PAX PRIME 2014: Surviving the creep show of Alien Isolation

hether it was on the show, editorial, video, social media, or whatever—I’ve gone on record ad nauseam about how the horror genre is dead in the water when it comes to modern game design. Over the last couple of weeks, titles like PT and Five Nights at Freddy’s have rightfully earned my foot an invite straight into my mouth, but one game in particular, managed to send chills down my spine.

Sega decided to dish out the scares several weeks before Halloween with Alien Isolation, an experience that was so effective at startling me, that it got the point across in an a show-floor environment, surrounded by a bunch of other people playing the very same game. People who were also relatively feeling some sort of anxiety of their own from the demo as well.

The setting of Isolation pays tribute to the suspense and terror of the original Alien film that started it all. Placing you in the role of Amanda Ripley, who volunteers for a mission to help locate the flight recorder of Nostromo, the same craft that was carrying her mother. However, her mission lands her in the same set of unfortunate circumstances her mother had barely escaped death from.

Alien Isolation plays this premise close to the chest, unlike any other Aliens-based license game where players were empowered space marines, who stood a fighting chance at taking down several Xenomorphs at a time. The dynamic is now focused towards players making as little contact as they physically can with the monster if they ever hope to live to see the end of the extraterrestrial nightmare they’re in.

Armed with a little more than a motion detector, the device quickly became a constant source of feedback to my every step, giving dual-feedback of navigating the waypoint of the current objective, and any indication of the wayward Xenomorph that hunted me. The further I ventured into the space station’s depths, the thicker the tension grew; never once did my advance ever bring me a second of reprieve or an inkling of security the farther I got, a constant sense of doom always hanging over my head. The design of the motion detector itself played a large part in anxiety itself, in spite that it was the one thing that gave me a fighting chance.

The field of range that the device scans over only blips approximate locations of the space beast, with subsequent delays in mapping the new position the alien may have traveled within every second to the next blip. The other factor is the cone of range itself doesn’t scan the perimeter, but what’s directly in front of Amanda and her most basic peripheral scope.

Anything to either side of her, or her backside will have instead have a solitary beep in specific section of her tracker, corresponding with the specific blind spot reacting to the potential movement. It may not seem like much, but in order to get a better grasp of where the Alien might be, you’ll need to rotate in that given direction until any motion being made can appear within radar range to get a more accurate grasp of where you and certain death stand any given moment.

I know it may sound like I’m being dramatic when modern games have all spoiled us with the privilege of infinite respawns and checkpoints, but the sense of helplessness and struggle to survive any encounter with this thing is enough to make each, and every violent end it brings you an unbearable one, more dreadful than the last.

The first, desperate run I made when that thing caught sight of me fleeing from the corner of his eye, only resulted in my sprint for the door, an attempt that was utterly in vain. My controller forcefully convulsing in the quick seconds that it did, my vision suddenly blurred in and out, then I slowly got to focus my vision on my last breath of realizing that I had just been impaled through the stomach, against the wall, violently crashing down as the screen smash-cut to a black nothingness before I could even process what had just happened.

While there were times where the Alien’s senses and it’s range of detection seemingly felt to be much more superior than any traditional covert movement or stealth tactics I could use to deceive it; the agency involved with survival, and the adrenaline I felt to make every move I made count, has single-handedly made Alien Isolation one of the most refreshing first-person games that I’ve played in years.

The game is set to drop on October 7^th, and if my time of it was any solid indication of what to expect then I suggest you pick it up. It’s definitely a game that deserves place on the radar of anyone looking for the next big game to play on their next-gen consoles.