Developer: Creative Assembly
Publisher: SEGA
Rrp: £31.99
Released: 6th October 2014
Available on Steam, SEGA store and Amazon
You have to hand it to Creatively Assembly they have managed to succeed where so many have failed, they created a scary Alien game. And just to go that extra mile they kept the aesthetic of the original movie. Everything in this title from the logo splash screens when you start the game to the menus is made to feel like the style of the original Alien film. You could almost believe that this game were created in the 70’s… Except for the whole ‘not having 3D graphics or a computer anywhere near powerful enough to handle it’ thing. The game is set fifteen years after the events of the Alien film. You play as Amanda Ripley daughter of Ellen Ripley of the films, like your mother you also work for Weyland-Yutani but in your case it’s to search for your mother.
Unlike many of its horror game peers Alien: Isolation doesn’t use a checkpoint system. Instead it opts for the older ‘save point’ system. These save points are made to look like emergency phones so that they don’t stand out from the rest of the games aesthetic. Also they aren’t instant, meaning in the few seconds it takes to perform the save you can be interrupted or killed. Another thing to be aware of is that once you have saved at a save point it takes some time for it to become operational again, meaning you can’t just save over and over.Also unlike its other horror peers Alien: Isolation doesn’t rely on jump scares. Oh it has one or two but that’s it. The terror this game brings is different, you can see it coming, slowly and inevitably for you. The alien will rarely just pop out of a vent above you, you’ll know it’s coming…. It doesn’t exactly do subtle.
Once the alien makes its an appearance the suspense becomes palpable, you feel like a rabbit desperately trying to escape from a wolf. The sudden change in the musical score makes this sense of fear all the more deep as you flinch at every minor sound.The alien isn’t the only thing you need to be watchful for, the scared humans that have banded together in fear aren’t exactly always friendly. Ah, but what’s not all, this game throws one final terror at you… The Working Joe’s, these synthetic workers are a terror of a different kind. In part I think it’s the whole ‘uncanny valley’ effect, but it’s also the way that their eyes follow you and that they calmly pursue you all the while intoning about how they are there to serve. In some ways I think they are worse than the alien in that there are so many of them and that there creation is well inside the realm of possibility (honestly this a actual thing I fear).Of course, not every encounter with a human is bad though some are quite helpful and not even in that ‘important to the plot’ kind of way.
While there are weapons such as the pistol you’ll often find that using it is more of a hindrance than a aid. The noise of gunfire is extremely likely to attract the alien, of course this can be used to your advantage allowing you to clear large swathes of hostile a without wasting ammo… Of course once the aliens done with them you’ll have it to deal with.The gunplay is also rather weak but I feel that is intentional, Amanda Ripley is an engineer for a corporation after all, not a mercenary or soldier.
One of the special things about this game is the AI, or more specifically, the alien’s AI. Unlike most horror games the alien doesn’t follow a set path, just because it’s gone into a duct or walked away doesn’t mean it won’t just turn around and come back. This can make the act of wandering around the various areas of Sevastopol a very tense affair. Not all the inhabitants of Sevastopol share this behavior of course, the Working Joe’s are fairly easy to predict and the human inhabitants tend to wander around specific areas.
There are a lot of well thought out and unobtrusive effects that are designed to add tension. Take the motion tracker, for example. When you use it everything else on screen blurs to show concentration but that’s not all, it also produces a noise when its in use, this means if you do it at the wrong time the alien might hear you. Another such example are the computers and systems you interact with. As I mentioned at the start of this review these have been designed to look and act like they did in the original movie, meaning that not only are they green screen but they also take time to load documents, even the automated doors take a while to register that your standing near them. All this attention to detail adds to the atmosphere of the experience, from the moment I stepped foot in Sevastopol Station I was on my guard and watching my surroundings nervously.
During your travels around Sevastopol station you may find you get a little lost, which is entirely understandable. Thankfully, if you press tab you will bring up a map screen that will show your location, the direction you’re facing, and the location (though sometimes it a little vague) of your objective.
Sometimes that mean old alien will spot you, when this happens the best thing you can do is run, they and find somewhere safe and hope it won’t find you. You can quickly dive into lockers and small units to attempt to evade pursuit (be it by alien, android or human) of course if it spotted you then there isn’t much point hiding. Hiding is only a temporary solution, in the end the alien, or any other pursuer, WILL find you if you spend too long in one place. Thing is running also has its drawback, while you may get away from your pursuer your footfall will also create a lot of noise making you easy to track. To aid in your stealthy endeavour you can use the control button in combination with a directional key, this will make Amanda peek around the corner without revealing herself.
Objects and items that can be collected or interacted with are done so using the E key, most of the time these interactive items (generators, draws etc) will have a green light indicating they can be interacted with. These items that you find hidden in draws and that are scattered around Sevastopol Station are used to create useful objects. Be careful though as you can only carry a limited number of items around with you. Pressing Q brings up a radial menu that allows you to select and use items you have on your possession such as flares etc, this menu also allows you to access the crafting screen. Something to bear in mind when your creating your various tools is that you need scrap as well as the parts required to build the item, scrap acts like a currency at least as far as crafting it concerned.In later stages of the game some of the objects you have to interact with will be a computer system or door that requires you to hack it. These hacking mini games come in six very different styles, but the most common is one where you have to quickly enter a sequence of shapes before time runs out.
There are two kinds of collectible scattered around Sevastopol Station. One being ID tags (of which there are fifty), these allow you to see some minor information on the character the ID tag is for. The second collectible is logs, each log gives a little bit more information about the goings on of the station both before and after the alien arrived. As I have said many times before, this is the type of collectible I approve of, it adds something to the world and sense of immersion. Suddenly the motivation behind certain characters become much more clear… Of course there are one hundred and sixty one of them to find.
I do have some faults with this game, one being that for some strange reason Ripley can’t jump… I suppose it’s a daft thing to pick up on but it seems so strange that there just isn’t a control for that. A second fault is that the audio for the dialogue is very quiet even at maximum settings. On my system the game would crash to the desktop every so often without explaining why, annoyingly I had to restart the entire system before I could play again. Having looked through several forums about this it seems it may be my processor that’s letting me down but I can’t be sure.
There is also an option to play the Survivor Mode, I advise playing these after you’ve finished the main game and they can spoil a few things. In Survivor Mode you get to pick what mission to do as well as being given the choice of two character to play as, Amanda or Ransome. While both play and control in exactly the same why they will each start off with different items.These missions have a main objective and several optional objectives to complete in a given time limit. The results of your mission are then posted on a leaderboard for all to see and attempt to beat.
Without a doubt I can recommend this game, it’s well worth the asking price in my opinion. I can’t speak as to the quality and pricing of the DLC’s as I don’t have any of them as yet. If you enjoy a good horror that has a decent story and is actually challenging, you could do much worse than Alien: Isolation.
