Nostalgia and Lockers - Alien: Isolation

It's kind of crazy to think about the nostalgia people hold for the classic sci-fi movies of the 70's and 80's.  It's actually kind of daft.  Most of the big franchises - Terminator, Robocop, Alien, etc. - had, at BEST, two good movies to their names.  Basically every one of these series has spewed out dreadful sequel upon dreadful sequel right up until today (excepting, of course, the beyond-excellent Mad Max: Fury Road - OSCAR ROBBED AMIRITE?).  Alongside these sequels Hollywood has sucked on the the nostalgia tit until it hardened into a dead stalactite, commissioning official novel tie-ins, comic books, and - you guessed it - video games, most of which have been just as wretched as you'd expect.  So, when I heard about Alien: Isolation, I greeted it with just a slight tad of apprehension.  How did I ultimately find it?  Well...

Alien: Isolation takes place fifteen years after the events of the original 1979 Alien, picking up on the loose thread of Ellen Ripley's daughter, introduced in the sequel, Aliens.  It's a testament to the staying power and common knowledge of these movies that very little exposition is given or needed with regards to the events of Ridley Scott's horror classic.  We jump right in with the now-adult Amanda Ripley, working - along with practically all of humanity, it seems - for the Weyland-Yutani corporation.  Approached by company representative Samuels, Amanda is told that Weyland-Yutani may have found a last trace of Ripley's fate, in the form of a flight recorder from her ship's computer.  The flight recorder is being held on a remote station, Sevastopol, and Ripley, Samuels, and a company lawyer, Taylor, are sent to retrieve it.

Here, I think, is one of the first major stumbles for Alien: Isolation.  What I've just described is basically the exact setup to Aliens.  Company meets (a) Ripley, offers them a way to find closure, they go along with a bunch of m̶e̶a̶t̶ side characters who inevitably get torn to shreds by xenomorphs.  And yeah, Alien: Isolation goes the same way because OF COURSE IT DOES.  There's no surprises here.  There's the usual check-boxing of a company rep who acts like a slimewad, somebody using somebody else as a host/bait, a character revealed as a synthetic, and, of course, a lone survivor (spoilers/not spoilers:  It's Amanda Ripley because OF COURSE IT IS).  Now, this might seem like a strange complaint.  After all, when you play an Alien game, there are certain expectations.  But the problem is that when it comes to plot, Alien: Isolation only meets expectations, and in a market where I'm seeing huge, original leaps forward in the horror genre, this one seems to just be towing the line.

Indeed, I have to extend this criticism to the gameplay, which doesn't really offer anything particularly new or exciting.  Now, to be fair, when it comes to the Alien franchise, just finally realizing that the world and story are best suited to a stealth/survival horror game rather than a shoot 'em up or even an FPS is a big leap forward.  That said, this is survival horror at its most grating.  At first, things kick off really well.  There's great tension in building up to the xenomorph's first appearance and the game knows how to really amp up the scares before it even puts its star player onto the field.  Sevastopol station is a really interesting, highly detailed environment.  There's plenty of great story-based touches like graffiti, unfinished work areas, and sealed off doors and access tunnels.  There's also some hilariously contrived audiologs.  I say "hilariously contrived" because the notion of people just leaving these massive reel-to-reel recorders all over the place immediately takes me out of the moment, and puts me squarely in the realm of "and now it's time for the writers to talk to the audience."  But what really killed me out of rocketing through the game were the senseless hacking minigames.

It's all just so...obtuse.  I mean, look at the screenshot.  LOOK AT IT.  What the hell are we even looking at here?  Why would anyone make a device like this?  What does it even mean?  You encounter DOZENS of these hacking minigames, and every time I obediently entered the codes, punched the numbers, did the "thing," I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment.  I felt the sense of the designers reaching down from on high to make sure there was actual gameplay in their video game.  And then there's the actual stealth/survival parts.

I complimented the game earlier on pacing out the first appearance of the xenomorph, but now I have to play the bad guy.  Yet again you can feel the anxiety of the designers, worrying over shipping a product with a $60 price tag that could've been over too quickly.  So, to draw the gameplay and the story out, they throw in a bunch human survivors and synthetics to serve as your early enemies.  And it suuuuucks.  It sucks so hard.  Their movements are incredibly difficult to evade, even with making good use of the environment.  They have very long pursuit times and distances.  But worst of all, they're uninteresting, dull, flat antagonists.  Honestly, they aren't even difficult, per se, it's just that they're merely annoying.  They are speedbumps meant to slow you down, nothing more, and eventually I grew so fed up with trying to evade their incessant random movements that I just ploughed through them with my trusty wrench.  So surely the xenomorph must have seemed like a blessing, right?  Well...

At first, yes.  There's honest terror in hearing the stalking footsteps of your nemesis, first on the metallic hallways, then rumbling above you in the ducts.  The game makes great use of the franchise's trademark motion tracker, beeping in consternation with each eerie contact.  But...then it keeps going.  And going.  And going.  At a certain point, our multi-mouthed friend simply wears out his welcome.  For me, that point came in a double whammy.  First, in a certain sequence, a character on a P.A. started crying for help and told me to hurry, and so I did...straight into the Alien's tail, striking from above.  So that was really fair.  Second, in a drawn-out mission, I found myself stuck in a locker while the Alien stomped around outside.  And continued to stomp around outside.  For FIVE.  WHOLE.  MINUTES.  Finally, I got so fed up I just hauled ass out of the locker, and was inevitably run down and murdered, losing about an hour's worth of progress.

Wheeeeee.

So look, having ranted about this game for five paragraphs and change, I've probably given a strong impression that I hated it.  And...well, I did.  But that doesn't mean it's BAD.  It's quite obvious that it comes from a place of sincere love and care.  There's a slavish attention to detail and an attempt to recreate the world of the original film that's a joy to see.  The problem, really, is that you can sense the urgency behind the designers to make this game...well, a game.  There's too much pointless busy work, too much backtracking, too much time wasted hiding from an antagonist that you get to know too well for it to retain much in the way of terror.  The bottom line is, though, that if you come to Alien: Isolation with measured expectations, it will still tickle your Alien organ better than any other game before or since.  As someone who thinks of Alien as one of the greatest movies ever made, rest assured that my complaints are tempered by remembering that I have been burned much, much worse by, say, Colonial Marines.  Ironically, the padding makes me less inclined to recommend Alien: Isolation for the steep price tag.  But if it comes on sale, I'd say to still check it out.  Just be prepared to wait in your proverbial lockers for the perfect moment.