‘Alien Isolation is the best and most underrated horror game ever’

As I write this, I’ve just booked tickets to see Alien: Romulus at the weekend. Despite being a big fan of the series I’m not very optimistic, since the director has a reputation for just coping older films he likes and from the early reviews this seems to be exactly what he’s done again. Judging by the trailers, it’s well shot and has the look and feel of the original films but that’s not the novelty it could’ve been, since not only can I just watch them again but I could also play Alien Isolation instead.

Alien Isolation was released in 2014 and as far as I’m concerned it is the most accurate recreation of a specific movie ever seen in a video game. The game is mostly spent on a spacestation, that’s not in the films, but there’s also DLC that recreates the Nostromo from the first movie and it is 100% spot on. It literally looks like you’re walking round the set of the film.

The amount of effort that went into recreating a late 70s view of the future is phenomenal but it’s not just a matter of copying what it looks like, it gets the atmosphere exactly right too. I like horror games, I’ve played a lot, but despite how into Alien I am I found Isolation terrifying. Terrifying to the point where, more than once, I was genuinely scared to move just because I knew the alien was nearby.

Working out why a game is or isn’t scary is something that always interests me and I think it’s a combination of graphics, sound, and how easy it is for your character to defend themselves. Isolation looks super creepy and the sound design and music is also great. It’s trying to copy the movie, obviously, but it does it perfectly, including stuff like the motion tracker, which must be one of the greatest tension-creating movie props ever.

It does add things of its own though, like the purposefully not-quite-human looking androids and the save points that apparently even Romulus has copied, because they’re basically a warning that something dangerous is about to happen – otherwise they wouldn’t be needed.

The important thing is that the alien can’t be beaten. You can get it to run off by trying to shoot it, but sometimes not even that works and there’s very limited ammo. So, the whole game you’re creeping around, knowing that you are super vulnerable and the alien could pop out at any point and you’d have little or no warning.

Now, I’m not saying Isolation is perfect, but I do feel its flaws are overexaggerated and some of the reviews when it first came out were unnecessarily negative and were clearly part of the reason the game was not a financial success.

Is it too long? I don’t feel that’s really the right complaint. The problem is that the story is too far in the background and it’s not really clear what it’s building up too. So while the game is longer than you’d probably expect I feel it has plenty of variety and surprises. The problem is that the story always lags behind and doesn’t really make the most of this.

The biggest mistake, I feel, is simply that it doesn’t have an ending. I don’t think anyone would be complaining about the game’s length if it had a satisfying ending but unfortunately it has a very bad one, that was meant to lead into a sequel that never happened. Not only that but it’s not even clear what the sequel would be about, so it’s hard to even feel upset about it.

That’s the flaw but there’s plenty of great games with bad endings, or who’s stories are a bit underdeveloped, and I really don’t feel that Isolation is especially bad that way. There are horror game with better stories, sure, but there is no game that is scarier or more atmospheric than Alien Isolation.

By reader Lester