Alien: Isolation, as both Nathan Stevens and I noted in our reviews, suffered damaging pacing problems and a manic sense of identity. Some of its issues were the fault of a game grossly outwearing its welcome, and the rest was the frustrating fallout of creating an authentic stealth experience. Isolation remained unlike anything else in the AAA game space, and most of the time for the better, but it wasn’t immune to genre-specific pratfalls. Waiting in lockers was tedious, getting cheap-shotted by the alien was routine, and a Mobius strip of inane objectives frequently mislead the player’s expectations.
The first of five (!) planned pieces of downloadable content, Corporate Lockdown arrives in a more easily digestible state. Players take the roll of Ransome, a Seegan higher-up encountered in several pieces of information in Isolation. Ostensibly a prequel to the campaign, it follows Ransome through three unique maps while he slashes and burns every trace of his existence aboard the Sevastopol. There’s no actual story behind Ransome’s actions, just a series of flavor text and vague objectives, but it’s enough to power the player through its content. Ransome needs to get the hell out of Dodge, and that’s all that seems to matter.
Corporate Lockdown’s arrangement may seem inelegant and off-putting, but it’s actually a more practical application. The content is accessed entirely through Isolation’s Survivor Mode. Previously, Survivor Mode housed one repeatable “mission” for Amanda Ripley, tasking her with a series of objectives under a time crunch. Corporate Lockdown continues these principles, but buoys them with brand new environments, a couple of surprising instances, and deliberate limitations on offensive and defensive items.
Each of Corporate Lockdown’s three missions are fairly different. Severance takes place on a dingy residential area in various states of distress. Objectives, “delete the server records,” “disable the camera system,” and, “seal the window shutters,” are clever interpretations of, “find this unmarked area and interact with it.” Players don’t have the benefit of a map and the locations of these objectives are intentionally vague. Each environment, relative the vast expanse of Isolation, is relatively small. Objectives are timed, and you’re only allowed the escape if they’re either satisfied or expired.
Survivor Mode is kind of a misnomer. While mere survival, holing up in a locker until your objectives expire, is certainly possible, it’s not the way to play the game. Efficiency is valued above all else, and it’s a lesson quickly learned upon the myriad of repeats you’ll surely undertake. Initially it can be kind of off-putting, getting wrecked by the alien while you’re just trying to collect your bearings can get annoying, but it quickly evolves into a measured, efficiency-based death run. After spending twenty or so minutes in Severance I had a path planned; sneak through the hallway, collect the flamethrower from the movie theater, throw a switch, encounter a scripted event, and hope to god the flamer fuel I collected was enough to ward off the alien until I made it out.
Scorched Earth, the second mission, operated in much the same way. They key, again, was locating the flamethrower and completing my objectives from there. Like an instance (I’ll not spoil) in Severance, Scorched Earth subjects the player to an explosive event that’s both shocking and mechanically challenging. The fact that it happens every time can make feels a bit like Groundhog Day, with the player nervously anticipating scripted events, but it’s no less dangerous in its consequences.
The final mission, Loose Ends, flips the script. It opens with an area populated with terrifying androids before filtering the Ransome into a final showdown (of avoidance) against the alien. It’s not too different from anything encountered in the proper game, but trying to figure out where the hell to go to with completely obscured objectives puts a greater emphasis on stealthy play. My bolt gun only had enough ammo to take out one of the four androids, and I never found more than one extra bolt. Like the other two missions, sneaking around everywhere eventually gave way to a planned series of movements, made all the more difficult by a greater number of adversaries.
Pushing through all of Corporate Lockdown’s content took me about three hours. If you’re some sort of Mentat, people are posting times in just a couple of minutes for each map, but I think you’d have to get an insane roll where the alien fails to make a impactful appearance. In any case you also have the option of tackling all three missions in a row, assuming you have the patience to deal with repeated and occasionally cheap deaths.
While I was initially hesitant to return to a world that I was done with after the credits rolled, Corporate Lockdown made it easier to get back into Isolation’s brand of survival horror. It felt more like a game and less like an experience, a dichotomy Isolation seemed uncomfortable with maintaining. It’s a strong entry as the first piece of post-release content, one that certainly works in its declared size and scope. If other pieces follow the same model they might get into some monotonous trouble, but, for now, Corporate Lockdown suits Isolation’s ideas just fine.
