You might want the Alien to kill you with all the repetition involved.
As the survival horror genre is slowly making its way back into the mainstream gaming circle with the likes of the Evil Within, There comes a game that could be just what the doctor ordered for the genre. That game is Alien: Isolation and the game does a great job of just being plain scary.
As I mentioned moments ago, the game does a great job of just being scary at times. The graphics help set the mood and that goes into story-telling and scariness. You never know what could jump out next and that’s the basis for a great survival horror game.
You have to go intot this with an open mind knowing the idea of survival horror and that you either love them or hate them. It is also a good idea to think going in that you will have that feeling of repetition during the course of your adventure/missions. Alien: Isolation is no different in this regard. In more ways than one, your goal is to not get killed by the Alien, sounds simple right?
It gets a lot more complicated than that in terms of how you do it. The Xenomorph does pretty much whatever it wants to do and that adds to the game play because you have no idea what it’s going to do next. That could mean you have to stay silent in a locker for a few minutes while the Alien is breathing outside and just the slightest noise will bring death.
To aid you in your survival is the Motion Tracker, a device that senses the “motions” of the Alien and you can use that information to your advantage. Now that doesn’t mean that you’re immortal, you will die. Sometimes you will die when you think you can’t possibly die! Minigames such as hacking computers will keep you sane and not banging your head against the wall but not for long.
The feel of repetition rears its ugly head again in terms of using the motion tracker/hiding-waiting approach with the Alien. The inability to know what the Alien is thinking will help get rid of this feeling but not too much. The back-tracking in the Space Station drag out at times and add to the repeat factor.
It will take some time to get used to the game play and the controls but once you do, it will be worth it. Isolation has the look and feel of the classic Alien movie complete with not knowing what’s going to jump out next. The story needs a little push at the start where it doesn’t move nearly as quickly as it should. You get hit in the face in terms of repetition with the stealth game play aspect and the backtracking in the space ship.
It’s these reasons that Alien: Isolation gets an 8/10, the game looks great but takes awhile to get going and like most survival horror games, has repetition out the you-know-what! Don’t get me wrong the game does horror very well and sets the mood it just could have been done better.
Score: 8 / 10
