Alien Isolation

[Mhaedros]

From issue 10 of the Gamer's Gazette. Go read it if you haven't already.

Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation is a first person horror survival game developed by the Creative Assembly and published by Sega. It is set in the Alien universe between the first and the second installments of the film franchise. It tells the story of Amanda Ripley, daughter of the infamous Ellen Ripley, the protagonist of the films, as she sets out to uncover the fate of her vanished mother.

Amanda and a small crew are sent to Servastapol, a space station owned by a company called Seegson, that has retrieved the black box of the spaceship in which Ellen Ripley was a crewmember. However, the crew arrive to find a station in turmoil and terror, filled with death and destruction, while those still alive slowly go insane in a constant struggle for survival. And as the cheap Seegson androids turn against their former human masters, an even greater threat stalks the corridors of Servastapol, an alien creature that..you know what, if you’re remotely interested in this game, watch the Alien movie first, and then decide if you still want to play it. And even if you are not interested in the game, watch the film anyway because it’s a great piece of cinema history.

Anyway, a Xenomorph (I’ll just refer to it as the Creature, as that is what the game tends to do) is stalking the space station, killing the people in it one by one. Amanda finds herself stuck in it together with two of the crew from the Torrens, the ship in which she came to Servastapol. Now the story is a bit of an oddity in my opinion, because, to me anyway, it’s feels fairly unimportant. It gives you an objective and a reason to complete said objective, but all it’s really there for is to give the player a reason to do all kinds of missions and that’s fine, to me anyway. The game never feels too scripted and most of what happens, happens naturally within the playground of whichever area Amanda is in.

The motion tracker helps you keep track of enemies; but get too close and they will hear it

Playing the game, you will spend most of your time crouching, praying to any deity of your choice the Creature won’t spot you and run you through with his claws. This is partly because of a very punishing savegame system; the game will save at certain cutscenes, between missions, but other than that it is up to the player to find special savegame stations around the area Amanda is in. These can be very sparse though and often difficult to find (especially with the Creature stalking around the area, meaning you can’t always access all rooms), and at times the player can lose up to half an hour of gameplay, probably more if you have gone a long time without saving. Despite this, the game does reward exploration. Being a skilled engineer, Amanda can craft all kinds of gadgets such as molotovs, noisemakers and medkits, but she also has access to a small arsenal of weapons, including lethal and nonlethal, and a hacking tool that has you complete simple puzzles constantly hoping the Creature won’t get you from behind while you’re doing it.

Isolation includes a competent crafting system

Alien games have in the past often been easy (Colonial Marines being the big, deranged elephant in the room), but make no mistake. Alien Isolation does all it can to make sure you are never bored and you can never get through an area too easily.

Apart from the obvious antagonist there are also other threats in Servastapol Station. Survivors who trust no one and will shoot you at sight, but also the Seegson synthetics. In the movies androids looked and sounded human, but these are just cheap, vaguely human shapes with blue plastic covering their heads and with glowing red eyes. These nice looking fellows are called Working Joes and are best avoided altogether as they are almost impossible to kill in melee and will take a lot of hits from your revolver before shutting down. But you can never be certain if a survivor or Working Joe is hostile towards you. Sometimes humans will just tell you to leave or be killed and sometimes they will shoot and ask questions later. Other times they won’t mind your presence at all, but these instances are uncommon and you can feel almost cheated after having wasted flares and noisemakers on people who are friendly towards you.

The Working Joe, a perfect example on why glowing eyes is not a good idea

Now the game does give you multiple options when you encounter enemies. You can try to sneak past them, but enemies will spot you rather quickly if you don’t distract them with noisemakers or flares. Noisemakers and flares can backfire on you though, especially if your throw fails because of a bad angle and it lands right beside you leading everyone to your position. Then there are the guns. You can use your revolver to kill enemies but more often than not it will lead the Creature to drop down from the vents and kill everything, which by the way is a valid tactic for getting past groups of survivors. Throw a noisemaker in the middle of them and watch them die.

The Creature will flee from fire, but will never give up its hunt

Graphically the game is really good looking and the design is directly from the original Alien film. It looks exactly like what people in the 70s and 80s thought looked futuristic, with computers that look like they are 30 years old and a general atmosphere that genuinely screams “Alien” it is almost scary. It also runs very smoothly on my GTX 660 ti, at a constant 60 FPS on ultra settings which is nice in a day and age when PC optimisation unfrotunately is low on the to do list for many companies.

Sound quality is quite amazing, and often you can keep track of the Creature solely based on what kind of sounds you can hear. Sometimes it feels like the game is giving you too obvious hints at where the alien is, with very loud banging noises when it walks around in corridors and a very distinct sound for when it jumps down from, and enters a vent, but ultimately I think this is good, because otherwise keeping track of it could get too difficult without getting spotted. The music does a great job of getting you tense and terrified and sound effects often use sounds from the film, which is a nice touch. Even many of the original voice actors did voices for their characters, though most of these are only seen in the Crew Expendable and Last Survivor DLCs, which tell the story the last half of the movie.

When you finally reach a save station, it feels as if you have accomplished something great

Ultimately I think Alien Isolation is a great game, but it does suffer from it’s length. It offers a real terror but the terror never really changes from mission to mission and at times it feels like it could do with some variation, or even being a shorter game. Sparse save opportunities can annoy, especially at certain missions where the Creature constantly is at your tail, but personally I never found the game boring, only slightly drawn out at times. I’d recommend this game to anyone who has watched and liked Alien the film, and to anyone who enjoys games where stealth is in focus. You don’t even have to like horror games, this was actually the very first one I ever played and I love it.

[Sir Adrian]

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