Alien Isolation is a first person survival horror game by Sega. Despite its poor sales at launch, Alien Isolation has become a sort of cult classic amongst the gamers.
The game follows Amanda Ripley who tries to find closure on the disappearance of her mom Ellen Ripley. This leads her to a remote trading station which houses a flight recorder from her mothers ship. The process of getting to that flight recorder is difficult since the station is filled with hostiles and an unknown menace stalks you at every turn (no surprise, it’s the Alien)
Alien Isolation is known for its unfriendly AI so much so that there are plenty of mods created that make the game easier. Going into this I was nervous that it was going to be much too difficult, however it turns out that I was more prepared for this adventure then many gamers back in 2014 were. Since Alien Isolation and Outlasts released there has been a plethora of first person survival horror titles in a similar vein. If you have played these before you will be fine.
The Alien AI in this game has two brains, one that controls the Alien but doesn’t know where you are and another that knows where you are and gives hints to the dumb Alien brain. How good those hints are depends on the difficulty you choose at the beginning of the game. It also learns as the game goes on. Like if at the start of the game you hide in lockers a lot it will start looking in lockers more as the game progresses.
You will get a lot of gadgets to get you through the space station. You even get weapons to help you fight, which makes the game so much easier. Having issues with mean humans? You have a gun. Androids being aggressive? EMP grenades and Shotguns are your best friend. Alien blocking you? May I offer you a flamethrower in this trying time?. Because this is a survival horror you will only have a limited amount of ammo so don’t get too trigger happy. It took me way too long to realize that your motion tracker can also be used to give you directions. The green line on the outside shows you which direction you need to go to complete the objective.
The game is chapter based. Each chapter you will end up in a different area in the space station, sometimes areas you have already been to before so you can use your new gadgets to enter different areas. Hacking requires a brief mini-game to be completed and most door unlocking devices require multiple button presses to keep you on your toes.
Playing on PC, I did have issues where the sound would glitch out and just play the sound effect of Amanda crouching. I also had some issues with text, when searching boxes the text of the items inside would get scrunched but that wasn’t enough to bother me. It would usually fix itself between chapters or I would just restart the game. You do only have one save slot so restarting isn’t always easy, but there are plenty of save stations. Just make sure there are no hostiles nearby. The save station will tell you if hostiles are nearby but sometimes it’s unreliable and it will just be that a human is nearby. Not all humans are hostile so make sure you don’t get spooked and shoot every human on the station. They can be useful for distracting the Alien.
The game has multiple DLCs. Two that let you play through scenes from the original Alien movie. Three survivor mode challenges where you must go from point A to point B on the map and complete an objective. You get graded on how well you did, and finally 2 salvage mode challenges. These are like the survivor mode challenges but more difficult and in larger locations. The movie DLCs are incredibly short, only lasting about 30 mins per DLC. Survivor mode is great if you really enjoyed the gameplay, you can also play as side characters.
Overall the base game is an amazing survival horror. I feel like it really immerses you in the world of Alien without needing knowledge of the Alien franchise instead at most you will only need to know about the first movie. The environments in the game are insanely detailed and every new thing they added fits in perfectly. This is one of the only Sci-Fi games where the space station and ship actually looked not only liveable but lived in. This game is a period piece of what the 1980s thought the future would be like. It’s wonderful at building tension and making you feel on edge. It’s an amazing horror game that any Alien fan should try, just be sure you know what you’re getting into.
If you want to see another point of view from someone who didn’t like the game we have another review of Alien Isolation done by Elise you can check out
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