Alien: Isolation Review

While the Xenomorph is undoubtedly the game’s centrepiece, CA are careful to ensure that its presence doesn’t overwhelm the game. There are long stretches in which it doesn’t appear, where the threats in the environment are reduced to Working Joes and other survivors on the station. These enemies can be evaded like the Xenomorph, but they can also be tackled head on, using weapons such as the pistol, shotgun, and high-powered bolt-gun, or crafted items like pipe-bombs, EMP-bombs, and so forth. Working Joes are darned tough, requiring the use of multiple devices to take down safely. Survivors, meanwhile, are weaker but work in numbers, and will often give you the opportunity to back down before firing.


Isolation metes out its systems and upgrades with mostly intelligent pacing. There are points when it combined all its elements together, where a gunfight between yourself and survivors or Working Joes will attract the Xenomorph, abruptly transforming a fearsome fight for survival into the galaxy's deadliest game of hide and seek, as the Alien rips apart on the survivors before turning its attention to you. Meanwhile, Isolation also provides you with some moments of downtime to interact with characters and unveil more of the story, although frankly I don’t think it does this enough.

If Alien Isolation has a problem, it’s a lack of interesting characters to facilitate the story. The plot will be predictable for any Alien fan. It’s more concerned with doing justice to the source material than telling a wildly innovative tale. Yet although its twists aren’t exactly surprising, they remain engaging in how they are approached. The problem is the game doesn’t give you enough time with its characters to establish a relationship with them. Samuels, the Torrens’ synthetic, is completely bland, while the young Weyland Yutani representative named Taylor is the one stitch in this otherwise beautifully cohesive tapestry who feels out of place, with her prim Home Counties’ accent and contemporary chunkily-framed glasses.


This is not to say that Isolation is poorly written or acted (although there is some iffy voice-acting, particularly at the beginning). The writing is fine, elevating to “pretty damn good” with the written and audio-logs. There simply isn’t enough time given to characterisation to make the supporting cast compelling. This is somewhat odd, because Alien Isolation is a long game for its genre. Your experience will vary depending on the difficulty you play it on and how much time you spend back-tracking through Sevastapol’s transit system to investigate areas that were previously inaccessible due to not having the right tools. But you’re looking at anywhere between 15 and 25 hours playtime.

There are a few other niggling issues too. The crafting system is rudimentary, and confusingly presented. For example, I kept getting “blasting caps” and “charge packs” mixed up. It does the job, but not as well as it could. The final act, while undoubtedly entertaining, feels very fragmentary, pushing beyond several natural ending-points. Then, when the ending comes, it is extraordinarily abrupt. So much so that I don’t know precisely what happened. I was momentarily distracted by my fiancée asking me a question, and looked back to see the credits rolling.


Still, these issues are nowhere near sufficient reason to blast Alien: Isolation out of the critical airlock. It’s a delightful surprise that such a game has emerged from a mainstream developer/publisher relationship. A game that embraces vulnerability rather than pushing a power fantasy, that demands a slow pace and rewards careful play instead of twitch-skills and killstreaks, that emphasises smart level design and wonderfully crafted systems in lieu of pretty but arbitrary skyboxes and overwhelming your senses with bullets and explosions.

Most of all though, Isolation reminds me of why the Xenomorph became the horror icon it did. It achieves what I like to call deep horror, an experience which goes beyond the simple jump scares of Slenderman or films like Paranormal Activity. It lingers in your brain a long while after witnessing its closing scenes, that’s layered in the time and history of a real-feeling place. To dispense with the florid prose, it’s an absolutely superb game, and it’s a testament to its quality that despite potentially giving me an annoying and unpleasant skin condition, I already want to play it again.