Opinion: The Perfection of Alien Isolation

Approaching the highly anticipated sequel cautiously.

As King of the casuals, it’s incredibly rare to pull my attention away from the camaraderie that multiplayer games combined with Discord chats offer. I don’t really discriminate against games based on my own preferences, except for one thing: will my friends play this with me? If, for whatever reason, there were a wildly popular multiplayer game that revolved around running a soup kitchen for the drug-addicted homeless, I would be radically confused about the game’s overall purpose. However, if said game existed, and my friends were spending all their time playing it, I would hop on the bandwagon, without shame, like the good American that I am.

Obviously, there have been blockbuster single-player games that have captured my attention over the years—the Arkham franchise, God of War, Spider-Man, BioShock, Uncharted, Wolfenstein, etc. I have a mile-long list of beloved single-player experiences, but Alien: Isolation stands among them, strong and proud. Alien: Isolation didn’t come from heavy-hitter publishers who are in the hall of fame for good reason; it came from SEGA, of all places. Yes, Sonic the Hedgehog is great, but if I were to tell you in 2014 that SEGA would be responsible for one of the greatest entries in the Alien franchise, you most likely would look at me with the same radical confusion as you would for a soup kitchen simulator. Alien: Isolation is, in my opinion, perfect, and like the perfect organism, I look forward to fearing its sequel, hopefully later this year. While I pray for its success, my greatest fear is that it will fall victim to the several-decades-long curse of failing to live up to its predecessor.

When Alien: Isolation burst onto the scene in 2014, IGN, in its eternal wisdom, scored the game with a “Mediocre” 5.9 out of 10. I won’t nitpick every detail about how wrong this score is; other than that, the author quite literally complains about dying too many times in their experience. To be fair to IGN, I played this game for the very first time in 2022 on PS5, not in 2014. Simply put, IGN couldn’t be more wrong on this take.

The Xenomorph is one of the greatest science fiction monsters ever created, and this game more than lives up to that reputation. The AI controlling the aliens’ movements consists of two simple parts. The Alien itself actively searches for the player to kill. At the same time, the second AI interface, called a “Director,” gives the Alien random hints to keep the player constantly working and navigating the environment around them, which brings me to one of the best parts of this game that IGN got wrong. Will you die a lot? Yes. Will this constant battle deter you from playing? No. This game is so exciting. You are constantly in a satisfying fight-or-flight state that makes you think and keeps you checking over your shoulder, over and over. There is even a feature in the game that can be turned on, which allows the microphone on your headset to translate the sounds you make into the game, so the Alien can actually hear them. This feature is so strong that the Alien can hear the air you breathe into the mic as you cower in a locker to avoid your imminent demise. Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game by definition and puts a whole new meaning on survival, which is what I want when playing a title designed to create fear.

The overall mechanics and graphics of this game couldn’t complement each other better. The setting of Sevastopol Station is a copy-and-pasted image of the original Ridley Scott masterpiece from 1979. The claustrophobic, mechanical space station captures that same alluring aesthetic that made the original film so captivating. Nothing from the pipes, the doors, and Xenomorphs loo’ look shows a flaw, which is far more than can be said of some games made even today. The gameplay mechanics help this shine. In reality, you play as a 25-year-old woman who is fighting, quite literally, a perfect organism. You are not a battle-hardened warrior or an alien expert trained and well-read on the threats they may face, but an average person figuring out how to do one thing. Survive. Player movement and combat feel smooth enough but not overly polished because they shouldn’t be. This isn’t Call of Duty, where you can slide 20 miles per hour to avoid bullets fired at you. You are a basic human who is incapable of destroying the monster you face. That feeling of being at a disadvantage matches the decrepit, industrial nature of the environment, which effectively immerses the player in dread. The sound design is the cherry on top. Every sound not only matches what we expect from an Alien movie but also deepens the player's immersion. Any time you hear the Alien in the vents or a steam pipe releasing mist, you will never hear anything that makes you think anything other than the game you’re playing in the moment.

Past the experience of the game, the plot shines just as bright. I am in the minority among Alien fans who claim that the original title is better than its immediate sequel, Aliens. Yes, Aliens is a great movie and one of my favorites, but it abandoned the horror aspect of the original in favor of an action-packed shoot-’em-up. Does this make it a lesser film? No, it’s simply a matter of taste. However, Aliens abandoned one of my favorite plot points from the original film: the mystery centered on the shadow corporation Weyland-Yutani and the crew expendable protocol. In Alien, the main character, Ellen Ripley, discovers from the computer mainframe named “Mother” that her ship, the “Nostromo,” was sent to the planet LV-426 to investigate a distress call. Upon investigation of the planet, one of her crewmates gets a parasite attached to his face that later birthed the Xenomorph on the ship, killing her entire crew. I’m aware that we all know the story. During this scene, Ripley investigates “Mother’s” orders and discovers that the computer system knew there was an alien life form on LV-426 and that the organism was to be captured and returned to the company (Weyland-Yutani) under any circumstances, even at the expense of the Nostromo’s crew. We never get a resolution to this plot point in the original film, and it was completely ignored in the immediate sequel. Subsequently, the entire Alien franchise ignores this plot altogether. Which is why I’ll make the bold statement that Alien: Isolation is the sequel to Alien we never got.

In Alien: Isolation, you play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of Ellen Ripley. Amanda, working as an engineer for Weyland-Yutani, is climbing the company’s ranks to find out what happened to her mother after her sudden disappearance following the events of the original film. The story begins with Amanda being assigned to a reconnaissance mission to the space station “Sevastopol Station”, where the station notifies Weyland-Yutani that it has the black box from the mining ship “Nostromo”. Knowing this is the first real opportunity for Amanda to finally get the answers she’s been looking for, she takes on the mission, only to find Sevastopol Station in complete disarray. While playing this game, you not only enjoy the linear story but also immerse yourself in the hidden lore and backstory that nearly every computer you can access in-game offers. This game goes above and beyond in world-building. Reading every message you can to understand what happened to Sevastopol Station, as well as details that add to the main plot, shows how much love and care went into this game and the franchise it belongs to. It’s a perfect jump from the original film. Both properties are classic monster horror, while taking the claustrophobia Alien had to offer and expanding it to a massive space station. You get to scale up while keeping the feeling that made the first part of this franchise so amazing.

As you can tell, I have a great deal of love not only for this game but for the franchise as a whole (despite its ups and downs), and after 12 long years for those who actually played at launch, we are finally getting the next chapter in the story. The trailer for Alien: Isolation 2, which dropped at Summer Game Fest, did not disappoint. We are getting a return of the perfect organism in Unreal Engine 5, in an environment that closely resembles the original film’s aesthetic. This trailer was filled with plenty of little details that fans of the first game can recognize, which is really setting the bar high for me, especially in the finer details of the look and plot that made me fall in love with its predecessor. However, the Alien franchise has no shortage of misses, and I will do my best to keep my expectations in check if this game follows the pattern of so many of the franchise’s follow-ups and disappoints its fan base. However, there is no shortage of excitement for this game, and I couldn’t recommend Alien: Isolation enough.

My score for Alien Isolation is 8.9 out of 10.