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| In this picture we observe the xenomorph "stepping out" as viewed from a cowering position under a desk. Not pictured: My stained underwear. |
The feeling of dread, suspense, and horror that permeates Alien: Isolation comes from such a weird place. Best know for their intense strategy games like Total War, developer Creative Assembly was quite possibly the least likely studio to be able to produce such an amazing first-person experience, especially with a license that has generated its fair share of mediocre or downright awful video games. Not only that, Creative Assembly has made a game for fans of the Alien film universe and people that possibly know nothing about Alien.
Right from the moment Amanda Ripley emerges from hypersleep on her way to discover the ultimate fate of her mother and the rest of the crew of the ill-fated mining vessel the Nostromo, to the closing chapters when everything is going sideways and the situation is completely out of control, it's very obvious that the developers really wanted to get into and explore this universe in a way that has never been done before.
Besides upping the graphical fidelity to “11” and making it feel like a hyper-detailed movie set, Creative Assembly makes the player feel helpless rather than empowered. Amanda cobbles together improvised explosive devices and makes use of distraction to sneak past enemies, scurry under desks, behind boxes, and slide into access tunnels. Anything to avoid detection. When guns are introduced, ammo is extremely scarce and players will only want to use a gun as a last resort.
Amanda's not alone on the almost-derelict space station, Sevastopol, where things have taken a turn for the worse. Through computer logs and voice recordings, players will learn that the space station was always a dump, the technology obsolete the moment it was turned on, and the founders had a weird God complex but what Amanda finds upon her arrival is a handful of human survivors, low-cost (and homicidal) androids, and a lot of ominous graffiti, some of it painted, some the result of arterial spray.
And something much, much worse.
The station is home to an eight foot tall walking nightmare that has one goal in mind and it's not a needlepoint rendering of Whistler's Mother.
The Alien, possibly the most iconic movie monster of the last 35 years, is terrifying. Until much later in the game, when Amanda has access to a flame thrower, every time the beast appears – and even when it's just a blip on the motion tracker – it's enough to ratchet the tension another notch. The alien doesn't fool around either. The thing will track Amanda. Listening. Sniffing. Then charging or clambering loudly into an air vent to await anyone foolish enough to pass underneath. Sometimes the alien is easily distracted – throw a flare into a corner, toss a noise maker away from Amanda's position – but at other times, the thing will stalk you. It will stop in front of lockers, listening for a noise then eviscerating whatever's inside the locker if it does hear anything.
This is why guns are such a liability. Unloading a shotgun round into an android's face, will drop the android, but is it worth it if the xenomorph shows up to see what all the noise is about? No, no it isn't, particularly because the alien won't go after the androids. Attracting the alien's attention when other aggressive humans are around is a better strategy.
For a lot of the game, the alien is this ever-present threat that makes simple things, like saving the game a nail-biting experience. Saving progress can only be done manually at certain points and even then it's not as simple as pressing button. Once activated, there's an agonizingly slow countdown until the game actually saves. In the meantime, Amanda is open to attack until the countdown is finished and the only thing she can do is wildly swing her head back and forth looking for possible attack. The game actually does provide a little heads-up that there's are "Hostiles Nearby" but when Amanda has just carefully picked her way through a hallways packed with death and the last save point was 40 minutes ago... There was always the thought that the xenomorph would suddenly appear.
Alien: Isolation so heavily emphasizes walking (or crouching) slowly to explore the environment and hiding at every opportunity, I thought the stealth aspect would bore me within a few hours. The only time where that actually panned out was toward the end of the game, but I think that probably had more to do with the fact I had to play the game in incremental sittings because the game was just scary enough for me that a couple of hours at a time was all I could take. With the end I sight I plowed through the last five hours and that's when “stealth creep” started to edge in from the periphery and it was easier to see the “gamey” cliches that tend to drive me nuts.
For example, engaging a generator to supply power to a door so it can be opened then to have that generator trip off when Amanda has just spent 15 minutes carefully dodging the alien getting to the door and being forced back through the area, was just gamey enough to take me out of the experience. It felt cheap. There are other moments like this but because it was broken into small chunks I was less apt to spot them, though the hacking mini-games were always a bit of menial task rather than a brief challenge or respite from the bleakness of the world.
