I have absolutely zero regrets at all.
There will be spoilers for mechanics in Alien: Isolation, but all plot spoilers are marked. I'll only talk about the alien's design and behaviour and then gush about how the environments look.
If you are in any way interested in an immersive, genuinely scary and extremely well-crafted sci-fi horror experience, this is where it's at. Alien: Isolation is a love letter to the original Alien movie, and if you love 70's sci-fi and are able to push through your fear, this is for you.
Yesterday, I saw that Alien: Isolation 2 got a trailer, and as a perpetual enjoyment procrastinator, I had not even played the first game. That is despite it being well-known for basing itself on the first movie, being one of the best horror games of all time, having some of my favourite fictional concepts ever and me wanting it for ages.
But with the announcement, I decided to yet again check the Steam page in case there was a sale... and there was! 70% off the base game and 60% off the base game with the DLCs. Only cost a few euros more, and then I can afterwards try to play ON THE ACTUAL NOSTROMO? I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT DLC EXISTED! THAT'S AMAZING!
So far in the game I'm at [CLICK THIS TO REVEAL SPOILER]
The part right after getting the keycard in the medical area. The alien was a menace, and I died a lot. It was terrifying.
First off, the game holds up extremely well. They NAILED the asthetic of the original Alien movie, and expanded upon it in immersive ways. The pre-recorded cutscenes look a little pixelated on my modern monitor, but otherwise there's little to complain about. The game is 12 years old, but it has aged gracefully.
The environments fit perfectly into the style of Alien 1979. The colours, signs, technological sounds and the white paneling contrasted with the harsh vents all work together extremely well. The environment is dynamic and interesting. There are so many details everywhere, and the spaces truly feel lived in.
The developers understood that a good jumpscare can work if it is a direct consequence of your actions and if there's an extreme amount of suspense preceding it. The game likes to trick you by making the default ambiance sound awfully similar to the alien's noises. Good audio design is extremely underrated, but it makes all the difference in a horror game. Alien: Isolated has perfect audio design. I have zero complains.
Oh, and by the way, the alien learns from your behaviour. I had spoiled how the alien works, but that doesn't ruin the horror. It actually makes it scarier, because I know that I can't trick it. It has no set behaviour.
The alien is notorious for having a very sophisticated algorithm that responds to your movements. Running pisses it off immensely, so you have to just jog while it's within 20 meters of you when every fiber in your body wants you to run. It has insane hearing. It is unpredictable because its behaviour is actually, truly alien. You cannot treat it like a regular enemy. The game isn't paused when saving, accessing computers or rewiring technology. You are NEVER safe. The alien can go whereever you go.
There are some psychological masochists out there who play this in VR. I have zero clue how they manage.
I was genuinely shaking after playing. Like, looney-toons-clattering-my-teeth levels of scared. I kept pulling a SH2 and pulling up my map whenever I got scared. I love this game, though. I love this kind of fear. Straight adrenalin without any actual danger.
I have very strong opinions about the different xenomorph designs. My mind is routinely afflicted with Xenomorph Obsession every three months or so unless I force myself to not engage with Alien-related content, which I did after the 4th time I was about to be fixated again. I am genuinely not kidding.
From mid 2023 to early 2024, exactly every 3 months, I'd have 3-6 weeks where any time my mind was able to wander away, it would wander towards Alien. The first few times were alright, but I learned about 90% of what there is to know, and so my brain started to starve... and made its own entertainment.
Trust me, you do not want xenomorphs wandering around in your dreams. It got that bad.
I've gotten it down to a background interest that emerges every 6 months or so and stays for a few weeks without disrupting me too much.
I did in the meantime caption a fan-cut of the movie. It has all the bonus scenes from the "Director's Cut" without trimming anything from the OG cut. (It's way overdone. I captioned EVERYTHING)
Which is why it is great that I finally started playing this game. I'll play the main campaign, and if I finish it before the xenomorph-mania (which hasn't set in yet, but probably will within the next few days) has dissappeared. I'll try to to save the DLCs for later. No content starvation! There's lots of replayability. It's awesome.
Back to actual game discussion:
So, whenever the creature is running around in the vents, it's incredibly stressful. My first non-scripted encounter happened while I wasn't sure if the Alien was able to roam yet. I opened a door, only to notice that it was clearly hiding in the hallway's roof vent. I noped into a nearby closet, and waited it out.
That's when the game got really scary.
