All right, so this will probably be my last post because - I did it. I beat Alien Isolation, finally knocking out a game that’s been troubling me since release. It was stressful, for reasons I’ve already covered, but I’m glad I did it. The experience was a good one, overall. But I don’t know that I can say that the game was a good one overall. Not really. Mainly, I just don’t think the experience they were trying to provide really worked. Not sure if that’s an inherent problem in attempting to bring the experience of the first movie to a game, or just the way they did it. But I do think this game kind of harms the mystique of the alien. You definitely feel that the alien is tethered to you, and will never be too far away even when you do manage to get by it. And, I’ll add, this is the case for the various android and human enemies you’ll encounter. If you sneak by them, they’ll just modify their patrol route to follow you, as if they subconsciously know where you are at all times but are trying to sportingly allow you the opportunity to keep avoiding them.
The scripted events work best. They really evoke the feeling of being stalked and trapped. There’s a really great “oh, I’m so screwed” moment at the end that really caught me by surprise. I also really enjoy these games that let you be a space engineer, like the Dead Space games do. It’s scratches that itch if you always wanted to be Montgomery Scott. And these guys made the environments so damned beautiful, in the sense that they look exactly like you’d think they should from the first movie. You’ll come across generators that have to be primed before being started, doors that have to be cut down with a blowtorch, monochromatic screens. It’s all low tech in the same way the movie was. I loved it.
So, thumbs up from me, for what it’s worth, but know what you’re getting into. I do think I made the right call dialing down the difficulty. I can’t imagine how bad it would have been any higher. I might never have climbed out of the lockers you could stash yourself in while you stare at the motion sensor and wait for it to stop beeping.