Alien Isolation

Alien Isolation is available on PC, PS3, PS4, X360, and XOne. I played it on the PS4 on the Hard difficulty, which is the difficulty suggested by the game. It's a well named difficulty.

Genre: Horror Survival with a huge emphasis on stealth.

Story: Fifteen years after the first Alien movie, Ripley's daughter, Amanda, is told a salvage team found her mother's recording from the Nostromo. Amanda travels to the space station that has the recording to investigate, but when she arrives, the space station is littered with body bags and the few remaining inhabitants are scared, shooting at shadows (and each other), and raving about some killer monster in the vents. What could it be?

Gameplay: First person view. You sneak, loot, craft, perform missions, play minigames, and occasionally fight. There are three types of enemies, and they act very different from each other. There are humans, who are all too often quick to turn violent out of fear, and if they hear you, they may never become "unaltered." They will search you out seemingly indefinitely, but they're not very perceptive, and they don't have a lot of life. Humans can be frightened into retreating. There are androids (synthetics), who are either very peaceful and helpful or extremely violent. They are about as perceptive as humans, but they are significantly stronger. They will get tired of looking for you though, and will return to their regular duties if finding you takes too long. And then there is the Alien. It's basically immortal, extremely fast, extremely perceptive, tricky, and learns from how you play. For example, if it ever sees you hiding under something, and you somehow manage to get away, it might look under things the next time it's looking for you. Sometimes it will come into the room you are in, search it, leave, and then poke its head back in five seconds later just to see if you left your hiding place. It's fucking crazy. The best AI I have ever seen in a game. Fortunately, you can craft items to help you out, such as distractions to get it go somewhere else and Molotovs to keep it at bay for a short while. On the Hard difficulty, you have to sneak almost everywhere, because moving quickly makes noise, and noise summons the Alien, and that is very, very bad. The game is very slow, but very intense, which was an extremely fun combo for me.

Presentation: Excellent. The space station design was heavily influenced by the Nostromo from the first Alien movie. The tech you use looks like the tech from the movies, such as the monochrome computers in the first movie and the motion sensor from Aliens. Fans of the Alien movies will absolutely love the presentation.

Replay value: You unlock a new difficulty, and there are other missions you can play, especially if you have the Nostromo edition. There's not a ton, but the main game is long.

Overall: I love this game. It's very intense on the harder difficulties, and I got adrenalin rushes just sneaking down a hall while being stalked on some levels. I highly suggest this game to anyone who loves stealth horror and the Alien movies.

Some people had a very hard time with the Alien, since it's so smart, and they felt like it was cheating, but if you pay attention and mix up your tactics, understand how your equipment actually works, you can evade the Alien fairly successfully. Sneak, hide, read the descriptions for all of your items, conserve your loot for later in the game, look at your map, use noise strategically, learn from your mistakes, go slow but steady, and you'll do fine.


Tailer

Gameplay: fighting low tech androids.


Gameplay: dealing with freaked out humans sometimes makes noise, which is often bad.


Gameplay: she should have sneaked or hid.