In Space, No One Hears You Scream | Alien: Isolation Review

It seems like a distant memory now when Aliens: Colonial Marines came out for us to enjoy – or more so for us to suffer in pain from as a forever offensive act on a great franchise. Colonial Marines was definitely a low point for both Sega and Fox with the help of Gearbox software, but now there’s good news. The chaps from Creative Assembly felt they could do better and introduced a terrifying concept: one lone survivor, one space ship, and one Alien.

I’m here to discuss the highly anticipated horror game that is set to shock and chill gamers to the bone with prolonged tension and intense atmosphere. Does this game set an impressive mark for other horror games to follow? This is Alien: Isolation.

The story of this Alien game ‘s set 15 years after the first film and centers on our main hero Amanda Ripley, daughter of the films’ Ellen Ripley. It seems as though the Nostromo’s flight recorder has finally been found and the infamous and evil company Wayland, have decided to send a few poor souls to recover it. Where is it? On the Sevastopol, a rival company’s own trading ship where the main game takes place and where Ripley and a few others board soon find themselves among the Alien terror.

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The story’s strong and develops nicely over the course of the game, keeping you hooked with several twists and never steering off the main focus. It does feel slightly longer than it should, but I pin this to design over plot. The game can last up to 20 hours, but maybe a slightly shorter game could have kept the impact as strong as some of its single moments are. At times it just feels like it is running out of steam and often drags on with the same objectives as before. Objectives like having to restart a generator, which you do about 30 times in the game. It’s boring.

Overall the game is a great return to horror and a great addition to the Alien saga, showing thatit is still strong in the aspect of horror. Along with its nerve wrecking tension, the game will be a challenge to all gamers alike and trust me when I say this, if your not a patient person, you ain’t going to like it. You will die, a lot and this is defiantly a game where trail and error is a key aspect of game play.

What is also be an unpopular feature for many is manual saving in the game. This relates to the older survival horror games such as Resident Evil, where you had to do the saving yourself without any auto saves or check points. It’s a nice touchme for personally as I grew up on many games that did this but at times you will find yourself repeating overlong sections that revolve around a tedious objective, only to die due to a silly error and repeating again. Still, for horror fans, it heightens the experience very well.

The game world is an impressively designed and detailed one, being crafted with such great care to fully represent something from the Alien universe. It’s has an impressively cool retro feel as everything seems to be from the 70’s. The incredible detail put into the world is superb, creating a beautiful and claustrophobic place to set a horror game in.

What adds more to the world is the dynamic lighting and sound design. Hearing the creeks and cracks of the decaying ship along with the flickering lights helps create the perfectly intense atmosphere. The game is also designed to be roamed freely, much like Resident Evil or BioShock. You’ll find new items to help unlock certain areas and you may go back to find others you may of missed. There is a lot of back tracking in this game but at times the world changes dramatically to help make this process easier to digest.

The graphical effects of fire, water, steam and such feel organic and life like. You could watch the endless particle effects take motion and how they conflict with objects in the world. Everything from lighting, animations and interaction within the environment are perfect, truly this is a lovely looking game.

There are also a number of rather odd and irritating graphical glitches that pop up in the game but thankfully the world is pretty enough to make you look past these. I believe the pretty particle effects along with the slick designs do help distract from these annoying problems.

It’s a survival game and what it does well, compared to say Metro, is that it gives you choice in dealing with certain matters. You as Ripley, a brilliant engineer, may craft items with the crafting system to distract, burn or blind your foes. The crafting system is pretty cool, with collecting resources being important as they allow you to make a number of handy tools.

You can improve them by finding blue prints and use them in a manner of ways from distracting or luring the Alien to take out human foes. The crafting system can be clunky as you can’t reverse any choices made while making objects. If you don’t have enough to make an object, you can then switch the resources over to another. This means you have to be very careful on what you make and make sure you have enough to do so.

There are a number of different foes in the game other than the Alien, such as crazed human NPCs who don’t like strangers on board their ships and the lovely sadistic android who just wants to choke you. There are different methods to try in order to over come them. You can go guns blazing, sneak your way past them or use an item or two to distract and confuse your opponents. What is cool is that you can use the Alien to your advantage and have him attack any human NPCs that stand in your way. This indeed causes a problem as now you have the Alien to deal with. Also using guns will bring the Alien to you as he doesn’t like noise that much.

