https://youtu.be/ALJ2bYKGKmI

This review is a truncated version based on the upper character limit for Steam reviews. For the full version, watch the video.

Alien: Isolation takes place 15 years after the first movie and you’re put into the role of Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley’s daughter. She gets notified that a flight recorder of her mother’s ship has been discovered and is offered a spot on the salvage team. And because this a 70s inspired retro-futuristic setting, they obviously can’t beam the information contained on that flight recorder back to wherever Amanda is. No, she has to go there in person and have a look at it. And that’s basically all the setup you get. Don’t worry, there is a reason why it seems to be more time and cost effective to fly three people out to retrieve a flight recorder instead of just having it brought back, and in typical Alien fashion it’s because Weyland-Yutani still wants to capture the bugger in question. In general, I like that the narrative is rather straightforward in setting up the adventure, but I do feel that overall it’s a bit threadbare.

The game takes place on the space station Sevastopol, which, as you’ll come to learn, is winding down operation. At least you’ll learn that if you diligently read all the computer terminal entries and listen to all the audio logs. It evokes Bioshock here in many respects with its apparent former bustling nature, given the many shops you can find on board. Although the Alien universe is decidedly different in its reason for having people in its isolated society. While Bioshock shows us the downfall of objectivism and free market capitalism from an idealistic standpoint, Alien is more concerned with showing us the drawbacks of free market capitalism from a humanist standpoint. It’s something that often gets glossed over, but the big bad villain of the Alien franchise isn’t the Xenomorph, it’s the large megacorporation Weyland-Yutani. It's a bit of a shame that this aspect never really gets expanded upon in the Alien franchise. The Xenomorph itself isn’t some kind of exaggerated metaphor for the plans of Weyland-Yutani, even though they continuously want to capture a Xenomorph specimen.

But I guess capitalism can’t be our prime antagonist here, so in true Alien form, the game is mostly about avoiding getting killed by the shiny black penis on legs. To that end the Sevastopol has also been infected by the buggers which have wreaked havoc on the station before you get there.

And this is where one of my criticisms comes into play: The narrative that happens over the course of the game is incredibly marginal if not even outright absent. Most of the game is designed around someone telling you where your next objective is. You’re usually sent somewhere alone to either push a button or retrieve something, usually at the far end of winding hallways and air vents, while your main form of interaction is evading enemies with simple stealth mechanics that mostly rely on crouch-walking from place to place, hiding in lockers and under desks whenever you’re spotted or to distract enemies to open a path. And I have to say that I’m not a massive fan of the stealth implementation. I typically enjoy stealth gameplay more if there are concrete indicators of visibility. Alien: Isolation feels like a bit of a crapshoot when trying to determine if someone can really see or hear you.

Now, even though I’m not a huge fan of the stealth implementation, what I will say is that it’s undoubtedly effective in making this feel like a true Alien experience. Making the saves take a few seconds to go through was a stroke of genius that adds an ever so slight bit of tension even to something that typically serves as a point of respite in many horror games. And the save spot even lets you know that there are enemies nearby to make it ever so much more tense. Similarly, the many instances where your view is locked onto a computer terminal, your hacking device or even just being locked to a corpse or cabinet you’re trying to loot are great. These instances make you feel vulnerable and serve as a risk-reward scenario where you have to gauge if the coast is clear to inspect something or not.

And where the game absolutely hit it out of the park is with the visuals. The aesthetic of the game captures the look and feel of the original perfectly. If you look at certain parts of the station side by side with the corresponding section of the film, you can tell a lot of effort has gone into recreating these spaces and making them look familiar to any fan of the franchise. And even though the game is close to a decade old, it still looks utterly fantastic because of the phenomenal lighting and the strong unified aesthetic. Though I do have to say that sometimes the game appears to try to hit every visual point the movie had in an attempt to make players realize they’re in a space recreated from the movie. It’s certainly not subtle about its fanservice.

Now, with regards to the horror aspect, I have to say here that I honestly didn’t feel that Alien: Isolation was all that scary. Sure, it does its best by constantly keeping you on your toes. Even if the Xenomorph isn’t around, the ship consistently produces noises that make you feel like you’re not alone. The game also employs a few jump scares. While I typically despise them and often see them used as simple ways to score a cheap startle, I have to commend Alien: Isolation for the way they’re crafted. They feel earned and aren’t just loud stings that immediately dissipate after you’ve noticed that nothing scary is actually going on.

But my overall criticism of why the game isn’t scary is that running and hiding from an unkillable monster is only scary right up until the first time you get spotted and killed by it. After that, the tension is somewhat broken, because you’ve already been killed once. And every subsequent death means lost progress that you have to retrace. So the stealthy horror aspect devolves into bothersome trial-and-error, especially given the dynamic nature of the Xenomorph’s behavior.

It also doesn’t help that the game seems a tad overlong. And I know, this criticism has been levied against the game by many other people, but I have to agree with them. The game could’ve been streamlined a lot. And the fact that you’re encouraged to take things slowly, to move deliberately and not cause unnecessary confrontations means that you’ll be traversing these spaces at a much slower pace than most other games. The game’s length definitely made it feel less scary and more of a chore by the end.

Mechanically the game also does few things to differentiate itself from most other games. It has your by now typical crafting system, where you’re constantly scouring the place for raw materials to turn into grenades, noisemakers, or med kits. There is at least some justification for why you’re able to do this since Amanda is an engineer after all. But at this point I’ve played enough games that offer some kind of light crafting system like this that it feels like less of a feature that enhances the game’s design than an obligation.

Outside of that, the game follows typical first-person shooter convention to a T. While there’s certainly a strong incentive to not use noisy weapons, during the stretch where there’s no threat from the Xenomorph, the game does offer a somewhat more action-heavy experience, which isn’t entirely unwelcome, since at that point you’re a dozen hours into the experience and in dire need of some variety.

I think Alien: Isolation succeeds spectacularly at being an Alien experience. However, that doesn’t mean that I think it’s a spectacular game. It’s not a bad experience, but I can’t say that by the end I was particularly enamored by it either. Call it an above average experience, with the caveat that you’ll eventually start noticing the stretch marks.