The Alien film series made Sigourney Weaver an action heroine, changing forever the face of the action genre, which had always been dominated by muscle-bound macho men like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. In the past there have been many video games based on the Alien franchise. Now Creative Assembly sends you once more into space to face off against the xenomorph.
Ellen Ripley is alive…maybe
The plot of Alien: Isolation takes place in the year 2137, i.e. 15 years after the events of the original Alien movie. Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, now working for the Weyland Yutani Corporation, obtains information indicating that her mother might still be alive. The answer is to be found on the space station Sevastopol, and together with a small team, Amanda Ripley sets out to investigate, never thinking that she might suffer the same fate as her mother. Pure chaos has broken out aboard the Sevastopol. A majority of the crew is dead, and the creatures responsible are the xenomorphs – a deadly extraterrestrial life form.
During the course of the adventure (about 20-30 hours), erstwhile civilian Amanda develops a warrior nature and must constantly learn to adjust to new conditions. The game fits in well with the storyline of the first film and does a good job of capturing the same pressing atmosphere that accompanied Ellen Ripley’s survival in the movie. It’s also really cool to be able to experience what happened after the events of the first movie. While you can only access certain parts of the space station at the beginning of the game, you end up finding various tools that allow you to enter more and more areas. One really interesting feature is the motion tracker radar that allows you to detect your enemies from a distance. This helps you plan your next move and think about what kind of resources you’re going to need to use. Blueprints allow Amanda to produce various items that help her confront her enemies, including medi-packs, different kinds of grenades, and a noisemaker. But before you can make them, you have to collect individual parts scattered throughout the space station. It’s also a good idea to read the messages found in the space station’s terminals, which not only contain background information but also hints on where to find hidden items.
High-adrenaline action horror
Like I mentioned, the xenomorphs, or better yet, the xenomorph, is Amanda’s greatest enemy. While you will run into androids and human enemies, the real threat is the gigantic alien lurking in the darkness. It’s obviously much more powerful than Amanda, and is not easy to defeat – the only real thing you can do is stay out of its way. But this is easier said than done, since the xenomorph is unpredictable, so you can never guess what it’s going to next. It’s practically omnipotent, and surviving it can really test your patience. Time and again, you have to keep going through the same trial and error sequence until you can figure out a way to not get killed by the alien. But if you’re thinking that fighting against one real enemy sounds boring, well you’re wrong…damn wrong.
Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game where every step you take might be your last. The game manages to create an unbelievably eerie atmosphere. Imagine you’re standing in a dark and bleak corridor and all you have to do is get around the corner, but your feet, or your thumbs, just don’t want to help move Amanda ahead. And then you see a dark shadow and hear clanging noises. What are you going to do? Keep going, turn around, or try to hide? What’s that around the corner? Is the xenomorph lurking back there, or is it a dead end? But what if you turn around and the monster’s waiting for you on the way back? Okay, then you’d better hide somewhere. But wait, the alien can still find Amanda and creep back and forth for a moment in front of her hiding spot only to tear open the door and kill her. But even if you’ve managed to hide yourself unnoticed, it’s not like you can relax, either.
Look! It’s me, the bloodthirsty alien!
Let’s face it, you’re going to have to leave that hiding spot eventually, and who’s to say that your pursuer wasn’t counting on that and isn’t waiting to ambush you? Sometimes you’ll be sitting in a storage compartment for several minutes, adrenaline pumping, because you’re afraid to leave. And if that’s not terrifying enough, there’s the absence of any auto-healing or a save feature. There’s a meter in the HUD that shows how much health you have left, and the only way to replenish it is with medkits. But if you want to use one of these, you’re going to have to make it first, so you’d better hope you have enough of the right materials in your inventory. To save your game in Alien: Isolation, you have to use save terminals, so make sure you keep an eye out for these.
In the Xbox One version of the game you can use Kinect’s head tracking and noise recognition capabilities to intensify the horror experience. When you play with head tracking activated, the Kinect sensor follows you head movements and transmits them to the character. This makes it easier to look past obstacles or around corners, like when you’re hiding in a closet or something. Activating noise recognition will have the Kinect pick up sounds around the player. Loud noises might alert Amanda’s enemies to her presence and make it easier for them to track her down. Amanda isn’t going to be the only one holding her breath when the alien is creeping past her hiding place.
“Retro” graphics and a terror-inducing sound design
The graphics in Alien: Isolation feature a simple sci-fi design that does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of the movies and makes it feel like you’re picking up right where the first one left off. Also contributing to the overall feel is the fact that the design of the space station itself depicts an early 80s vision of the future, including CRT monitors with blocky graphics displays and retro keyboards. There are tons of details to warm the heart of any real fan of the movies. Some examples include the cryo-chambers and the narrow passages like on the USCSS Nostromo, complete with pipes on the ceiling. There are also eerily dark corridors with plumes of smoke making it harder to see, and signs of devastation everywhere. The characters are extremely detailed, especially in the cut scenes, right down to freckles and little beads of sweat.
One essential element in any real horror setting is sound design. Most of the sounds are pretty faint until they suddenly get louder right before a tense moment, causing you to freeze in shock before anything actually happens.
Survival Mode
Alongside the main game, there’s also Survival Mode. You should probably wait until after you’ve completed the main game before you play Survival Mode. Unfortunately there’s only one playable map on the game disk itself, called “Basement”. To get more, you have to pay for DLC. There were also two bonus missions for anyone who pre-ordered the game, which you can now get in the Xbox Games Store.
In the “Last Survivor” mission, you play as Ellen Ripley and have to complete her final mission aboard the Nostromo. The rest of the crew is dead, and your survival depends on disarming the ship’s self-destruct mechanism and making it to the escape pod in time. “Crew Expendable” brings the Nostromo’s original crew back together. Brett and Kane are dead, and together with Ash and Lambert you take on the role of Dallas, Parker, or Ellen Ripley to find a way drive the monster into a narrow space and face off against it.
The main point of Survival Mode is, as the name suggests, to survive. Within each level there are various mission objectives to complete. But be careful, there’s a terrifying alien who could be anywhere, and your next step could easily be your last. Survival mode is pretty exciting at first, but later, after the tenth time you play the same map, it’s not really motivating or even all that interesting anymore. But it is more than just a nice little side bonus to the actual single player campaign, and I’m sure it’s a lot of fun once you add a bit of variety with the downloadable maps.
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