ALIEN: ISOLATION
Publisher Sega Developer Creative Assembly Format 360, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One Release October 7
Alien: Isolation is beautiful, its aesthetic taken from the 1979 movie and expanded until Creative Assembly had envisioned an entire world in the same style. The studio’s faith in the source material has made for a terrifying game, too, but it’s possible its story’s shocks and thrills will be good only once, even with a systemic, AI-driven alien hunting players differently every time. The answer, then, is a series of challenge rooms, the first of which was demoed at E3.
Each challenge sandbox places Amanda Ripley in a confined space with a distant objective and a lone Alien hunting her down. It’s Alien: Isolation reduced to its most essential parts: Ripley, the alien, and as many stealth options as Creative Assembly can offer. Taking a cue from Rocksteady’s
Batman challenge rooms, each mission offers three objectives which, when completed, shave seconds off your recorded completion time. The thought of facing the Alien without a motion tracker is a terrifying prospect, but to do so while completing two additional jobs in Sevastopol Station’s challenge spaces for a full 90 seconds of bonus time is near unimaginable. Few at E3 even saw the area’s exit, and many more backed out early – the game’s procedural scares as effective as anything the designers could script.