4.5/5 ★ – hcolesmith's review of Alien: Isolation.

Alien is one of my favorite movies. I love the series quite a bit, but I’m a bit of a black sheep: my second favorite is Prometheus. Two weeks ago I saw Romulus on opening night. It was ok, but I found it too indebted to the legacy sequel format to stand on its own. After watching, I remembered for the millionth time that I never finished Alien: Isolation—I have a yearly ritual where I install it around Halloween intending to play it, but never got beyond the first few missions for one reason or another. But this time, I finished it. In short, Alien: Isolation is perhaps the most innovative and unique survival horror game I’ve played in a while. I’m not certain how this game didn’t cause a full on revolution in the survival horror space. I suppose it may have inspired Resident Evil’s jump to first person and some more horror-focused elements of the seventh entry, but to put it flatly: Isolation puts every single horror game released since that I’ve played to shame. This is the scariest game I’ve ever played, but it’s also one of the smartest. I’ve tried playing this game many times, and one of the times I played when I got the farthest (before now) I initially started on hard (the recommended difficulty), but bumped it down after struggling. Then I dropped the game. This time, I wanted to do it right. I played it on hard. In the first few missions, this game is brutal. It’s old school—it barely autosaves and requires an in-game save point. It tells you that sneaking is preferable to combat—the alien can’t even be killed—and it means it. As a result, I was struggling to feel like this game was doable. Then it clicked. Suddenly, I saw how Isolation doesn’t just use the dressings of an immersive sim, it IS an immersive sim. The game uses a systemic based approach to stealth, which means that rather than solve a puzzle, you have to learn the AI. It’s one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had in gaming. Throughout the course of the game, you will learn to be invisible. You will learn what attracts enemies, and you will learn what attracts enemies often can make them attract the alien. You will learn why the systems work in tandem with each other, and then suddenly the game unlocks. Alien: Isolation is immersive, and ten years on it still looks incredible. The atmospheric lighting, and intricate detailing on the Sevastopol feel so well realized that learning the maps is attainable and necessary for a sneaky approach. I loved my time with this game. But there are some minor nitpicks with some mission design that are a bit tedious. Coincidentally, these are the moments that attempt to use the game’s emergent systems in a more scripted manner. They’re cool, but they feel a little out of place. They’re not a dealbreaker though. Overall, I think this is magnificent, even if not perfect. It’s amazing to see something so completely fresh, and full of ideas (the alien can hear your tracker? So cool). I am bummed that, a decade on, nothing has really taken that much influence or followed in its footsteps. I’ve never been big on Creative Assembly’s other games, but why they aren’t making survival horror full time is beyond me.