At this moment in time I’m sitting in my brightly lit room: I’ve wanted to get a drink for almost two hours but in my big empty house the idea of walking those corridors in the dark is almost unbearable…
Alien Isolation is the reason my fear is so heightened, Alien Isolation is the reason the flashlight on my phone is constantly on, Alien Isolation is the reason I’m a quivering mess.
Set on the space station Sevastopol 15 years after Alien and 42 years before Aliens, this game follows Amanda as she tries to learn what happened to her mother Ellen Ripley and in case you hadn’t guessed already, it is terrifying.
Alien Isolation comes hot on the heels of the 2013 release Aliens: Colonial Marines, a game so terrible it created a class action lawsuit for misleading marketing and cost its developer Sega $1.25m. It is definitely the first game bearing the Alien brand-name to properly nail the feeling of the original films, this is the first time where the developers have realised that what made the films so terrifying wasn’t the actual meeting of the Alien but the build up to it. It’s the endless anticipation knowing that there’s a Xenomorph somewhere, the stomach churning feeling of knowing there is no escape, the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in space, trapped in an environment with an organism you don’t fully understand but that’s relentlessly hunting you.
The way Creative Assembly has accomplished this impressive feat is by limiting what it is you as a character can actually do. Isolation is a first-person game (viewing through the eyes of the character) that unlike most first person games focuses on stealth and monitoring your surroundings and it is this focus on staying unseen that builds the tension. Every second you spend hiding in the shadows is a second you’re worrying about a Xenomorph slowly appearing behind you mouth slavering ready to eliminate you. As well as this, weapons are pretty scarce and ineffective but there are a few gadgets you can make which are somewhat useful, but nothing that will empower you to victory although may buy you a few extra seconds.
The whole gang looking happy
to be reunited on the Sevastopol
As well as limiting you in regards to resources, the game also has some of the most impressive A.I you’ll see. If you want to escape the alien (especially on the harder difficulties) you really have to stand back and analyse the situation. On more than one occasion while using the motion tracker to try and ascertain if there was any threat the Alien silently snuck up behind me and took me. Another time as I hid I threw out a noise maker but unfortunately the Alien caught a glimpse of me and came at me completely ignoring the distraction. Don’t even get me started on the time I got ripped out of a locker… I thought I was safe in there!
Its hard to accurately convey the depth this game goes into to enhance the fear; the atmosphere is at times too much to cope with, with lights flickering and music slowly becoming more unsettling with every step you take.
That isn’t to say that the game doesn’t have its flaws. For some reason the pre-rendered cut scenes have real frame rate issues. The gameplay itself is mostly unaffected but there were a few instances where I watched the alien in the distance apparently robot dance his way across a room! The other main issue I have with the game is narrative flow. This includes the “Average Joe” robot workers aboard the space station, who seemed to be filler to extend the game and are mostly pointless. The other comes about two thirds of the way into the game when you get a flamethrower. A flamethrower that with a few blasts scares the Alien away. Once you have that the game goes from intense stealth horror game to kind of scary space station simulator and that’s just a travesty.
Overall the good outweighs the bad with Alien Isolation and its by far one of the best games based on a movie license, definitely worth a play if you like horror games or the Alien film series. Check out the terrifying trailer below but don’t forget that it’s very, VERY scary!
Author – Hal, Plymouth store
