Alien: Isolation

It's clear the desire of this game is to immerse you in the world of the original Alien movie. Mission accomplished, the game sets up some amazing atmosphere. But when it comes to what you have to *do* in this fabulously designed environment... It all falls apart.

I'll be upfront, I hated this game. And while I can concede a certain amount of that will come down to personal preference and that other people may enjoy what I didn't, I found the gameplay to be some of the most monotonous I've ever experienced, to the extent that not even the cool atmosphere (which eventually lost it's impact) could save it. A list of the good and bad isn't the most aesthetically pleasing way of conveying information, but honestly I just need to get my thoughts down on paper, and out of my head and move on.

After finishing the game, I struggled to come up with positive aspects that I enjoyed about the game. Upon reflection, here's the highlights.

Aesthetics

The look and feel of the world is pretty much perfect (if I had to nitpick, the spray paint graffiti looks dumb) in terms of trying to put you directly into the movie's universe. The lighting is a amazing, and the eerie noise of activity in distant and near vents is so well done. It feels weird to leave a section like this, that is a pretty important factor after all it's one of the main attractions of the game, so brief and just leave it at "it's great", but it is.

Motion Tracker

Not just in the spirit of capturing the experience of the movies, rather than having it as some kind of permanent on screen radar, the having to physically turn around to keep track of enemies really adds to the tension. I felt the range was a bit lacking, but trying to work out if the dot next to you meant someone/thing's in the adjacent room or in the walls or vents, above or below. It really was one of the better done parts of the game.

Some Of The Alien Parts

Yeah I have to prefix it like that, the reasons will be covered below. But it doesn't change the fact that for parts of the game the stalking of the alien is done pretty well. I really enjoyed uncovering the alien nest and the realisation there's more than one alien running around. The first time you get dragged up into a vent because you didn't realise there's a trail of drool, or whatever liquid it is, trickling down from it is a fun experience too.

Also there are a couple of parts where the Alien will appear around other survivors, and its fun watching others fall victim. Call it schadenfreude I guess.

Space Suit

The visual of this is amazing, the reflections on the visor look so cool, and really do provide an unsettling feeling as regular objects and people around you are distorted into unrecognisable shapes, constantly making you look around to ensure that you're safe.

Okay... As you probably gathered from the preamble, this next list is going to be slightly longer. I've tried to be as objective as possible, obviously horror and fears are a completely personal experience, so rather than just saying what bored me or annoyed me, I'm going to do my best to explain why. Just as a heads up... This might get a bit on the long side.

Androids

I ordered this under the belief I was going to be combating the Alien not a bunch of clone robots. I get that they don't want to use the Alien all the time (not that they show much restraint with that), but the solution they come up with is to use add a different enemy to constantly encounter in its place?

Just to mix things up, eventually they start sporting hazmat looking suits... Which now protects them from EMPs... You know, the items solely there to deal with androids? I didn't come across an explanation for this, I mean sure in some areas I guess it makes sense where there's a lot of electrical interference... But you then see them everywhere after that area.

Late into the game they just straight up throw a Terminator style android at you that doesn't need to see you, will just chase you down no matter if you break line of sight. If you hide, he'll wait for you to come out. Of course he's in a hazmat suit that makes him impervious to all damage, the only thing you can do is run (maybe a pipebomb would work, I didn't have the parts to test it). HE'S A BIGGER THREAT THAN THE ALIEN!

The attempts to make the androids funny are pretty cringe-worthy too, why are re-purposed assembly line robots programed to smack talk people they're tracking down? Then put their finger to their lips in a "shhhh" animation as they put the boots to someone's head? Rather than, you know, being the efficient no-nonsense destroyers of humanity they are when tracking you down?

They also play dead. And hide themselves in piles of their comrades corpses. Really. In some ways they're better ambush predators than the Alien.

The overuse of the androids completely ruins the game.