There are a couple of interesting twists toward the end of the game, but otherwise the story is kind of flat. At least emotionally. Amanda's compatriots and the people she runs across just aren't memorable, though I will admit that seeing Anthony Howell (Foyle's War) as the friendly android was cool. When the characters are killed off, there's no sense of loss even if Amanda emotes, with the exception of one character early in the game but even he – SURPRISE! like a face-hugger lunging from the shadows – is killed off very quickly. Creative Assembly included a nice little nod to the original Alien, specifically allowing players to explore the downed alien ship. It doesn't make that much sense in the context of the game because you actually play as another character – the one telling the story of finding the ship – but it was still a neat way to fill in players that might not be familiar with Alien lore.
Alien: Isolation is the Alien game I always wanted to play – I just didn't realize it. It's fun in the sense that I find sci-fi extremely enjoyable, especially when it involves aliens, androids, and a space station full of terror. It's heavy on stealth and the overall story execution isn't great, but I'm already anticipating playing through the downloadable content. Alien: Isolation is on my “Games of the Year” list and I'm sure it will be on many other lists as well.
- Aaron Simmer
Follow @EmpireArmchair
The Good:
- Such a detailed setting, it's like being there
- The Alien is terrifying
- Makes stealth a fun thing to do
The Bad:
- Manual save points can mean frustration, especially if you've spent 30 minutes carefully creeping through an area and the alien gets the drop on you
- The story and characters didn't really draw me in enough to care much
- There is an Oculus Rift version of this game... Break out the brown trousers!
Right from the moment Amanda Ripley emerges from hypersleep on her way to discover the ultimate fate of her mother and the rest of the crew of the ill-fated mining vessel the Nostromo, to the closing chapters when everything is going sideways and the situation is completely out of control, it's very obvious that the developers really wanted to get into and explore this universe in a way that has never been done before.
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| The motion tracker is game changer. Though players will want to use it carefully so as not to give away Amanda's position. |
Amanda's not alone on the almost-derelict space station, Sevastopol, where things have taken a turn for the worse. Through computer logs and voice recordings, players will learn that the space station was always a dump, the technology obsolete the moment it was turned on, and the founders had a weird God complex but what Amanda finds upon her arrival is a handful of human survivors, low-cost (and homicidal) androids, and a lot of ominous graffiti, some of it painted, some the result of arterial spray.And something much, much worse.
The station is home to an eight foot tall walking nightmare that has one goal in mind and it's not a needlepoint rendering of Whistler's Mother.
The Alien, possibly the most iconic movie monster of the last 35 years, is terrifying. Until much later in the game, when Amanda has access to a flame thrower, every time the beast appears – and even when it's just a blip on the motion tracker – it's enough to ratchet the tension another notch. The alien doesn't fool around either. The thing will track Amanda. Listening. Sniffing. Then charging or clambering loudly into an air vent to await anyone foolish enough to pass underneath. Sometimes the alien is easily distracted – throw a flare into a corner, toss a noise maker away from Amanda's position – but at other times, the thing will stalk you. It will stop in front of lockers, listening for a noise then eviscerating whatever's inside the locker if it does hear anything.
This is why guns are such a liability. Unloading a shotgun round into an android's face, will drop the android, but is it worth it if the xenomorph shows up to see what all the noise is about? No, no it isn't, particularly because the alien won't go after the androids. Attracting the alien's attention when other aggressive humans are around is a better strategy.
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| Creative Assembly explores some pretty interesting locales even though the game takes place on one large space station. |
Alien: Isolation so heavily emphasizes walking (or crouching) slowly to explore the environment and hiding at every opportunity, I thought the stealth aspect would bore me within a few hours. The only time where that actually panned out was toward the end of the game, but I think that probably had more to do with the fact I had to play the game in incremental sittings because the game was just scary enough for me that a couple of hours at a time was all I could take. With the end I sight I plowed through the last five hours and that's when “stealth creep” started to edge in from the periphery and it was easier to see the “gamey” cliches that tend to drive me nuts.
For example, engaging a generator to supply power to a door so it can be opened then to have that generator trip off when Amanda has just spent 15 minutes carefully dodging the alien getting to the door and being forced back through the area, was just gamey enough to take me out of the experience. It felt cheap. There are other moments like this but because it was broken into small chunks I was less apt to spot them, though the hacking mini-games were always a bit of menial task rather than a brief challenge or respite from the bleakness of the world.
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| The details are pretty darn awesome. It's like walking onto a movie set. |
- Aaron Simmer
Follow @EmpireArmchair
The Good:
- Such a detailed setting, it's like being there
- The Alien is terrifying
- Makes stealth a fun thing to do
The Bad:
- Manual save points can mean frustration, especially if you've spent 30 minutes carefully creeping through an area and the alien gets the drop on you
- The story and characters didn't really draw me in enough to care much
- There is an Oculus Rift version of this game... Break out the brown trousers!
