Alien: Isolation celebrated its 10-year anniversary on October 6, 2024.
This piece was written before theannouncement of a sequel, with the original director returning.
It’s been a decade and I’m still mad about Alien: Isolation.
Alien: Isolation deserved better.
But then there’s the alien.
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The thing is terrifying.
I finished the game with my flamethrower completely full.
I died maybe four times in 15 hours.
Here, the computer exists purely to make you vulnerable.
And maybe the problem was, fundamentally, that Alien: Isolation failed to make that clear.
What does this room teach new players?
It happens before you’re able to defend yourself or have the tools you oughta navigate around searching opponents.
There’s not much cover and not much clarity of what to do.
You think the alien won’t react the way you expect and that you could die at any time.
You feel like your actions don’t matter in the face of the alien’s unpredictability.
It’s an example of a gameplay approach that players had gotten used to over the course ofyears.
No wonder those people hated it.
Maybe the takeaway is that, sometimes, games need to do more to make themselves understood.
It’s still a masterpiece and quite possibly my favorite game of all time.
You should still play it.
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