Over the past, there has been two different schools of horror games. These lead to – for me at least – a devastating flaw: At its core it fails to be a faithful emulation of the original Alien (1979) movie.īefore we can properly discuss the game, we need to talk some video game history and design theory. It is a great game in many ways, truly excellent really, but there are some fundamental problems. It does an excellent job at creating tension and uses a lot of the knowledge built up over the years to great success. But, because it has such a laser focus on a certain type of play, a bunch problems arise and other parts of the package suffer. It is the latest entry in a lineage of games that I refer to as horror simulators. Alien: Isolation i s an interesting game.
