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Alien Isolation: Nostromo Edition
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Graphics & Sound:
"Let me see if I have this correct, Lieutenant - it's an 8-foot creature of some kind with acid for blood, and it arrived on your spaceship. It kills on sight, and is generally unpleasant."
-Superintendent Andrews, Alien 3
Alien is one of my favorite films of all time. I can think of only a few movies that have aged as gracefully. But more importantly, it is one of a scant few that legitimizes the horror genre. Rather than manipulate you through meaningless jump scares and expensive special effects, Alien plants the seeds of fear and allows your imagination to tend to them. So when I heard that Sega and The Creative Assembly were working to bring that experience to video games, I was tentatively excited. Now, the game is finally here, and I am lucky enough to have been given the opportunity to review it. So how did it turn out? Well, I’ll put it this way: Alien: Isolation is not the most fun survival horror game I’ve played, but it is the scariest.
Alien: Isolation gets the most important parts right when it comes to the visuals. Ridley Scott’s 1979 masterpiece had a very distinct perspective on what technology might look like a few hundred years in the future. Those who haven’t seen Alien might be confused at the clunky, primitive-looking future tech, but those who have seen it will be delighted to see that Alien: Isolation absolutely nails the aesthetics of the film. From the selective lighting and the billowing smoke to the huge dot-matrix screens and giant cathode ray tubes, the interiors of the Sevastopol are completely at home in the universe. There are so many little touches and subtle nods to the film that it’s difficult to not be taken with the developer’s obvious admiration for the source material. Walking the halls of the Nostromo-inspired Torrens (and later, Sevastopol Station) and seeing the compartments that housed so many of my favorite scenes (the round dinner table, the soft yellow MU-TH-UR 6000 (Mother) interface room, and the air vents, complete with the irising entrances/exits) is a delight.
Character design is uniformly terrific, save for the human characters. It’s not that the likes of Ripley, Samuels, and Taylor look bad (Amanda totally looks like she could have been Ellen’s child); it’s just that the non-human characters look so amazing. The Working Joe androids in the employ of the Seegson Corporation are a far cry from the lifelike Weyland-Yutani synthetics (like the traitorous Ash and the heroic Bishop). These androids have hard plastic faces that are incapable of moving or showing emotion, and their dead, glowing eyes make their presence genuinely unsettling. They are essentially sentient, murderous mannequins, and if that isn’t scary, I don’t know what is.
The Alien is obviously the star of the show, and it’s amazing how much care was put into its presentation. Ridley Scott was wise not to show much of the fully-grown Xenomorph in Alien; most of the time, it just looked like a really tall man in a rubber suit. But since Alien: Isolation is a video game (and therefore free of constraints imposed by the real world), The Creative Assembly is free to make the Alien as fearsome as possible. And though much of the fear in this game comes from what you don’t see, it would be unreasonable to hide the Alien for as much of the running time as the film does.
Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack to Alien was acclaimed as being not only avant-garde, but full of mystery and creepiness. From the plucking of random strings and bizarre mechanical sounds to the unsettling ambience that punctuated the silence every so often, it’s masterful work. Alien: Isolation brings some of that work in, cleans it up a bit, and expands upon it. Lots of little cues and nods to the soundtrack are everywhere, but it feels like more than fanservice. It’s straight up reverence.
Sound effects are also completely faithful to the franchise. Some of them sound like they’ve been taken straight from the film; from the grating sounds of the vent openings as they iris open and shut to the shrieks and hisses of the Alien to even the computer sounds that accompany the crafting menu screens, one can only wonder at the resources The Creative Assembly had access to.
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Gameplay:
"I promised her that I would be home for her birthday... her eleventh birthday."
-Ellen Ripley, Aliens
For those who have watched the Special Edition of Aliens, you know that Ellen Ripley left a daughter behind when she took that fateful voyage aboard the USCSS Nostromo. Despite her promise to Amanda that she’d be back in time to celebrate her 11th birthday, the events of Alien ultimately resulted in Ripley spending 57 years in stasis – long enough for poor Amanda to not only outlive her mother, but to die of old age shortly before Ellen’s recovery. Alien: Isolation tells the story of what Amanda Ripley went through during her mother’s lengthy nap.
Amanda is making ends meet as an engineer when she is approached by a Weyland-Yutani executive with the news that the flight recorder box of the Nostromo has been recovered. Desperate for answers, she leaves with a team for Sevastopol, a space station and synthetic (or artificial person, if you prefer) manufacturing facility run by Seegson, one of Weyland-Yutani’s foundering competitors. Things go horrible from the start; Sevastopol is heavily damaged and radio silent, and the team is separated by a debris storm during their spacewalk to the station. So Amanda finds herself alone in Sevastopol, which is not only crippled by power failures across the grid, but also the site of what appears to be bloody anarchy. Survivors are so distrustful of each other that they kill strangers on sight, and the androids (here called "Working Joes") are... let’s just say they play it fast and loose with Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. After a bit of exploration, Amanda comes face to face with the reason behind not only the Sevastopol crisis, but also her mother’s disappearance. That’s right: one single, solitary Xenomorph.
