Alien Isolation

Stay in there mate, it's far more entertaining

I remember the first hour or so of this game vividly, it looked and felt like classic Alien. From the old-school technology, to the aesthetics of the corridors, and the mood setting sound, perfect. I berated a couple of friends into watching a (choppy) stream of me playing, and they both agreed it looked and felt like the original movie. So it's a shame about how the game plays out.

Don't get me wrong. Technically it works well, and the first few hours are genuinely entertaining. When the androids came along I loved it, at first, then I was a little frustrated. My atmospheric exploration game had become a sneaky game of crouching under tables and hiding in lockers for REALLY long periods. The punishment for mucking it up was pretty much instant death, Alien Isolation is not a forgiving game.

The fixed save positions suck, I mean really suck, I'm not a man with infinite time to replay whole chunks of game just because I didn't know there was an alien up that vent. It's a cheap, dated game mechanic that belonged on the consoles of the 90s and needs to fuck right off.

So anyway, an alien up a vent dropped on me and I was insta-gibbed, losing all my progress to that point. There was little warning, apparently I needed to know about the alien goo dripping from the roof, though this was never communicated to me in-game. Great, lesson learned. Realistically, this is probably not the end of the world and I could have worked through it had it not been for the fixed save points. I hate repeating myself, but we're not all 15 year olds with infinite time and patience to replay the same part of the game over and again. I want to see new content, not the same room/corridor/underneath of a table for an hour.

So then the titular alien showed up properly and the cat v mouse gameplay it introduced was fun - for about thirty minutes. Thirty minutes was the time it took for me to be killed several times because I failed to get things just right. The alien moved in unpredictable patterns, used vents and pipes and could hear and see you from really far away. It was fast, omniscient at times, and hard to track when it got into the ceiling. If it sighted you, you died. If you moved to fast, you died. If you wanted to get on and keep enjoying the game, too bad - dead.

Let's break out into a little aside here and get a few things straight. I like sneaking mechanics, I often choose to play sneaky characters in RPGs and first person games and whatnot. I like sniping, and sneaking, and backstabbing, and hiding. I played through SOMA (so I don't mind being helpless) and it only caused some mild anger at various stages. It was fair (and excellent). I also like choice, I like to choose my approach. Another game that does this well (and fairly) is Dishonored. If I feel like sneaking, I can. If I mess it up, I have avenues to escape and try again without being killed (unless I'm trapped or incompetent). I'm not forced to hide in a cabinet for several minutes while the alien wanders around aimlessly only to have it suddenly find me in a very unwelcome game of hide and seek.

You get to do a lot of this. Enjoy.

This is what Alien Isolation became for me, and at one point I tried over and over to progress, reloading and reloading, swearing and banging my mouse (gently) on the desk. I looked up a walkthrough, yep, I was doing it right, you just had to time it perfectly. There was no clever solution, just be lucky and time it right. Even if you did time it perfectly, you still had to be lucky. I got past that part through sheer determination, but that was pretty much the end for me. The magic was gone.

Verdict: Technically great. Atmospherically excellent. Mechanically interesting. Gameplay, terrible. I don't play games to be angry and frustrated, that's why I have a job. And on a really specific point, seriously, it's not 1995 anymore, ditch the fixed save points. If anyone wants to call me a savescummer, fine, I'm over 40 years old and don't have any qualms saving as I progress, WHEN AND HOW I WANT TO. If I have to leave the game running because life intercedes, that's BAD. If I have to make up all of my progress again because I forget where I was at and died, you  fail at being a good game. Your game sucks if it leans on this outdated crutch to extend play time. Alien Isolation is a missed opportunity, though it probably appeals to lovers of games like Dark Souls.

Final Word: Get it for five bucks and play it for the first few hours, otherwise - NOT RECOMMENDED

(game link)