The only saving grace is that I think the Alien's design is so cool that the momentary joy it brings me slightly covers up the fear.
One time, the alien stomped in front of a huge window I was behind, and then immediately bolted towards the door to get to me. It clearly saw me through the glass, and I was a dumbass there, so it was deserved. The alien isn't blind, actually. In this game and Alien (1979), it even has slightly hidden eye holes under the translucent dome in its head.
This xenomorph is undeniably intelligent. It learns, it investigates, it strategizes, it taunts you and it draws out its kills for the hell of it.
I HATE how these elegantly terrifying, interesting and intriguing creatures have been reduced into little more than huge space ants with 5 collective IQ points. In Alien (1979), for example, the alien shows curiosity towards Jones the cat, and in the Alien (1979) novelization, there are scenes where it is curious about things around it.
I LOATHE how Ridley Scott, who is an incredible cinematographer, I'll admit, reduced the mysterious alien origins to "Uhhhh some pale blobfish-looking dudes made the xenomorphs... And humans too, I guess. Yeah they're made with space goo that completely undermines the themes of the original movie."
As an overexplainer, I am 100% willing to admit that it is tempting to explain these things, but when you have a horror monster, it is idiotic to demystify it. It just is.
My main concern for Alien: Isolation 2 is that it will have "the goo" (as I love to scornfully call it) and be dumbed down for a new audience.
Alien: Isolation works so well because the alien is incredibly dangerous on its own.
It's a niche game, but not everything needs to try to hit the mainstream. I love the huge successes of indie projects in the past few years precisely because it challenges the big players in the market to actually innovate, instead of trying to appeal to everyone, and in turn, no one.
The developers of Alien: Isolated decided to base the game on the style of the original movie. They took the BEST parts of the OG alien, and somehow improved upon them. THIS is my favourite xenomorph design.
It's skeletal, it's unsettling and it's wet. (but not overly so) They decided to embrace the alien's biomechanical origins. Another thing Ridley's retcons often do, is invent new alien types, and they're always entirely fleshy. They lack the disconcerting texture of pipes and wires intermingling with vertebrae and bones. This alien is uncanny because it looks utterly unnatural.
Alien: Isolation has some very dynamic animations. They transition so well into each other. In the gif below, the alien descends, raises it tail, drops it to the ground (without goofily ragdolling) and then sees the player, without the animations being too jumpy.
This vent animation is amazing. I mean, just LOOK at it. It's one strange smooth motion.
Some features I love in no particular order:
- The domed head. If you get close, you can see the eye holes!
- The ribbed detailing on the limbs. They nailed the ratios between biological and mechanical. Some alien designs tend to fall too far into one or the other, usually the biological category
- How tall it is. It has to crouch in most hallways. The animations are adjusted depending on ceiling height
- Elegant, precise movements. It's clearly inhumanly flexible, but doesn't move like a brute
- It's fast. Like ridiculously so
- The lower legs are ditigrade with these strange spikes at the joints. Still, there's something scarily human about it.
- BEST TAIL EVER. It's long, it's prehensile yet also floppy, it ends in a point instead of a blade and it's made up of intricate skeletal structures
- Truly alien noises. Yes, it screams and snarls, but it also makes passive clicking noises. It breathes weird
- It has self-preservation. I haven't gotten anywhere near having something that truly scares it, but I've seen clips, and there's something delightfully uncanny about the way it inquisitively trots towards the player
- THE XENOMORPH IS PRACTICALLY UNKILLABLE. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.
- If the alien sees you and you don't immediately get out of sight AND get incredibly lucky, you're dead. That's it.
- The back pipes. They're properly shaped here.
- The stomping. I like it because the game would be unbearably scary if you couldn't hear where it's walking around. UPDATE: Turns out that supposedly the Alien eventually learns to be quiet in its stalking phase. So quiet in fact, that it doesn't appear on the motion detector. Fuck my life
- In some lighting it's black while in others it is brown, green or even slightly blue. Its skin absorbs the colours in the environment. It's super cool!
All in all, it's amazing that we're even getting a sequel since the game had a very unfortunate start. It got some terrible reviews when it came out (IGN is notorious for criticizing this purposefully difficulty and stealth-based game for being difficult and stealth-based. What a joke) and didn't sell that well.
Since its 2014 release, Alien: Isolation has gathered a very dedicated fanbase, and for good reason. It's 12 years old and still holds up visually and mechanically. That's amazing.