In
space, no one can hear you scream. The famous tagline from Ridley Scott’s
classic 1979 science fiction horror film still stands strong to this day with
Sega’s newest horror survival game Alien:
Isolation. At first when I heard about this new game I was excited and
cautious because the last Sega game they decided to market off for a quick cash
grab was nothing more than an atomic bomb of disappointment in the shape of Aliens: Colonial Marines. That game left
me in a great distain to a point I wanted to avoid anything to do with that
franchise. However when I read reports that this game only has one alien and
the main objective is to hide and survive a very claustrophobic environment,
and they made a promise that was the game meant to scare the daylights outta me,
it perked my anticipation to a point where I actually bought it. Suffice to
say, they kept their promise.
The story set 14 years after the
first Alien film where you play as
Amanda Ripley, daughter of the lone survivor Ellen Ripley. Amanda heads to a
space station to follow up on a report that may lead to the whereabouts of her
missing mother only to find that the station has gone to chaos with paranoid
human survivors, defectively violent androids, and a single murderous alien
that has mindset of every known serial killer. Your main goal of the game is to
survive under any circumstance. Whether by hiding, running, crawling through
vents, or using some poor sap as fodder you have to survive.
There is a lot to say about Alien: Isolation. For starters it’s NOT Aliens: Colonial Marines. You only have
to deal with one alien throughout the game but it cannot be killed. The most
you can do to it is distract it or stun it temporarily. Even then the alien AI
is completely unpredictable, which causes all sorts of paranoia. What really
makes this game terrifying is the atmosphere and sound. The entire space
station has little lighting and there is so much noise going on that you’re not
sure if that is air or the alien crawling through the air vents. And the most
chilling sound comes from your motion tracker that you use to identify where
the enemy is. The louder it beeps the closer the enemy is. But what the tracker
is picking up could range from the alien or an android on other side which adds
more paranoia. You can also construct new items to use at your disposal by
finding blueprints and scraps that are scattered randomly throughout the game.
The only problems I’ve come across is that when you
want to save your progress you have to walk up to a save station. It takes
about 10-15 seconds for you to start saving your progress, which might give an
alien an opportunity to kill you from behind. My best advice for you is to save
your progress constantly at every save station you see. If you finally picked
up an important item and then die, it will start you off back at where you
saved last. Why can’t I just go to the main menu and save like every other
game? I guess the programmers really wanted gamers to suffer. In addition, a
small peeve is that this game that game is extremely long. I’m talking about 20
hours of gameplay in just the main story alone. That’s a bit too much horror I
can handle but at least it’s more gameplay than playing just 4-5 hours of Colonial Marines.
Overall, I believe that Alien: Isolation is by far one of the
scariest games I’ve played if not one of the best games I’ve played this year.
It pays more homage to Ridley Scott’s classic film than anything that was
ravaged out of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
This game captures the fear of isolation, claustrophobia, being eaten by a
monster, and the unknown as the original Alien
did.
Photo: http://assets1.ignimgs.com/thumbs/userUploaded/2014/10/15/alien1-1413386369832.jpg
Pros:
· Extremely scary
· Unpredictable
Alien AI
· Extremely
challenging
· Haunting
atmosphere
· Great follow up to
classic Alien
Cons:
· Constantly using
save stations
· A bit too long
Final Verdict: 4.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment