I’m crouched behind a desk, utterly panicking. Not because I can’t find a pencil, or because my computer has crashed - but because there’s a massive 9-foot tall monster in the room, and it’s trying to find me.
Peeking around a corner, I see it coming towards me. My stomach does a backflip. Did it see me peeking out from under cover? Am I safe? Crouching, I frantically move to a new hiding place, desperately hoping that my movement isn’t detected. Crossing from the cover of a table to the next room leaves me painfully exposed.
Please don’t let it see me please don’t let it see me please don’t let it see me…
In this moment, the only sound in the room is my own panicked breathing, the hissing of the alien, and the sound of a little water-dipper moving up and down, up and down. The tension is unbearable; every single sound is terrifyingly loud.
I’m safe. I wasn’t detected, the creature is still in the room hunting the space where I resided just a moment ago. But in this split-second of relief, I then make a fatal mistake - I try to run towards a nearby locker and hide inside it. My footsteps are instantly heard and with a roar echoing in my ears, I know I’m done for. I may be inside a locker, but the monster knows damn well where I am. Through the slats in the locker door, I can see it staring at me. I stare back, a lump in my throat. We both know what’s coming. The creature tilts its head slightly, before tearing the locker door from its hinges and grabbing me.
I’m dead.
Welcome to Alien: Isolation, quite possibly the most frightening game you will play this year. Crafted in secret by Creative Assembly for years now - they originally pitched the concept shortly after finishing work on Viking: Battle for Asgard back in 2008 - Isolation takes the Alien franchise back to its roots. In recent years, players are more used to Aliens being mere cannon fodder on the receiving end of a pulse rifle. The fear of H. R. Giger’s classic monster has been slowly bled away over the years as developers were more interested in looking to James Cameron’s Vietnam-in-Space take on the concept than they were in the tension and slow-burning horror of Ridley Scott’s original.
Creative Assembly is seeking to change that and, based on what we have experienced so far, they’ve succeeded. Not since Amnesia: The Dark Descent has a game induced such a sheer state of panic. Rather than being able to fight back, Amanda Ripley - daughter of Ellen - spends much of her time in hiding. Without any real weapons to speak of, you need to tread carefully. Make too much noise and you risk alerting the Alien. Create too much light, and you risk alerting the Alien. These encounters aren’t scripted, either; the Alien is an AI construct and will hunt you down based on its perception of the environment. Make a noise, and it will hear you and investigate. Hell, so much as breathing can attract its attention, as it detects the heat from your breath.
This is not a game for the faint of heart.
Hiding in a locker might fool it once, or - if you’re lucky - a couple of times, but this thing is clever. It remembers when it’s been fooled, and it won’t be tricked again. It’s also fast.
Towards the end of the preview demo I played, I’m asked to activate a sequence that will open an airlock and allow me to escape. Triggering the activation sequence sets off blaring sirens and flashing lights - basically, everything you don’t want to happen when you’re trying to remain inconspicuous. Inevitably, the Alien comes to investigate. As I crouch behind a short outcropping of pipework, the countdown until the airlock opens is excruciatingly long. In real terms it’s probably only about 30 seconds - but it feels as though an entire age passes. Then, the Alien starts to hunt. It’s not stupid - it knows that someone triggered all the sound and light, so it commences its search for the person responsible.
As the Alien creeps along one side of the outcropping of wires and pipes that I’m hiding behind, my heart starts pounding. Mere inches separate us. I try to move around the barrier, keeping distance between myself and the Alien and hoping it doesn’t see me. Every inch closer to the airlock is an inch closer to escaping the horror that is stalking me. Then I make a fatal error - about 10 feet away from the airlock, I think I can make a break for it. Abandoning all pretense of stealth, I sprint.
Bad move - the Alien instantly hears my footsteps and, being 9 foot tall, it closes the gap with ease. My playthrough ends with me looking down at my body, a barbed tail erupting from my chest.
I’m dead.
Creative Assembly has gone to great pains to ensure that their work on recreating the look of Ridley Scott’s seminal 1979 film is accurate. This isn’t a modern imagining of the future; this is, in the developer’s words, “lo-fi sci-fi” - the future as imagined through the lens of the disillusioned 70s. Monitors are CRT, video footage is distorted, even the gameplay is overlaid with a cinematic grain effect. Their diligence has paid off: from the moment you set foot inside the Sevastopol, the station in which the game takes place, you feel as though you have stepped back in time. From the furniture, the lighting, the colors in use - this is Alien.
Quite possibly the most exacting recreation of Scott’s original vision, the team behind Isolation has pored through over three terabytes of assets provided by Fox Studios - behind-the-scenes photos, original concept art, set blueprints - to ensure that the world they are crafting is as accurate to the look of the original film as is humanly possible. This attention to detail even extends to the displays on the monitors. Rather than being crisp, high-resolution footage, Creative Assembly fed it through an old VHS recorder, captured the result and then imported the result into the game.
Fans of Alien have been poorly served over the years by videogames based on the franchise. 2010’s Aliens Versus Predator was average at best, while last year’s Aliens: Colonial Marines was downright woeful. Creative Assembly has a lot to make up for, even if past mistakes weren’t their own - but it’s a responsibility that they are all too aware of.
Alien: Isolation is utterly terrifying. It’s authentic to the source material, it’s compelling, and it’s most certainly not a game to play without a change of underwear nearby. It’s also managed something which so many Alien games have failed to do over the years.
Isolation manages to make the Alien frightening again.
Dale Morgan
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