The Therapist Gamer

Most movie-based video games are garbage - it's pretty much a scientific fact.  Alien: Isolation attempts to change the very laws of our universe by not sucking.  It almost succeeds.

​

There's a lot to like about Alien: Isolation.  You play as Ripley's daughter and are summoned to help a distressed space station.  Through a series of unfortunate events you end up alone with no supplies and, well, I suppose you can guess where things go from there.

​

One of the design choices the developers absolutely got right is that this is a survival game and not an action game.  There is only one alien and it cannot be harmed in any way.  Your only defense is to hide and out-maneuver.  If you make too much noise or otherwise alert the alien - you're done for.  There are some other enemies, including humans, but the other main threats are maintenance androids and they're suitably creepy - possibly even creepier than the alien!  They're cold, dutiful machines - and they see you as a threat.  If they see you they briskly walk towards you; something about them not running makes things even more tense.  It's possible to kill the androids but it takes a lot of resources to do so.  

​

You scavenge resources from the environment and use them to construct various gadgets, such as smoke bombs or noisemakers.  You need a lot of resources to create usable items and there is a strong sense of scarcity, which I think is good because it adds to the tension.  There are a few human enemies and you can usually decide if you want to face them head-on or let the alien sort things out.  In general, I think the overall feel and tone of the game is well-designed and thought out.  At last!  A developer has the guts to make an Alien game that feels like the film!

​

Unfortunately the game has some significant shortcomings.  There's no quick-save system, but rather you manually save your game at terminals.  I'm not sure why the developers opted for the 2003 way of doing things, but it feels out of place and doesn't really add to the tension in any meaningful way.  If you die they could have just made it so that the checkpoint was where they put the save terminals.  

​

The save points are annoying, but they're relatively unimportant compared to the gameplay issues.  Simply put, the game just gets kind of boring.  For a game about hiding, it's honestly two to three times longer than it should be.  I'll almost never say that about a game, but this game is simply too long.  There aren't enough new gameplay mechanics to keep things interesting, and the story isn't captivating enough to put up with 20 hours of hiding under desks.  There are a few tricks to learn, such as creating noise to divert the attention of the alien, but it's not really that engaging.  

​

There are a few bright spots later in the game.  For example, there's a part where there are facehuggers all over the place while you're trying to evade the alien, and it's super creepy and atmospheric.  Just perfect, really.  But these bright spots are interspersed through hours and hours of fairly boring gameplay.  It's a bit of a shame, really, but given the context of how poorly Alien games have been conceived in the past, I still consider this game an artistic success.