Before you’re being hunted by Giger’s monster, it’s worth simply wandering around the game’s environments and taking in all the homages to late-70s design: the beige, padded walls, the 8-bit computers with their chunky keyboards and displays. As an evocation of the Nostromo, and the work put into it by such artists as Jean Giraud, Ron Cobb and Chris Foss, it really is something to behold. Such matters aside, it’s as an atmospheric experience that Alien: Isolation excels, and it has to be said that the amount of detail put into the game is quite breathtaking at times. Alien: Isolation isn’t a game for those born without a sense of direction. In one part of the game, your humble writer spent several minutes creeping round in circles and avoiding Working Joes, before he realised he’d been walking around in circles. It’s also fair to say that, even with a map and motion detector in your hand, the Sevastapol’s corridors and crawl spaces can start to look very similar to one another once you’ve started dashing round them in a blind panic.
In a throwback to earlier survival horror games, you can’t auto-save, which can be both a source of pleasing tension and controller-gnawing frustration: the sudden, unscripted arrival of bloodthirsty Starbeast can occasionally leave you returning to your last save point, and if you were mere inches from an emergency terminal (the places where you can save your progress) when you were caught, the irritation can be difficult to bear. Isolationis a game that punishes rash movements and mistakes at every turn. Hard to kill and immensely strong, the Working Joes will track your movements with their dead, red eyes, and it’s easy to be cornered by a pair of these plastic-faced ghouls if you don’t keep your wits about you.
Then there are the Sevastapol’s other scary inhabitants, the Working Joes – a small army of android slaves who’ve decided to turn against their human masters. The Alien will shrug off bullets, and even the flamethrower will only keep it at bay for a while. You start the game with little in the way of defence, and even as you amass a range of weapons, from pistols to shotguns and flamethrowers to improvised explosives, you learn that these aren’t necessarily useful in most circumstances. RELATED ARTICLE: The Best and Worst Alien Games Trapped aboard a crumbling ruin of a space station called the Sevastapol, your job is to locate the flight recorder from the Nostromo – yes, the stricken vessel from the first film – and find a way to survive the attention of a predatory creature that has been stalking the station’s dwindling population over the past few months. The game itself is deceptively straightforward and perhaps even a little retro – something that might account for the wide spread of reviews Isolation has received between publications, from six out of 10 on Gamespot to nine out of 10 at Games TM. You’ll either warm to the game’s ruthless efficiency, simple concept and profoundly frustrating moments, or find its punishing nature and repetition a bit too much. In fact, it could even be argued that some of its ideas could have been made into an effective cinematic sequel.
Before its release, the game was both anticipated and, in a weird sort of way, feared: memories of Gearbox Software’s calamitous Aliens: Colonial Marines – a game hyped as a loving companion piece to James Cameron’s Aliens – were still raw in the minds of the franchise’s fans.įortunately, Alien: Isolation’s design and atmosphere is such that it immediately dispels the ignominy of Colonial Marines. While it’s far from flawless, Isolationis made with a captivating attention to detail and what feels like a genuine affection of the original film. Thirty-five years on, and the videogame Alien: Isolationmakes a concerted attempt to engineer a similar kind of deep space nightmare, taking a back-to-basics approach in which the Alien is a tireless, indestructible force of nature.