Alien: Isolation is too long for its own good, and it doesn't finish strong, but considering the indignities that this once-great franchise has suffered in the last two decades -- and more importantly, how much this game gets right, it’s mostly forgivable. Less forgivable is some narrative dissonance that is clearly contrived in such a manner to fill the game with more things to avoid. I’m sorry, but if a monster is loose aboard a space station and the administrative robots are murdering everyone in sight, I don’t believe for a second that every single human being on board the station would instinctively turn on each other like in The Walking Dead. And while this game may ultimately springboard the franchise into taking more bold narrative steps, I don’t think that Amanda Ripley was a good choice for the leading role. I would have personally been more interested in a story that starred the offspring of one of the other Nostromo crew members. Think of what kind of compelling drama could have been created had the game cast you as the son or daughter of the original Patient Zero, poor Executive Officer Kane! But I digress.
Speaking of the original cast of Alien, most of them return for the additional content provided in the Nostromo Edition. Every single one of them, with the exception of John Hurt (Kane) and Ian Holm (Ash). This extra mission, aptly titled "Crew Expendable," is loaded with fanservice of the best possible kind. In it, you return to the Nostromo's darkest hours; with Kane and Brett already dead, you must find a way to get the Alien to the airlock. It's a fun diversion that doesn't last very long, but is well worth the time and effort.
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Difficulty:
"I can’t lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."
-Ash, Alien
If Alien: Isolation was easy, it wouldn’t be as utterly effective as it is. This is a difficult game that is clearly designed to make each escape hard-fought. When you do succeed in making that extra bit of progress, you may not feel much better about your situation. After all, you’re not off the hook until the credits roll. The best course of action is to remain unseen, but Ripley is no Sam Fisher; you will be pulled into combat with Working Joes from time to time and though there is a trophy for completing the game without dying once, I’m not really convinced it’s a reasonable one. So stealth aside, loot everything you see, save whenever you can, and construct as many medkits as you can carry.
In his review of James Cameron’s sequel Aliens, Roger Ebert described his experience thusly: "The movie is so intense that it creates a problem for me as a reviewer: Do I praise its craftsmanship, or do I tell you it left me feeling wrung out and unhappy?" Much of this applies in Alien: Isolation: when that door closes behind you, blocking off access to the snarling creature, you may need to do a reality check and get in touch with your body. Your heart will be racing and your muscles will be tense. A lot of reviewers have called out Alien: Isolation for having too much downtime. I will actually hold that up as a positive; if the intensity wasn’t buffered out to the extent that it is, I probably would have dropped dead of a heart attack before I reached the halfway point.
Alien: Isolation’s old-school saving mechanics are a double-edged sword. You can only save your game at designated terminals, much like in earlier horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Furthermore, these terminals are in short supply, which means a single slip-up can result in up to twenty minutes of gameplay completely lost. Does it create tension? Absolutely. Is it frustrating? Absolutely.
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Game Mechanics:
"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism. You don't dare kill it."
-Parker, Alien
Though the end of Aliens saw her mom slaughter the Xenomorphs to near-extinction, Amanda isn’t equipped to put even one of the beasts down. Combine that with the fact that it bleeds molecular acid and it’s clear that poor Amanda is on the defensive throughout the entirety of Alien: Isolation. The threat of the Alien is one that can’t be fought – only avoided.
For starters, the Alien’s behavior is completely unscripted. This is not one of those stealth games that allows you to memorize patrol routes and make your move when it’s obviously safe to do so. Alien: Isolation is always pushing you to your fate, and that deadly encounter can happen at literally any moment. And it is this uncertainty that makes Alien: Isolation as painfully intense as it is. You don’t even have to screw up to find yourself looking into the Xenomorph’s dripping maws or staring dumbfounded at the razor-sharp tail that has somehow sprouted from your ribcage.
Amanda can’t fight the Alien, but over the course of the game, she gains an arsenal of tools that assist in keeping its attention away from her. Instruments like flares and flashbangs can serve to distract or disorient the abomination, and once Amanda gets her hands on a flamethrower, she can scare it off momentarily to buy her some time to escape. Other tools open up locked off areas. But the most valuable tool of all is the motion tracker, which gives Ripley an idea of where each moving object is. Hearkening back to the iconic scene in which Captain Dallas pursues the Alien into the Nostromo’s airshafts, the motion tracker is an imperfect tool: it’s prone to false positives and doesn’t reveal whether or not moving objects are above or below it. But on top of giving you an idea of where you need to go, it is a vital tool for survival.
You are never, ever safe in Alien: Isolation. Not even when you’re in a hiding place. If you stow away inside a locker as the Alien approaches, your job isn’t done. You can peer out of slits and holes to determine if the coast is clear or not, so your role remains active. The Alien may not be the most intelligent lifeform on Sevastopol Station, but it isn’t beneath tearing every room apart to find its prey. If the Alien investigates your hiding spot, you must lean as far back as you can and hold a button to make Amanda hold her breath. Do it for too long and she begins to take steady damage. Exhale too soon, however, and you’re lunchmeat.
A very rudimentary crafting system is present in Alien: Isolation, and all you really need to know is that the containers with green lights can be looted for blasting caps, medicine, scrap and other assorted detritus that can be fashioned into survival tools.
Sevastopol is littered with terminals. Most of them provide insight into the history of the station and the specifics of its infection, and some provide passcodes that can grant Amanda access to locked off areas. Others are used as part of the station's security system. This system can be used against the homicidal administrative staff, as well as anything else out to kill you. Each area only has enough power to sustain a number of its systems. Changing the allocation of that power might give Ripley a chance to distract her enemies or open a new escape route.
Alien: Isolation deserves credit for being as bold as it is. It's the most original and the most intense survival horror experience to come around in a very long time. If you're a fan of Alien, you should buy it. In fact, the only ones I can't recommend this game to are people with heart problems.
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-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications AKA Jon Carlos |
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