Some Of The Alien Parts

The allure of the Alien for me has always been that of an omni-present threat that could strike at any time. Not a constant on screen presence. While I'm not adverse to the idea of it patrolling the level after you've made some kind of noise (hey, being able to manipulate the alien like that might have been a cool idea), but it would always just seem to randomly spawn and patrol any corridors in your nearby area (somehow always knowing you'd left a particular area and following you through)...

Okay, not entirely true, if you run, the Alien would be pretty likely to come for you... The solution? You walk/crouch walk everywhere. Though there is the problem that most of the alien stalking revolved around avoiding androids at the same time, so there is the conflict of do you run while the androids are after you? Internal conflict and debate and having to make snap decisions are great for a horror game. Except you can walk fast enough away from the androids. Oh...

The biggest problem came after the reveal that there was more than one Alien (even though all the tooltips refer to "The" Alien). Late in the game you have to get past several of them in a single room... In theory that'd be great. Problem? It plays practically the same as crawling past a room of androids, which by this point in the game you've done time and time again. The only difference is you're not sure to be safe in the vents, because even if you stayed perfectly still an Alien would just know you're there and come in. What should have been the most tense part of the game was ruined by the fact it plays identically to the rest of the game and the overuse of enemies early on.

Its fear of fire would also come and go.

Dumb Humans

To distract humans I lobbed a flare at them... It hit one flush in the face and bounced off. They all proceeded to stare at this flare that descended from the heavens. I've thrown flares in areas below enemies on higher platforms that shouldn't be able to see it only to have them shout out "Hey a flare!". Some enemies you can be about ten feet away in the middle of a corridor and as long as you're crouching you're invisible to them. Others, the moment you open a door they open fire. Also they can shoot you through stuff like boxes. And walls.

Crafting

Personally, I found the interface clunky and kind of unresponsive, that I can put down to just my tastes, but the choice of buttons also baffles me, L1 to build? When you use X to confirm at all other times? (Yes you use X to commit a part, but you can only build when the blueprint's complete anyway) What isn't personal taste is that adding one item to a blueprint permanently commits it. Why? It's not like it's attached to anything and can't be separated. Sadly I'd guess its because if you have a full inventory and tried to remove one, then what's the game to do? But that's their problem, deny me in that situation, whatever, but as it is, as the player, its incredibly frustrating when I'm missing one part to something I want to make and happen to have the exact piece sitting in another blueprint unused.

Backtracking

The space station could be huge... But I never noticed. You spend so much time going through the same places with a couple of extra doors open each time, that it feels like you spend the entirety of the game in an incredibly small, confined space. And not in the claustrophobic sense you'd want, in the "Oh god, I'm back here *again*?!?" sense. There's one point where the game sends you in one room to get a keycard, to turn a generator on in that room, which opens a door across the way (of course, there's debris so it's not as simple as just walking across the corridor). When you get there, the power goes out, go back to the room you were *just* in to turn the power back on to walk all the way back to finally get through the door. Sounds dumb? It is. It also pads the game out by about another 15 minutes. To go from one room to another.

Load Times

I've no idea if this is specific to the PS3 edition, but going from one game area to another (usually the transit cards) can result in around a minute loading time. Which isn't too bad, except when there's no save points between going through these, and an Alien spawn point at the destination, meaning when you die, you have a minute loading up the previous area, then a minute loading up the next area again. It adds up. A lot, and completely discourages experimentation, because rather than trying out new things you stick to tried and tested in the hopes it'll work and save you from taking 30 minutes to traverse 2 rooms.

But wait, there's more. Door's themselves can take ages to load, and while you can say it's designed that way and it adds suspense while you're running in terror and the door opens up at the last second possible, just like in horror films right? Well, no. If it was a consistent amount of time I could maybe concede that point, but sometimes doors open instantly, sometimes they can take 5-10 seconds (I didn't actually record a time, but the point is they get lengthy). You can have your perfectly planned route that avoids the Alien and takes you to safety only for the game to randomly give you the middle finger and prevent your escape, ending up in another death for reasons beyond your control. As the player, that's endlessly frustrating.

