In 2014, Creative Assembly and Sega teamed up to release a survival horror game that takes place 15 years after the events of the first Alien movie. In the game, you are Ripley, but not that Ripley. You are Ripley’s daughter, Amanda, who is trying to find out what happened to her mother 15 years after she was last heard from. A black box from her missing ship has been salvaged and Amanda and two of her crew are headed to the decommissioned space station Sevastopol, to find out if her mother had any parting words. Before you even land in the space station things start to go wrong and continue to get worse.
Isolation is one of 17 official licensed video games in the Alien franchise. There are a total of 19 story missions in a limited map, so you’ll come back to the same areas multiple times with different tools to complete different tasks. Every time I thought I was close to the end something else would drag me back into the story to start the next chapter. Isolation used the PS camera’s head tracking option as well as noise detection, both which can be turned off on the main menu otherwise movement and sound will attract enemies. You are also given a hand tracker in the game to detect movement which comes in handy when you are hiding from all of the things trying to kill you.
There are xenomorphs, face huggers, and other people on the station who will attack you when they detect you. My biggest nemesis were the Working Joes, the maintenance droids built by Seegson, especially the ones in the hazmat suits. Usually they are hostile but there are a couple that you need to help you progress and it’s difficult to tell if they will help or kill you. It’s not that they are hard to kill, there are just so many of them and like Michael Myers they never stop casually walking behind you. Amanda will pick up several weapons along the way but her best chance of survival is hiding as running can alert your enemies to your location.
As you are sneaking around the station, hacking or accessing the computer modules will give you more of a flushed out story as to what happened aboard this space station full of corpses and hostiles.There are also tape recorders that are usually near dead bodies but the codes you need are in the computers. You do get to play as one other character in a flashback sequence but it is short and not very eventful. Make sure you save often as you cannot save in the menu but in special locations. Dying takes you back to the last save which could be in a different area of the map. You also have limited supplies so make sure you use them wisely and that you pick up crafting material when you can.
This game felt to me as more of an experience and there was less importance placed on the story itself. Amanda being Ripley’s daughter seemed to only matter as a way to explain why they would be at the space station. Weyland-Yutani has corporate interests it strives for over the safety of their crew and Seegson cuts corners to save money. Which is a common theme in most Alien games. Personally, I am not a fan of having to repeat levels to collect different loot but with the station looking it took a couple of minutes for me to register where I was and that I had already been there. The xenomorph’s locations and movement change but there are some predictable patterns that are story related. Running away from and shooting at people often attract the attention of a xenomorph, so you can shoot one attacker just to be stabbed through the back or attacked from above. I found this game more frustrating than enjoyable. While I like the world of Alien, I did not enjoy my time in this version of it.
If you want to hear a different perspective we have another review of Alien Isolation done by Savvy.
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