Alien Isolation Nostromo Edition (PS4)
Developed by The Creative Assembly
Published by Sega
List Price: $59.99
Amanda Ripley's mom has been missing and presumed dead for 15 years after her ship went missing in deep space. Representatives from Weyland Yutani, the bastard "Company" who serves as the human equivalent of death dealing xenomorphs in previous Alien films, shows up saying that the flight recorder of her mom's ship, the Nostromo, has been found. The flight recorder is being held on Sevastopol Station, a soon to be decommissioned space station, that for all intents and purposes, looks just like the Nostromo. Amanda decides to accompany the Weyland Yutani executives to the station to find out the truth about the fate of her mom.
They arrive at Sevastapol to find a devastated and rapidly falling apart station. After almost getting killed by space debris trying to board, Amanda enters into a terrifying situation once she gets inside. Sevastapol has become a microcosm of apocalyptic survival horror in space. Almost all authority has broken down and wild gangs of looters roam the halls killing anyone they don't know and hoarding food and supplies. If the humans don't kill you, then there's the "Working Joes", budget androids manufactured by Weyland's rival corporation, Seegson. The Working Joes are killing anyone they deem a threat, which translates into anyone and everyone. And then, of course, there's the alien.
Finding out what happened to your mom takes a backseat to just surviving and trying to contact the ship you came in on, the Torrens, in order to escape the Hell you've just stumbled into.
In some ways I really loved this game, and in some ways this game really pissed the crap out of me. The main objective of the game is to sneak your way around humans, androids, and aliens to get to your objective. You do have ways to kill humans and androids, but you have to pick and choose your moments and methods of attack. Also, once you get into the game, the noise of fighting attracts the unwanted attention of the alien. Said alien is basically invulnerable to items that kill humans and androids. You can only distract and scare it away for a time so your best bet is just to avoid him altogether. Besides causing distractions with noisemakers, and scaring him away with a flamethrower or a molotov cocktail, you can hide from various threats under desks, tables, and in lockers and cabinets. Essentially, this is a stealth horror survival game.
What I really loved about this game was the spot on capturing of the original 1979 set design of the Nostromo reincarnated in Sevastapol. The cool thing about Alien Isolation is that they weren't only inspired by the original set and prop designs. The Creative Assembly was able to expand on the original concepts on a much more grander and epic scale. You actually feel is if you're inhabiting the world of the first Alien movie. It also helps that the composers of the game music used a lot of Jerry Goldsmith's music cues from the original film as well, which is one of the creepiest scores ever.
The voice acting was first rate as well, with Andrea Deck voicing Amanda Ripley. Something else that helps the feel of the game is Amanda's character. She is every inch just as much a reluctant but brave badass as her mom. I consider the original Ripley character from Alien played by Sigourney Weaver as one of the most important roles in film. It was one of the first films I remember seeing where a woman could be a true Homeric hero. Without Ripley, there would be no Katniss. Without Ripley, there would be no female action heroes. Like mother like daughter. I fell in love with Amanda's strength.
One of the things I didn't like about the game was its Big Brother linear nature. Say, for example, you had to go flip a switch to activate something. If you look at the map, it's just down the hallway. Should take you like a minute to get there....WRONG! There's a door you can't open so then you have to go looking all over the station for the key...and then on the way to look for a key, an elevator breaks....so you have to go turn the power on to activate the elevator to get to the place where the key is to open the door to get like 10 feet down the hallway. And oh, the alien just happens to be walking around in circles at the spot where the key is. THEN, when you get the item, you have to backtrack all the way through humans, androids, and aliens to get back to where you started. There were a lot of threats you could have avoided but the devs FORCE you to confront them. It's a bogus open world really.
That's the thing about this game. In other games, when you get to an area or get an item, the game pauses and loads and you're on to the next mission. In Alien Isolation, you have to actually backtrack to get back to where you started EVERYTIME, encountering everything twice. Luckily, there are plenty of savepoints along the way, so I never really lost a ton of progress. That was actually the most nervewracking part of the game. While you are saving, the game doesn't pause, so while you're busy saving, the alien can come out of a vent and kill you!
I had a lot of problems with the Alien in this game. You pretty much know he's around cause you hear him bumbling around like a big baby in the air ducts. And a lot of times when you have to reach a particular area, he just conveniently walks in circles for no reason just to annoy you. I had just watched the original Alien film before playing this game and the behavior of the alien in the game just doesn't correlate. In the movie, the Alien is more of a stealth and ambush killer of opportunity. It would never expose itself or just clumsily waddle around as it did in this game. The devs just didn't seem to get the whole elegance and horrible grace of the Giger design. I didn't see the Alien AI as any more advanced than Colonial Marines. Sometimes I could be in almost open space, naked as a babe, and the alien would walk right past me.
Another minor complaint was that the cutscenes in the game were really choppy, especially early on. The frame rate of the cutscenes seemed to improve as the game went along. I didn't notice and slowdown in the game iself.
I would recommend this game because of its atmosphere really and just because I really loved the main protagonist. I wouldn't really say it was "fun". It did what it set out to do. Make you feel scared. Well, I don't know if scared is the right word. It was more like STRESSED. To me, there's a difference. I'm not really a big fan of survival horror games like this. When I get off work, I like to relax. So I could only play this game in small doses. But there's just something about it that keeps it in my mind and tells me that this is a really good game, that with more refinement, could have been great.
I preordered this game from Gamestop, which included the Crew Expendable and Last Survivor DLCs. While they are cool because they reunite most of the cast from the original movie, each actor only has a few lines and each mission only contains one level, so I wouldn't really mess with buying them unless you're just a totally hardcore alien fan or they are discounted. The two missions only last about 30 minutes or so each.
My Grade: B+
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