In a game where I'm trying to try out different tactics and use tools in various ways to see what's effective, dying is going to be par for the course. Thanks to the load times, I stopped wanting to experiment. I stopped engaging with the game.

I also had doors open up before the floor had finished rendering, so there's goes the theory that it's a stylistic choice.

"Mini Games"

I'm fine with the idea, but the execution is horrible. Stop the line in the bar? Match the symbols? Press left and right to make two numbers the same at the numbers below? I can suspend my disbelief and can deal with the concept of a remote control that can magically open doors and interact with other pieces of technology, and get upgraded by slapping a new gizmo into it... But in what way do any of the mini games even remotely correlate to the task at hand? They're so jarringly out of place that they bring you out of the game experience, which is crazy considering how much effort they obviously spent trying to bring you *in* to the world. They just pop up on a door or terminal, that looks just like every other... The frequency of having to do them really doesn't do the game any favours.

Turning The Power On

This could have been coupled with the point above, but since you do it so often, it deserves to be raised on its own. I think on every stage at some point you have to turn a power generator on or slap a power switch. Sometimes three or four. I get that the station's supposed to be falling apart, but there's enough power around the ship to power mass transit, but I'm supposed to believe they need to hook a generator up to get a door to open? It's just the dumbest thing, and they're always so conveniently placed that the moment you see one you know the power's going out sometime soon.

The Space Scenes

Nothing happens. At all. Ever. The space suit is a really cool visual and would have loved to see it used more and more effectively, but because of the way it is, you can't use weapons or move very fast, it's a huge heads up of "Hey, don't worry, you're safe here~". Also, compounded by the moving at a snail's pace, these scenes take far too long for what they are (straight paths with something to interact with at the end).

Relaying Objectives

Often the game is incredibly unclear with what it wants you to interact with. One instance that sticks out in my mind is with "coolant". There's a room with three cylinders in it, if you go up to them when you enter you can't interact with them (I wasn't even sure what they were supposed to be). After using the computer in the room, they'll now glow orange when you get (obnoxiously) close to them, though when the game says "activate coolant" (or whatever it was), it's not explained at all that it actually means these three cylinders. If you think "oh it should be obvious!", there's a lot of unique tat lying around the spacestation that you have no interaction with, so there's no reason to not write them off as simply environment filler.

Also while the game does provide a waypoint system on the motion tracker for you to follow to objectives, it rigidly wants to stick to specific paths, so if you follow blindly you'll often be led away from your objective only to have to double back on yourself. The alternative is constantly having to reference the map, but the game shouldn't be constantly making you second guess the waypoint markers you're given.

Traversing The Environment

Very early into the game I hit a problem; there was debris in a corridor and I couldn't work out how to get past any of it, despite one area where she could very obviously just walk through and another where if she raised her knee even a fraction she could have walked over the obstacle. Instead, you have to crouch and move to the back of some sort of vacuum cleaner to activate it and it moves forward... But if you approach from all but a very specific angle, you don't get any indicator you can interact with this object. I know, because it was one of the first things I tried to interact with, received no feedback and assumed it was pointless background furniture.

Or even worse, this scenario; go to a terminal to get a password, to open a locker, to get a keycard, to plug into some kind of control panel to power up a forklift and raise it enough that you can crawl under and finally escape the room. In a single tiny room, with an invincible(?) robot on your tail and the Alien periodically spawning in it. All this, despite the fact there's clearly enough room to shuffle around the side of it.

Time after time the game throws arbitrary obstacles in your path, and you'll have no idea which bits you can actually interact with (if any) unless you get right up next to them and look from the correct angle. And there's so much glowy stuff in the game its not simply a case of head for what shines or appears out of place, most things you can't do anything with.

Text Logs Of Death

Obviously a lot of stuff went down before Ripley's arrival to the space station, and the game's way of inferring this information is through text and audio logs. That's fine, plenty of games do that now... At least the audio logs you can have playing while you walk around. But the text logs, you're stuck at the monitor reading them. Now obviously you have a huge problem (and the androids) that kind of doesn't really allow for standing in a single place for all that much time. Especially standing in plain view. Where the only thing you can see is the monitor. And if you hear the alien spawning it's already too late. Its just another gameplay mechanic that's completely at odds with the rest of the game.

