The Flaws Don't Hold it Back
With a decent narrative and a constant sense of tension, Alien: Isolation stands out as one of the better horror games I've played recently. Though you get a few weapons the scarcity of ammo and the fact that only the flamethrower and molotovs work for chasing the alien off temporarily, mean you're not overpowered at any point. In fact, I rarely used my weapons on the working joes or human enemies until late in the game. I did like the sense of a constant threat on most of the segments but at times it got annoying when try to hack or use the ion torch and getting killed or having to exit to scare of the alien. There was also a sort of Metroid feel to the game in the form of returning to areas to explore locked rooms. The map was poorly designed for room and area transition so I didn't even get most of the upgrades.
My main gripe with the game was its checkpointing. While the save system offered a balance by having a station that you could seemingly only save at once, the checkpointing in some segments, mainly toward the end got pretty bad. Dying and then having to repeat the same objectives and watch the same moments play out because they couldn't be bothered to add one more checkpoint in was disappointing. On top of that there were little things like not being able to pause the game or bring up the map or weapon wheel for a good 30 seconds after loading in got old fast. There was also an issue where after interacting with any of the games numerous points your view would be locked forward for a few seconds not allowing you to turn to the side which could be troublesome should everyone's friendly xenomorph decide to show up. I also felt that the game ran a little too long, with some segments and aspects feeling like padding. Such as having to backtrack several times to turn on a generator and activate switches to move forward.
Despite these issues I really enjoyed the game as a fan of the Alien franchise. I think it is worth a play for any fans of horror or scifi.
