Alien: Isolation

Unlike most horror games which rely on cheap jumpscares and played out methods to "scare" you (really they only work the first few times, then get annoying) Alien Isolation uses a beautifully terrifying environment, brilliant alien A.I., and an interesting story to keep you attached.

Here's a thing about me: I hate randomness in games. I want to be able to do something with certainty, every time. If a game has even slight issues with controls or A.I. it may ruin my experience completely. Alien Isolation's controls are perfect. The game runs perfectly. The game looks perfect. Though there is randomness in how the Alien reacts (which isn't entirely random - its interactions with you are largely based on your playstyle) you quickly learn methods to outsmart it.

You can beat this entire game on nightmare mode without ever using a single item. You just have to learn. For me, the learning was extremely fun. This is just up to personal preference, some games are very fun to learn, others not so much.
Alien Isolation is set up in a perfect way where - even though you may die a lot and become slightly discouraged - you will push on as it never gets you quite to the limit of giving up.

The weakest part about this game is the story, which is still alright. It actually works quite well in the canon Alien universe.

You can tell how much work the developers really put into this. It is amazing. Never has a videogame adaptation of a movie looked so close in resemblance to the original (it actually looks even better).

I was praying to finally reach the end of the game for the last 4 hours because it just felt like I made progress and then got thrown back to the start for no reason, many of the story elements were predictable and enemies could often just be annoying to avoid or try fight.

The game looks amazing, and the sounds are sick, but I was just struggling to enjoy myself for more than 30 minutes at a time. Game felt unnecessarily long.

Alien: Isolation is a game I have fond memories of. I had played it sometime soon after its release on console, and have just finished a replay of it on PC. This time around I decided to play it on the hardest difficulty to get a new experience. Overall, I feel that Alien: Isolation is a very good game in most regards. In particular, I want to praise the awesome, atmospheric score as well as the faithful, interesting design of the Sevastopol map. The early encounters with the Xenomorphs are extremely tense, and even the space station's "Working Joes" serve as challenging foes at times. The challenge of avoiding, hiding from, or distracting these unkillable alien foes serve as some extremely compelling horror. However, as others have commented, the game is a bit too long for its own good. My run this time around took roughly 19 hours to complete, and especially in the last quarter the game becomes extremely tedious. The addition of the flamethrower/molotovs allow for a way to fight back against the Xenomorphs, however they also allow for certain scripted segments of the game which can be challenging to bypass depending on how you've managed your resources. There was a segment in the last two hours of the game which took me roughly 10-15 retries to complete successfully due to some scripted Xenomorph spawns and limited resources. Furthermore, the pacing of the game (especially in its latter half) could be much improved; as it stands the latter half of the game feels like a series of constant climaxes as opposed to a grand payoff (and the ending as a whole is pretty unsatisfying). Despite these complaints, Alien: Isolation remains a success in creating a tense horror experience within a familiar, yet fleshed out sci-fi setting. I would definitely recommend the game for those who haven't engaged with it.

Os primeiros sete capítulos são de um jogo brilhantemente aterrorizante. Marca todas as lacunas que uma obra do gênero precisa pra ser grande: design sonoro impecável, sensação de vulnerabilidade, ameaça pulsante e recursos escassos.

O segundo terço parte para um frenesi que ainda funciona, com alguns momentos ocasionalmente frustrantes.

Já os últimos capítulos são só gordura, uma infinidade de problemas chatos pra resolver, walking simulator no espaço e ambientes repetidos. Não gosto da decisão de multiplicar o Alien, pois o transforma em um inimigo comum e a conexão com o jogador se perde.