And fine, maybe it's to add tension and you're meant to be worried about getting attacked while reading. Really? I'm supposed to fear reading? The alternative that I eventually ended up doing after getting bored of being attacked? Don't bother reading it, just scan the page for passcodes and just get on with the game, I never found much that I read very interesting anyway and a lot of it was just different people saying the same stuff. I guess my bigger problem was the amount of time it takes for the computer to boot... That you have to see *every time* you interact with a computer.

This is a point I can concede other people may like because of the tension its supposed to add, but it felt so artificial to me. The whole "be scared, we've taken away your sight and you never know when the Alien will get you, woooOOOOoooo~! Hope you're a fast reader~!" Especially when the Alien would clearly follow you from area to area and you can't just try and lure him into a specific area to give you time to read this stuff.

Stuck In Animations

Tying into the point above, maybe it sounds like a dumb complaint? Well considering you can't control when the Alien spawns, and you can get locked in animations for everything from interacting with a computer to pulling a lever on a door or one of the many doors you need to blow torch open, then it's valid. Ripley will merrily take her time gently going through the motions for the task at hand and our buddy the Alien spawns and comes running up and stabs you through the chest. Yes, you can cancel out of the animations (some of them anyway, I'd imagine all), but if you're hearing the Alien spawn next to you to give you cause to want to cancel out, guess what? It's already too late, it takes long enough to return the gameplay to your control that the Alien will most likely already be peering over your shoulder by the time you can even move.

Isolation?

Maybe it's not fair to build expectations based on the title of the game, but they chose it and it gives a pretty specific impression! There are exceedingly few times where you're completely on your own, and I don't mean in an "enemy free" scenario, all throughout the game you're hanging out with people or getting called on your radio enough to make you think you're playing MGS. Hell, in the first few scenes of the game you come to the "decommissioned" space station, and see people running around in the distance.

The Ending

Honestly, I get why the ending is the way it is... But that's your reward for making it through the game? The climax of 20 hours work? It wasn't tense or shocking, nor does it leave you with a sense of accomplishment... It was dumb, uninspired and dull. There was no sense of worth for having struggled to get there

Ripley

She should be a tragic, sympathetic character, we know the circumstances of her mother and she wants to find the truth for herself. But... I couldn't empathise with her, for the most part she feels too emotionless, I'm not sure whether it's bad voice acting (a lot of lines sound mumbled), but during cutscenes while, admittedly, other characters don't portray the greatest range of expressions, Ripley just gives a stone cold 50 yard stare. Any time you see her she just looks bored by what's going on. I guess I was too so I shouldn't blame her. Also her mastery of any form of computer or mechanical device that she comes across seems a bit much, she's a mechanic when we're introduced to her, but does that apprenticeship really cover advanced hackery of spacestation systems? She's just a little too perfect I guess.

Oh the loading screens also indicate she'd prefer not to resort to violence. But she has no reaction to bashing someone's head in with a wrench...

I love horror games, I even had this preordered... I don't remember the last time I was so disappointed by a game. I even have the Nostromo DLC, and no desire to play it. Honestly, I can appreciate my words probably come with a degree of saltiness. I don't scare easily I'll admit (I watched too many horror films as a kid) but I was calling a lot of set pieces out before they happened (the collapsing elevator scene... really?), and the alien patrolling the levels rather than being in the vents just made him an obstacle rather than something to fear. I also can't recall when I was last so bored by a game.

The game isn't without some enjoyment and some tension, but it's diluted by an insane amount of chuffer to the point where it's easy to forget that its there. As a game, it's not bad but unremarkable, however as a horror game it suffers so much from uninspired writing and reliance on clichés in favour of doing anything original or remotely memorable.

On here I'd say giving it a 2/5 feels quite harsh, especially in comparison to other games I've given a 2. But this game doesn't feel average like a 3/5 would suggest. Also most those other games were a fraction of the price.