Distraction Dinsdag – Alien Isolation

As today is my birthday I thought I could gift you all a small glimpse as to my dreadful lack of posts this year. You will know by this time, or not depending when you started following this blog. I have been gaming this past year, a lot. Just before 2021 ended I managed to score a PS4 second hand with a few games included in the deal. Since then my collection has grown some what. Not as elaborate as my book collection was but I still have a few hours of gaming to go, but I managed to cut some time of to bring you this notification.

Distraction Dinsdag will probably be returning in full force in the new year and I found a website that will help me with keeping track of it. Here is the first review I wrote for Alien Isolation, a game I finished not too long ago and was very happy to use as my first review on there. I do not exactly know how I am going to do the reviews here in future. It might just be a link to the post on the other site as there it will already have the game I reviewed’s picture up and published details and all that kinda stuff. For Today it will be a bit longer as I’m just going to copy paste from the review there and also share the link to it so you can have a rough Idea. Not all reviews will be this extensive so don’t worry.

“Having only recently become a PS4 owner, Alien Isolation was one of the games I knew I wanted as part of my collection. I read the novelization last year and really enjoyed it. Having been a fan of the original Alien film for many years this was such a nostalgia high for me. My short review might be a little rose tinted even though there were a few personal problems I had with the game, it does deserve the 5 stars I give it. You play as Amanda Ripley, daughter of the not so famous yet, Ellen Ripley, who is out looking for signs of her mother that went missing so many years ago. Information trickles down to Amanda about a recovered flight recorder and that the name Ellen Ripley is brought up in the same sentence means this is where the adventure begins for Amanda.

She has grown into woman who knows her way around the engineering side of the Alien franchise, not knowing that it will pay off in the possible prolonging of her life for an extra few hours or so. That is as much as I want to say story wise as I am not a fan of spoilers. I played this on the recommended Hard mode on my first run and will return to try it on the survivor difficulty soon.

Alien Isolation takes place between the movies Alien and Aliens as far as I figure. It sets a pretty cool narrative for what Ripley wakes up to in the movie Aliens, finding ut she has been in hypersleep long enough for her daughter to have grown old. That is at least the story I told myself up until the ending of the game, the game leaves a lot to speculate on regarding Amanda’s outcome at the end of her Sevastopol trip.

Why I love this game:

It pays homage to the original films. I loved all the scenery. That first encounter with the Alien was tense as Hell. This game does not hold your hand. Sevastopol had a fair open worlded feel to it apart from when you reach certain checkpoints. I missed a lot of things by not going back to previous levels with tools gathered in the next one. No worries, I will be going back in…
Sound design and the environment was just perfect to me personally and I loved the feeling of certain set pieces that made me feel like I was on the Nostromo, the ship from the first Alien movie. The Alien design and A.I was pretty intense, and I was at the edge of my seat nearly throughout the whole game. When the Alien was not on your heels you also had to face off against humans trying to survive the place going to the crapper. In some sections you also had to face off against the Seegson Working Joe’s. Seegson is kinda like Wayland Yutani, but a knock of version in this universe that also have a version of androids that could spell trouble for Ripley. In some sections you had to not only deal with one group of individuals, but also while the Alien was on your ass. -There was some light resources gathering for item building needed to navigate Sevastopol. Using some of these also meant that you would attract the Alien a lot quicker. For a game that came out in 2014, I feel that it looked pretty amazing on the PS4 still. This game makes you die often, with not being able to kill the Alien who just one shots you (as it should be). Face huggers = insta death (also as it should be). The save system was pretty nerve wrecking too. You are never truely ”safe”, while saving. I was killed right after a specific save, which meant that the next load I had to act quick to get the Alien frightened off before it got me. Thank F@!k I had some juice left in the flamethrower for that bit.

Things I had a personal gripe with:

In some cases the audio seems to stop working and I would end up just being scooped up by the Alien with no audio cues being given. The last part of the game was a tiny bit annoying but did not overstay it’s welcome. Much like Deadspace, there is a lot of ”Ripley go do this, go fetch that” while npc’s who have been on the station longer than Ripley did almost nothing to make her journey easier. This should not annoy me that much as who plays a game only to let all the npc’s do the work? Too much starting generators back up for me personally. I get that the tech on Sevastopol represents the ideas that were still floating around the 1980’s era of tech, so I can forgive the game for that. -Some parts where the Alien was particularly aggro and on your case and could just sniff you out of wherever you found yourself at the time meant that big parts of the game needed to be replayed after a death scene. Seeing a the save system was not always easy to get too. This was my first playthrough though and I am sure I could do better on the next run on the next difficulty setting.

Conclusion:

 Alien Isolation is a game I had fun with while at the same time slightly pissing my pants with at certain points. The Alien does tend to get a little frustrating after a point, but the payoff when you outsmart, or outlive the mission you are on does wonders to the dopamine. I had a decent time with it and I could easily recommend it to other likeminded fans of the franchise.”

And as promised, here is the link:

https://www.grouvee.com/user/savageddt/reviews/3065955/

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