Alien: Isolation – Xbox One

Alien: Isolation is a great horror/stealth game that will take you to a different time and place (a strong visual astetic that’s based on the first 2 movies, so the 80’s in space?) — it’s also a damn good Alien game, and I think we were all begining to think this would never happen. The game -IS- scary with out a doubt, and I enjoy running and hiding to save my butt as much as the next guy; the first time crazy robots or the Xenomorph show up you may pee a bit, but there is a bit of a slow down towards the latter half of the game. The audio is very well done, the graphics and design perfectly fit the style of the movies, and the levels while a bit disorenting are good: lots of secrets, tunnels, and items to find. There’s a decent crafting system too which allows you to piece together some lifesaving tools.Scare gags or other similar scenarios are only good a certain number of times, and this game keeps it fresh most the time at least, and the characters and environments are good enough to maybe make you forgot about any small gripes. It’s a dang creepy game, play with the lights out and the volume UP!! Highly recommend this to get full enjoyment! :)P.S. – for added bonus use Kinect with noise detection on, if you scream or make a peep the Alien will hear you! haha

Exceptional game. Highly recommended for any and all Alien fans. The game nails the aesthetic of the first film, manages to deliver a compelling story, and establishes a benchmark for future Alien games. Good work, Creative Assembly. A proper sequel to this genuinely frightening game should be a no-brainer.

I try never to rate something 5 stars – it tends to suggest the reviewer was blinded by the product and wrote the review in the honeymoon period. But having played the game through once to the end, I’m totally prepared to give this a 5 star review.Why?It’s the best Alien game to date. It’s better in every way than all it’s predecessors because it works. It writes an interim story between the original Alien movie and Aliens, where you get to play Ripley’s daughter. It does so in such a way that you do feel like you’re playing inside the original movie. A lot of reviews of games tend to fall back on that old chestnut but this time I think it’s true to say – this is the closest you could get to being in the universe that Alien created.The storyline is simple enough – travel to an outpost for The Company (Weyland Yutani) to recover the Nostromo flight data recorded. But being set in the Alien universe, you know the story isn’t really that simple. There’s no point in ruining all the surprises in a review, so you’ll have to play it to find all the brilliant set pieces.Where this game really shines is in the audio design, the graphics design and the AI.The audio design is hands-down one of the best pieces of videogame work I’ve ever heard. Truly cinematic, properly engaging, and best listened to on a 5.1 surround system (or more – if you have a full DTS system, go for it!). Because a vast part of the game involves not being found or attacked, there’s a lot of sneaking and hiding that goes on, so sound becomes a key component that you’ll use to locate other entities in the game. Eventually you’ll become completely paranoid about every last creak and groan, and towards the end of the game when the inevitable 5-alarm disaster is unfolding, the audio design will induce a proper state of panic in you.The graphic design is similarly brilliant, from all the different steam and gas vents, to the lighting, to the level design – you can be forgiven for thinking that the Alien universe is real and that the game designers just went out and digitised all the relevant space ships. The Alien itself is equal parts bloody scary and very impressive. Best not to stand around looking at it though. That always ends badly.Which brings me on to the AI. A lot of games talk about how fantastic their AI is, how next-gen and cutting-edge it is, and other corporate buzzwords. You can normally fool the AI in most games though – it really isn’t that clever. Alien Isolation is different. The Alien does seem to learn. It figures out your tactics – where you like to hide, how you like to move around, how you like to cause distractions. Each time it learns, your game becomes a little bit more difficult. What’s really neat is that, if you enable it, the Kinect will listen to your environment and transmit the sound into the game. Novelty? Sure. But if you’re properly into the game, you’ll get the shock of your life if you sneeze in the real world whilst hiding. I did – I sneezed, or coughed, or somehow made some noise and instantly the Alien spun around and looked right at where I was hiding. If you have your cellphone with you when playing, I suggest silent mode…..Alien Isolation is best experienced in a dark or light-controlled room, on a big TV or a projector system, with a good 5.1 or greater sound system. That’s when it becomes properly immersive, and if you’re a fan of the Alien movies, that’s when it starts to properly blur the lines between game and movie.Really – I can’t lavish enough praise on this game – I love it. I’m starting to play it again on hard mode once finished with this review. Then there’s all the survival sub-games, and the Crew Expendable add-on where you can play as one of the original characters on the Nostromo too. $60 (when new) for a triple-A game is pretty steep nowadays, but this is the first game I’ve bought in a long time where I thought it was properly worth the money I paid for it.Full thumbs-up. Just don’t cheer to loudly and pray you don’t have squeaky floorboards or noisy pets, kids or spouses – they’ll all accelerate your demise when playing 🙂

A great game you get some truly good scares out of and a good story too.

I bought this used from a 3rd party amazon seller.Is it my favorite game? No but it’s really good, challenging, but not frustrating. Good story (honestly, a better story than 90% of the alien sequel movies that were made). Decent graphics and audio. Definitely worth playing!