Alien: Isolation Review

Alien Isolation on GOG - gog.la/alien2 Alias Isolation - github.com/aliasIsolation/aliasIsolation/releases It's a dark and smokey game which YouTube compression does no favors for, but it eternally looks recent to me.

I'm an Australian Electrician. And this game really nails the feel of working in someone's roof after finding a 7ft long snake skin.

I got to learn first-hand that the Alien can get you in the early levels when I accidentally bumped the "swing wrench" button just after getting into that tram you have to wait a long time for. I hit the wall, making noise, and the Alien nearly immediately dropped from a nearby vent and bum rushed me before I could react in time to send the tram off. I didn't just shit a chicken, I shit the whole roost.

To this day it’s crazy to me that it took Creative Assembly, a strategy game developer, to make one of the best alien games.

I still cannot believe this game is 8 years old... It looks so good and was so good mechanically/story wise it's hard for me to realize

Marlow's encounter with the space-jockey was also key to resolving a plot-hole in the original film series. The crew of the Nostromo visited LV-426 because a signal was detected. Decades later, LV-426 was colonized without finding the derelict until it was too late. So between the two events, the signal was deactivated. Marlow turned it off.

During my first playthrough, I spent most of the game thinking that the alien couldn't enter the vents and I was safe there. Seeing him suddenly crawling towards me in a vent about 12 hours into the game is probably the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me in my life.

I always found the Working Joes were scarier than anything else in the game. With the alien you know you can't kill it and need to hide. But a blank faced robot briskly walking at your proclaiming it's intentions to help you is horrifying

If I remember correctly the Alien actually has 2 AI's. One that always knows where you are, and one whos job is to find you and actually controls the Alien, the first one just gives it hints. That's how they deliver the combination of it being unscripted and yet still able to perform.

Fun little fact: story was written by Dan Abentt. For those who do not know him he is one of the best Warhammer 40k writers. His most famous 40k novels are Gaunt's Ghosts and Eisenhorn. If you wondered why story is this long you just need to read one of his books to see.

It felt like a love-letter to the original film which is all most people are asking for out of a movie-game.

The reason the music syncs so perfectly is because it uses Wwise. Wwise can essentially link specific events in the game to specific parts of music or tracks and dynamically switch between them immediately. Some of the Total War games also use Wwise and it's why the music there so perfectly flows between ambient idle in battle, to more tense build-up during the first charge into the enemy army, into full on battle music after contact is made. All of that is done entirely unscripted obviously and the sound engine itself handles all of it based on what's actually happening in the game. So, the music changing from scary horror running away music to something more intense and action-like when you turn around to fight the alien is because the sound engine picked up your actions and is suiting it. I'm sure other audio engines also use this capability in a similar way, but I've personally modded with Wwise and it was really impressive how easy it was to use and how effective it is too.

Mega props for the VHS gag. Nobody else on youtube game circuits puts the thought and effort into the audio design as you do.

"Beyond just being unnecessary, it's redundant." what a beautiful sentence

I had no idea it was this studio's first run at a first person game. They really knocked it out of the park in a way I didn't think was possible. This will eternally be my favorite survival horror game and I am heart broken that we will likely never see a proper sequel.

I remember being absolutely blown away by the design in this game. The UI felt so diagetic and well put together and really remains a shining example of how set design and UIs should be done.

I loved The Empty Man. We need more horror movies where the characters take one look at spooky shenanigans going on and say “Screw this, I’m out.”

Like Mandalore says, there's plenty of things the devs just barely missed the mark with, but what you get in game has a level of polish I'd love to see in the majority of games coming out now. It's a triumph of horror gaming and I hope future development teams look at this game for how to make interactive systems of conflict integrate with an immersive experience.

This game is a friggin' art piece. The amount of work the team went into to nail the Cassette Futurism feel of the original so faithfully blows my mind.

This is probably one of my favorite horror games of all time and seeing this video was a delight. One thing I remember my sibling said about it was that while, "yes the xenomorph is afraid of fire, you can very quickly help it overcome that fear"