19.6 hours played
Written 7 days ago
My experience with Alien: Isolation really came about during a time in my early school life where I had an Xbox 360 and I was stuck with it for a long time, unable to move over to the Xbox One where the rest of my friends were slowly going due to budgetary restrictions at the time. I don’t personally remember where I heard about Alien: Isolation from, but I do remember being extremely excited about the prospect of its random A.I. and how it could potentially make the game actually scary. I wouldn’t be able to really sit down and play it for a while however, and would only be able to after my parents had tricked me a bit; they had said that a coworker of one of theirs was getting their kid an Xbox One and they asked about a good horror game, throwing The Evil Within out there. I didn’t hate Evil Within but from what I’d see, it looked okay at best and suggested Alien: Isolation as something actually scary. I went out and did my usual s hi t though before I eventually got an Xbox One during Christmas, along with guess what? Alien: Isolation. This was my first Xbox One game and for the longest time, I wasn’t really able to beat it without taking long breaks in between because honestly it nearly made me s h i t myself a lot trying to avoid not getting mauled on by the Xenomorph. I would eventually complete the game a while later though and overall I had loved it, though I wouldn’t end up playing it for a long time due to other stuff going on. However I felt it was important to revisit Alien: Isolation after the announcement of a sequel for the game’s ten year anniversary that came out around October of last year in time for the sequel whenever it would come out. Having now beaten pretty much everything but the Challenge Maps and feeling pretty good, I pretty much am going to fan out about it a bit here, starting with the plot.
For rest of review: https://backloggd.com/u/gamemast15r/review/3028461/
So since I mentioned dying all the time, let me get into the gameplay portions of the game and how Alien: Isolation really clicks altogether for me. Now while I feel like the game is easily one of the best horror games of all time, it has its issues in how it goes about things. Alien: Isolation likes to do the thing that other horror games (like Outlast) where the Xenomorph is almost always in a nearby area so that when it detects you, it’ll be able to pop up and try to look for you. While that’s cool in a sense and can be explained via the later spoiler of the Xeno colony as said before, it also gets kind of annoying in a sense when you realize that this singular Alien adapts to your move (or is slowly upgraded by the in-game systems to make it look like it adapts to your moves) so it can kind of break the immersion a bit if you already know about a lot of these systems. As such, there are times where it does feel like it’s kind of b u l l s h i t when the Xeno just pops out of nowhere somehow and decides to eat your face and as such, if you die right before you’re able to save most of the time you’re sent back a good ways. For those first starting out or are really rusty like me, expect to basically die a lot, especially in the latter half due to a couple of weirdly designed levels. Some of my least favorites are the one where you’re infiltrating the nest deep in the core, dealing with both the Face Huggers who instantly kill you that hide in the water along with two separate Xenos who will drop down at any instant moment along with an area where you’re trying to turn on a generator to open up another door late in game and it’s only one linear way through a singular hallway….where the Xeno tends to patrol. By this time I can understand if people get extremely annoyed as admittedly, the game tends to overstay its welcome with how it does its set pieces? For example, after you shoot the Xeno out into space there’s a lot of time in between then and running to the core of the space station where the nest is that’s solely based around a robot malfunction that’s not bad per se but does lack the terrifying feeling of the first half of the game. If I were to give any other real criticisms with Alien: Isolation, I would say that the game can get a tad annoying sometimes due to the weapon wheel being open by the B Button (or Circle) and as such can be kind of cumbersome to navigate in a pinch or sometimes certain button prompts (entering a vent) just disappearing altogether that’s annoying. Also using cheats in specific missions (mainly Mission 6 that I’ve noticed) can glitch some things so if you wanted to use cheats to sneak through undetected or like me try to lure the Xeno into killing a bunch of human patrols at once? I would say don’t bother or don’t go crazy because sometimes the game gets a little goofy.
However this is where the negatives stop for me, as I both need to explain the general loop but also I genuinely love how this game operates and I never felt like I was super angry or annoyed at how this game would kill me all the time. The basic loop throughout the game is basically to explore a certain place, complete an objective while being ultra paranoid at the potential for the Xenomorph to pop out wherever and molest your face with its big ass dagger tail. There is no way to kill them; it’s not like Alien vs. Predator where you’re going to get this Pulse Rifle and blast it to hell, and I’ll tell you now that the shotgun and the pistol don’t do the trick either as it’ll either stun it for a bit or do absolutely nothing. The weapons you collect (Pistol, Shotgun, Flamethrower, Boltgun and Stun Baton) are basically tools to either defend yourself from hostile human enemies, synthetic robots or in the case of the Flamethrower: scaring the Alien away for a bit. In a way, if I were to compare how one were to go about this game I would say that in a way it’s kind of like Amnesia: The Bunker as you have to use your environment to hide around various places, pick up components to create tools like health needles or sound distractions and just try to stay alive the best you can. I feel that the loop is honestly terrifying as you never know what noises from the detector are actually the Xenomorph or if it’s another moving organism, and you always have to keep your ears out at all times in case so you can detect if the Xeno is crawling through the vents or right around the corner whether it’s through its roar, the clacking of its feet on Sevastopol's floors, it’s creaking or anything similar. On top of that, using your wits feels amazing, with one of my favorite things to do is to use a Noise Distraction device to lure the Xeno into an area with armed humans who will shoot you either on sight or give you a warning so that it can clear the way to my next objective, which I wish they had more of to be honest. The only enemies I haven’t really addressed really so far are the Synthetics, which are really where any and all bullets should go later in the game as these guys will approach you to try to choke you out and can take a good couple of bullets or shells depending on your proximity. One of the scarier sequences, and best sequences in the game to be honest in terms of immersive sim capabilities, is the [spoiler]Seegson Synthetic Showcase where all of them come to life and you can choose between gunning them down, activating an electrical or fire system near the door to kill them or using components that you find to take them out.[/spoiler] I’m not sure if you could just escape from there but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case to be honest, and keep in mind when I say “Immersive Sim”, I would say it’s a horror lite version as the Immersive Sims are complex RPG type games where as this game is much more “Emergent” compared to something like Resident Evil.