The game has a great deal of freedom to allow you to face any tricky situation with the resources you have. It’s great at allowing you to be creative within the world and doing what you think is best, as there are truly more ways than one with any situation. What is annoying though is that Ripley can’t step up a one foot incline. So if you are chased by the Alien or an android and need to get onto a raised platform, which is a foot off the ground, you can’t step or climb up onto it by yourself. You need to find some steps to walk onto it. That’s weak! Hiding under beds and in lockers is a great way to do the stealth approach and it’s needed when the Alien is near by, creating an intense and thrilling gameplay experience.

The sound design and lighting are truly organic and help further the gameplay as noise can be your best friend and worse enemy. Making even the slightest noise will threaten your position and particularly if your hiding. Your motion tracking will be out a lot during the game and this helps you see what you can’t see but can also be your down fall. Enemies have a dynamic nature to them when they can hear you’re moving or your motion tracker beeping.

One neat feature that adds a new element of survival to the game, the Xbox One’s Kinect can also sense movement and sounds you make and transfers them to the game. So, if you’re like me and you cough or fart or have your cat meow loudly for food, the Alien will hear you and punk your face with his tongue. Nasty.

The game escalates in difficulty and challenge, offering different obstacles to overcome, keeping the gameplay fresh. It’s either the Alien, human or crazed androids that prove a problem with very entertaining encounters. My favorite part was half way through the game when I had to face off six androids with anything at my disposal, it was brilliant.

The Alien itself is a menace and a brilliant foe to face off. A cat and mouse style game is most effective with the Alien. His behavior is ever changing and he will always try and best you whatever the situation. His tactics will always keep you on your toes and no where is safe to hide. What was brilliant was how he would follow you into air ducts, just like the film. Yet one thing that came as an annoyance was that it wouldn’t die! I understand you want an impressive enemy to face against but it’s not the Terminator but an organic being and thus a pipe bomb and four rounds of shotgun blasts should kill him!

I tend to find more enjoyment with foes you can kill but maybe in a certain manner, otherwise it becomes a routine of running away, hiding or scaring off the Alien creature. It’s a rinse and repeat method and at times, can be fun as you gain new items such as the flamethrower, but later on it becomes tedious.

The Alien will try out new tactics, like hiding in a vent or using an android for cover when you fire your flamethrower. But even though it uses these tricks, their repeated over and over again with nothing new at the half way point. He is a great enemy but at times, over stays his welcome.

A mention towards the survival mode and my feelings towards a touchy subject. I like the idea of having a challenge mode to play after the main game is completed but strongly dislike the fact there is only one map. The rest? All 15 new maps will come as DLC in a Season Pass. Great!  I don’t mind season passes as long as the game has a healthy amount of content and the main campaign is strong, but as for Alien: Isolation‘s extras? They’re weak.

With no real unlocks in the game nor many additional extras to play afterwards, the game fails to impress, as does the Season Pass. So, sad to say but the score is dropped due to this. The additional missions (Crew Expendable) is a fun little mission but not worth buying separate and nothing too major will be missed if you don’t play it.

Sadly the game ends on a flat note and leaves it open for a sequel or (hopefully not) an added DLC ending. There is some drama, explosions, Alien action and nice set pieces but nothing to show appreciation for your time spent with the Alien or a final battle of wits to end your fued with the mega space fiend. However, the game’s very good as far as survival horror goes in its tense atmosphere, detailed graphics, and gameplay, but it falls short with its unbearable length, flat ending, uninspiring voice acting, and many uninteresting mission objects.

With that said, Alien: Isolation is a bold improvement from the last Alien game and this will hopefully inspire many other developers to make balanced survival horror games, which blend both strong tension building and intense action gameplay. If you’re a fan of Alien, pick it up. If you love survival horror, pick it up. If you don’t, then go play Colonial Marines…no, wait. I’m just joking. Please don’t. Instead, play this.

Alien Isolation

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Great Atmosphere and Beautiful World
• Intense, Brutal Gameplay
• Amazing Level of Detail

Cons

• Under-Developed Alien AI
• Tedious Post-Game Missions
• Can Seem To Drag On