Sega; Xbox 360/Xbox One/PlayStation 3/PlayStation 4/PC (version tested); £45; Pegi age rating: 18+
Video games have traditionally done HR Giger’s most famous creation a disservice. His alien, the xenomorph, is supposed to be a calculating, ruthless killer – a “perfect organism” as Ash described it in Ridley Scott’s original movie. But in games based on the series, they’re usually little more than dumb animals, politely lining up to be blasted by the player’s pulse rifle.
This is where Isolation differs. It is perhaps the first video game conversion of the movie series to treat the alien with the respect it deserves. Here, it is a merciless, unstoppable force that can kill you in the blink of an eye. You can’t fight it and you can’t outrun it. All you can do is hide and hope it doesn’t sniff you out. It is the Alien experience that should have been made a long time ago, and, bizarrely, it has taken the creators of the historical battle sim series, Total War, to realise it.
Ripley vs Alien: the rivalry returns
In Alien: Isolation, you are Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley. 15 years after the events of the Alien film, you’ve learned that the black box recorder from the Nostromo, your missing mother’s ship, has been found on a backwater space station called Sevastopol. When you arrive you find the place abandoned and in ruins, and it’s clear that something has gone horribly wrong. Something black, shiny, and terrifying is on the loose, and it has decided to make you its prey.
Isolation takes all of its cues from Scott’s 1979 film, and not, like so many other games, from James Cameron’s action-packed sequel. It’s slow and atmospheric, mixing elements of stealth, exploration, and survival horror. Encounters with the alien are not scripted, and its dynamic, reactive artificial intelligence makes its behaviour unpredictable. You genuinely feel you’re up against an intelligent and devious predator. It is genuinely hunting you, using its keen senses.
As you explore Sevastopol you can hear it searching for you, its heavy footsteps thudding in the distance. Sometimes you hear it above you, crawling through vents, or below you beneath the floor. Its persistent, ominous presence, and the fact that being spotted will almost certainly end with you being impaled by its tail or torn apart, makes this a brilliantly, and sometimes unbearably, tense game. Veteran game players, so used to feeling powerful, are going to feel very different here.
To get through the station’s warren of winding, narrow tunnels alive, you have to be careful, patient, and methodical. But it’s not all deadly games of hide and seek with the alien. One of Isolation’s greatest strengths is its pacing. As well as the alien you’ll have to contend with murderous androids that grab you if you get too close and crush the life out of you. There are other human survivors too, and they’ll open fire if you stray into their territory.
Ripley is an engineer, and can use scrap littered around the levels to craft gadgets including smoke bombs and EMP mines. Combining these gives the game surprising depth, like tossing a noise-maker into a group of gun-toting looters so it alerts the alien and it kills them for you.
The game is constantly mixing things up to keep you on your toes. In one level, your motion tracker is rendered useless so you have to rely on sight and sound to detect the monster. In another, you’re stripped of your weapons, forcing you use your gadgets creatively. There’s even a section where, briefly, the alien isn’t around and you can fire your guns freely without alerting it — a cathartic moment after a long, hard stealth sequence.
The Alien vision
It never once feels repetitive during its 15-20-hour duration, owing to smart, systems-driven stealth and the fearsome intelligence of the alien. The visual design is also beautifully faithful. The developers have built Sevastopol the same way Ridley Scott and his team built their sets in 1979, using only props and tech from the period. The computer stations look like old 70s terminals; video recordings hiss with static.
This retro-futuristic aesthetic is evocative and convincing, placing us directly into Scott’s vision of a bleakly industrial space environment. Flickering lights and smoke are used to great effect, adding to the claustrophobia and general feeling of unease. The station’s dark, oppressive corridors can be as intimidating as the xenomorph itself.
This terrifying game is a passionate homage to a horror classic, and a rich, well-designed stealth experience in its own right. Giger’s monstrous alien is, for the first time in a video game, as formidable and menacing as it was in the films. It was brave of Sega to take a chance on a game like this, where guns are a last resort, but their faith in The Creative Assembly’s vision has resulted in an unusually clever and subversive triple-A game.
