Alien Isolation
Alien Isolation is a first-person survival horror game that is set 15 years after the original 1979 horror movie, Alien. It has the player take control of Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley from the film, as she searches for her missing mother.
The game was developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega and was released in 2014, with a positive critical reception, and winning awards for its audio.
I'm not big into horror games, but the movie Alien is one of my favourite movies of all time, and what I liked so much about the game is how similar they are in atmosphere and in visual design. The creators got the feel of the movie so spot on, with the retro-futuristic design of everything, that even certain props from the movie, such as the motion tracker, feels like its been lifted straight out of the movie.
Obviously the main attraction of the game is the Xenomorph, or the alien. Even before the alien appears in the game you get little hints and pieces of dialog from the NPC's on Savastapol Station about a "creature" and a "murderer", of course the player knows what they're taking about but Ellen hasn't a clue. This really sets the tone for the rest of the game, as sometimes you won't even see the alien you will only hear it.
I really like how spot on they got the alien to look, it made H.R. Giger's original design even scarier than in the movie, because in the movie it was a man in a rubber suit, but here the alien is unrestricted and is able to move in ways that would never be possible with a man in a suit.
In some portions of the game the player is able to use the air ducts to move around to avoid the androids or other humans, but this comes at a cost, as the Xenomorph also uses the vents to track the player. Hearing the noise of a 7 foot alien crawling towards you in an air vent in total darkness is one of the scariest things I've seen in any media let alone a video game.
One of the scariest things about the game is that alien cannot die, and it will never "de-spawn" or teleport near to the player, apart from a handful of cutscenes, for any cheap scares, the alien is always searching for the player through sound. It's also not programmed to a certain route, it will always be making its own decisions based on noises in the game or what the player has done in the past. If it has found you hiding in a locker or under a table, next time it'll go check there.
A feature of the game which I thought was really cool that I had never seen before was a setting which can be turned on or off, that will turn on your mic, if you are wearing a headset, and pick up any sounds you make in person that will enable the alien to hear you. As I said before the alien never de-spawns and it is always within earshot of you, so depending on how loud you are or if your breathing is heavy, the alien will hear you and it will find you.
If you plan on buying this game, which should be cheap enough nowadays, I 100% recommend wearing headphones.
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