your sense of sound and sight. Both of those sensory concentrations actually upped the intensity and high sensation value of the experience. Without the dimmed lights on the mostly gray/black/white ship or the jarring sound effects that become more intense as Ellen Ripley finds herself slowly and surely becoming isolated on the Nostromo with the Xenomorph, the movie may not have worked as well.
Taking that blueprint from Scott’s film, we have the same sort of visuals and experience going on with Amanda Ripley’s adventure. The Creative Assembly plays on your senses constantly making you feel uneasy or uncomfortable. They emulate the work that Ridley Scott did with his characters by adding flashing lights, smoke, deep darkness and things that make you feel like a kid stuck in the middle of the woods on Halloween night. I would even go as far as to say they out performed such games as The Evil Within and/or the Resident Evil series with the amount of surprises, distractions and ‘oh shit’ moments. The development team did a great job with putting you in a constant state of unrest that you can’t really find a safe hiding space in the game to take a breath. It’s an intense game and all of this was delivered by the visuals and the sound effects. Creating the perfect atmosphere in some games, like Alien: Isolation, is an essential part of the process. Asking the player to go through air ducts, to be constantly weary of the surroundings, to look for signs and listen for sounds of an alien scrambling towards the area; this is a lot of intense stuff. Regardless of how you feel towards the game, it will force you to get with the program or simply die.
If they had not gone the extra mile to make you feel scared as shit, then this game might fail and fall flat on its face becoming another in a long line of Alien franchise game disappointments.
On the actual visuals of the game, the PC side of things is gorgeous. The textures in the cutscenes are breathtaking, as is the in-game material. I particularly love the lighting TCA developed for Alien: Isolation, as well as the shadows and shading. You will feel like you’re very much part of a dying space station that is trying to stop you from getting out. When you run into windows on the ship that show the depths of space, you’ll be briefly fascinated with the depth and detail of what’s outside. There’s a lot of visuals to love in this game and The Creative Assembly certainly doesn’t spare the time and expense to bring them to you. Of course, you won’t have a lot of time to enjoy the visuals, as you’ll mostly be uncomfortably looking over your shoulder, but they are at your disposal to enjoy once you get through the survival horror adventure.
In terms of audio, jarring stuff. The dialogue is more respectful than any AvP film, and/or the last two Alien movies (not counting Prometheus — great film, you boobs). You will have plenty of screeching moments from the alien, dialogue from your violent/reluctant shipmates and plenty of jarring moments where your ears will want to shutdown, but don’t because they don’t want you to die. In short, the audio is just as good as the visuals, though the soundtrack gets drowned out by the sound effects.
Now, an important element of any game is the replay value. While the DLC is going to be there for Alien: Isolation, the main game is more than likely a once-through. I’m not sure what the motivation would be to get on this horse again and ride this pony back out into the pasture, but personally speaking there is way too much stress and intensity that comes with Alien: Isolation to make this a replay-able game. I certainly won’t be chomping at the bit to get back into that sort of environment and drudge through it again. I respect the coolness and frightfulness that Alien: Isolation brings to the table the first time around, but once Amanda is out, she’s out. Much like Ellen Ripley’s attitude in Aliens, I would not want to put myself back in the same situation again. Maybe some of you crazies out there want to go through this type of game more than once, but not this reviewer. So, for me, the replay value is close to nil. Maybe 5-7 years down the road when they make Prometheus 2 or another Alien film, I will launch Steam and have another go. Until then, I’ll be enjoying folks from afar going through this terror.
With that said, the final point in this review is the cost. If I believe the game has no replay value, is it truly worth the $49.99 asking price? It’s going to be weird, but I think so. For a game that relies so heavily on your sense of survival and isn’t necessarily linear once things get going, the experience of feeling isolated and terrified is definitely worth the price tag for at least once through. Honestly, if you wanted to experience what it is like being Ellen Ripley in the first Alien film, then The Creative Assembly has brought you just that. It’s a unique game that stands out from the rest in the Alien series. It delivers what it promises and that is worth the price of admission.
