Aliens: Isolation swooped in with a hopeful dollop of hype but was somewhat snubbed by the larger reviewers. It does sit on a very respectable 81 on Metacritic and has always been a game that I was keen to get my hands on once my wallet and I had survived the onslaught of high-profile titles leading up to the holiday season. So when I recently got a few spare moments to float around space with everyone’s favourite Xenomorph, my body was ready. What I expected was a tense sci-fi horror experience, what I got was one of the most tedious and needlessly drawn-out Hide and Seek simulators to have ever graced video games.
Aliens: Isolation belongs to a relatively new genre that I’m going to dub Hide and Seek Door Porn. Perhaps for some people this might sound exciting, but for me it became my hell. I will say that the derelict space station Sevestepol makes an interesting setting and the game features a very strong start. It also largely nails the vibe of Ridley Scott’s excellent films and comes the closest to delivering a compelling Aliens experience in the gaming medium. But there’s only so many times that a man can be directed to flick on the power or restore comms before insanity begins to set in. While there are plenty of tense moments and your ruthless alien stalker inspires a fair amount of fear, it is hard to dress up the fact that all the game wants you to do is hide in a cupboard until it’s safe to open a seemingly endless amount of doors for 15-20 hours.
This guy’s Hide and Seek skills were not up to scratch
The game’s favourite mechanic is to make you traverse to one end of a section, usually to restore power or get some key item, and then backtrack through that same section to get to a door. It becomes so utterly predictable that it’s almost comical. Of course there’s the added complication that for most of the time you’re being hunted by a murderous alien so getting to that switch or that door isn’t always straightforward. Towards the beginning of my adventures I was quite fearful of this salivating extra-terrestrial because if it sees you then more often than not you will meet a swift and violent end soon after. However, during the many hours I spent peering out at the beast from lockers and cupboards, I figured out that the Xenomorph’s only trick is to descend from the ducts in the roof, stalk around for a while and then return from whence it came. At this point you have a brief window to complete your quest to open the next door before it comes back. It becomes a humourous sort of tango with your adversary… that is if hiding for minutes on end could be considered humourous. I understand that the game wants to scare you by disempowerment and limited combat options, but after the fifth hour or so the gameplay loop starts to become a tedious grind that is the antithesis of enjoyable. Perhaps the game isn’t striving to be fun in the classical sense (and it certainly isn’t fun in any sense of the word), but without enjoyment and only a bunch of repetitive objectives to keep you company you’ll slowly begin to wonder why the hell you’re playing this game.
I wonder what part of the Xenomorph’s anatomy this is?
Never before have I played a game that so grossly overestimates how long it ought to be. Aliens: Isolation could easily have been half as long as it was and in fact this might have gone a long way to improving the game. So many times I thought the game would end, only to be unceremoniously thrust into yet another part of the sprawling ship that required me to restore some power and open some more doors. It gives the game such a plodding pace that gracelessly squanders any tension it manages to build. My eyes glazed over and a thin line of drool escaped the corners of my mouth as I was forced to tackle one mundane objective after another and the fear slowly turned to extreme boredom.
Solving Pythagoras problems will help pass the time as you chill out in the broom closet for minutes on end
I realised at some point the game had broken me; curiosity and apprehension had been completely replaced by apathy and I prayed that the game would just bow out and salvage its dignity. I think the turning point for me was setting up a trap to contain the alien in a server room. On the way to the server room I had to fortify a bunch of doors (read: flick a thousand switches) while being stalked by the alien. It was all very arduous but once the trap was set I was relieved that I might be able to take this guy down; I look back and laugh at my naiveté. Of course that trap didn’t work and a late-minute fumble by one of my colleagues sees the alien escape our clutches… all that busywork for nothing. Little did I know that this was to be the theme of the remainder of my journey; all my best laid plans were destined for failure. The inevitably of this failure slowly broke my spirit and made me wonder why I should even bother to open the next door or flick the next switch, knowing full well that all the doors and switches in the world couldn’t save me from this dull nightmare. I appreciate that the idea of seemingly solid plans going awry is a common trope in horror games and films, but why the developers thought this cycle might be compelling enough to warrant trying to maintain it over upwards of fifteen hours is mystifying.
The alien’s constant requests for high fives were largely unappreciated
I think Aliens: Isolation would have greatly benefited from distilling some of its better qualities into a much shorter experience. There’s a good setting and decent story in there, but long before the credits rolled I had lost all interest in Amanda Ripley’s plight. While the idea of playing Hide and Seek with an alien was initially appealing, all the doors I had to open, every power generator I had to restore and each comm line I had to re-establish stole a small piece of my soul and dulled my senses to the point I simply couldn’t muster the ability to care about what was going on. Like a Kiwi with an expired Visa, Alien: Isolation overstays its welcome and in the process the tension it works so hard to create simply evaporates. Some claim that this is an underrated gem, but unless you like looking at the inside of cupboards for long stretches at a time and playing stealth Ring Around the Rosie I’d avoid this one.
