I had heard a lot about how good Alien: Isolation was and I knew that it had won a ton of awards so I had high expectations for it. After playing it, I have to say I’m kind of baffled. I liked the game but, man, is it long and repetitive. How many times can you be sent on a fetch quest only to have that plan turn out not to work and then have to go on another fetch quest?
Some minor spoilers here…
To be honest, I’m most confounded by articles like this one by Danielle Riendeau because I have respected and enjoyed her work so much. (Am I so out of touch? …no, its the reviewers who are wrong.) So as much as I hate to do it, I think that digging into her post will help me to organize my thoughts on why I was so disappointed in the game (I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed)
Riendeau writes,
“[Alien: Isolation is] a truly bold, risky, brilliant game that only fails when it remembers it’s a video game.”
My problem is that it never forgets it’s a video game. I will explain why I felt this way in my subsequent comments.
“There are other enemies in Isolation: devastated, scared humans with guns, creepy androids that kill you in brutal ways — but there’s really only one that matters. The one that hunts you down wherever you go.”
I found those other enemies incredibly irritating. People shooting at you. Robots that go crazy. They are felt like artificial reason to make you crawl into a vent and make a detour instead of going directly to your goal. I have to go flip this switch. Just get out of my way and stop bothering me you stupid robot.
“Isolation is a game where shooting a gun almost always means certain death. Where one singular creature — that cannot be killed — stalks the player, almost entirely unscripted, throughout the experience.”
While it is true that shooting a gun often means death because it will attract the alien, the second part of this is false. Maybe Riendeau didn’t want to give away things but you do in fact kill the Alien. Oh but guess what? It isn’t “one singular creature.” There turns out to be a hive and there are multiple Aliens.
“Make a woman hero that shows her character through actions, not cutscenes”
I recognize that a lot of this is about the main character being a woman. That’s great. That’s awesome. The more the better. However, the second half of this really confounds me. There are way to damn many cut scenes in Alien: Isolation. It really infuriated me. I’m sure that most of the cut scenes are to cover up for the limitations of the game engine but it was just frustrating when you get ready to go so something and you have to watch a movie. They even show animations of you crawling into vents or opening doors — which you do a lot and so you see them a lot. Ugh.
If the game was half as long, or had half as many fetch quests that end up failing or fewer cut scenes then I would have liked it as much as Riendeau did. I guess it comes down to what we focus on because I totally agree with Danielle when she writes:
“[Alien: Isolation is] way too long, with obvious filler content. I put in around 28 hours. Most playthroughs are likely closer to the 20-25 hour mark. This is way too long for a horror game that is 100% focused on being a tense, difficult experience.
Far worse is the inclusion of cheap, frustrating enemies in a few sections of the game. It’s tarnish on the better-designed sections. They’re a boring, rote, frustrating feature that belongs in a cheap haunted house.”
She still loves the game despite these things. I can’t love it because of them.
three thumbs up
Stupid Alien
I dislike disliking you
Need to cut it down.