Somando tudo, ainda é um jogo muito bom, mas poderia ser excelente com umas quatro horas a menos

the game shows you all it has to offer in the first 4 or so hours out of the 12 hour campaign. being:

- Move around dark enviorment looking enviorment for panels, computers, buttons, switches. Press them.
- Look at your tracker and follow the objective to next button/switch.
- Crawl from savepoint to savepoint, in between enemy encounters.
- You have 4 enemy types: Alien, human, robot, and facehugger

- For anything except Alien its a minor annoyance.
The humans you crawl past,
the robots you can sprint past.
Neither of these one hit you, which brings me to the next point:

- Alien: this guy one hits you. Instant death every time. If he sees you, unless you have a flamethrower, you're toast. you cant escape. Now this is pretty amazing the first 10,20, maybe 30 times. But when you do the same cat and mouse chase, and death animation for the 50th time? It starts to lose its wonder and turns into a bad trial & error loony toon. To make it even more annoying, there is tiny little globs of spit dripping from the ceiling and if you happen to walk under them in the pich blackness, its instant death.
Reload checkpoint, sometimes for the 10th time in a row. Trial and error this time, learn where to crawl, learn where the buttons are you need to press while crawling past the alien. Proceed to next save point. Repeat.

You have limited defense options against this guy, the only viable one being the flamethrower, but its always a guessing game how far away you can be while you desperately tap the mouse button hoping he'll piss off. Because you cant kill him. He just will tempoarily go away.
Other than that, you hide in lockers and wait and wait for him to go away. Its pretty tense the first few times, but after that it becomes a novelty and tedious.

There are other weapons, but none of them do anything against him. And they're hardly worth using against the other enemies as well. Easier to just go past them.

- Facehugger: Same as alien, just about the size of your foot and even more annoying. You have to flamethrower them. And they can appear in multiples. Most of the time you dont even see them before they instantly one shot you.

So whats left after you've seen all these mechanics? well, not really honestly. you repeat this same cycle for the other 75% of the campaign, finding switches, computers, terminals, hitting E on things, watching an animation, crawling to the next save point avoiding the alien, or if you're lucky sometimes you'll get Alien+Human combo, or Alien+Robot combo.

The vast majority of the game is just crawling around in the dark and looking for buttons. No combat, no mechanics, just crawling and pressing switches. And looking for saves. Lots of saving.

It's not like its really bad or anything, it just lacks mechanics that keep the gameplay fresh. Everything else about the game is pretty stellar, the graphics, sound design, enviorments are top notch and very immersive and make you feel stranded on this hostile lonely ship in the middle of space. So for that alone the game is worth crawling through and experiencing. The story is enthralling to, true to its name which is all I will say without spoiling anything.

And lastly, since you see everything the game has to offer in the first 25% of the campaign, it starts to drag a bit towards the end. After doing the same encounter for the 100th time, in a slightly different enviorment, it doesn't quite hold the same edge it use to. There is a lot of 'walking simulator' space suit outside in space sections, and they don't really add much. Sometimes they can last 40+ minutes with zero threat, just sliding along at a snail pace, pressing E on random buttons and objects. So you can see why the campaign drags on.

Even just for the environment and story experience its worth a play through and wont be forgettable anytime soon


6/10

I just finished Alien Isolation and absolutely adored it. I played it on hard and had a total blast.

Having read about that game for years, and made inches of progress into the first few chapters before stopping due to stress, I think I have come to some conclusions about people not giving that game a fair deal. People love it no doubt, but you hear a lot about how it is too long, too hard and too stressful. I think this is because the illusion of it being such a good Alien facsimile intimidates people to never try and experiment. Once you learn what you can get away with, how dumb the AI can be, it becomes gamey in a way I think is fun because it's often not vague about what rules you violate when you get killed. If you learn the AI and how the items interact with them, you can have a lot of fun trying to juke the Xeno or herding the Joes. But it's still affective at being terrifying, because sometimes you go to far and you CAN'T get away lmao (ayyy...)

Although, it is sort of a point worth mentioning that the xeno in this game is a big noisy motherfucker who lunks around halls, seemingly rolls around in the vents all the time, instead of playing like a true and clever predator like in the first film. I understand that a game where it was all about not dying to blindsiding insta-kills would be boring, but it is a different representation of the xeno for sure. I love the bully puppy xeno in this game though.

Oh- and the game is obviously insanely beautiful and the Riddley Scott world is fully realized unlike in any other adaptation I have ever seen.