I'm so glad this game is not another Colonial Marines! This is what happens when a game is put into a competent developers hands! Alien Isolation is a Superb game, and you should play it!
You play as engineer Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley from the first and second Alien film. Amanda has been searching for Ellen, and is informed of a lead on the space station Sevastopol. As usual in a horror story things go horribly wrong. It's awesome. Alien Isolation plays like a stealth game, well a cat and mouse game, and you're the mouse. Your enemies are significantly stronger than you, especially the Alien. So it's usually in your best interest to crouch walk through the deserted and dead hallways to your next objective. That's not to say you can't fight back, the game gives you an arsenal, but if still makes you feel weak and vulnerable. You have that gun? Ok, it's gonna take a few shots to put that enemy down, oh, and the Alien will hear you! Oh, you have that flamethrower that scares the Alien away? Well, he will come back, and he will be pissed! Alien Isolation is terrifying because of this constant one-move-from-checkmate feeling, and it's excellent atmosphere further drives this feeling. Walking down a deserted hallway and hearing the Alien bump around in the vents is heart pounding! Your only source of comfort is your motion tracker, which alerts you to near by enemies. But you dread pulling out your only savior because you don't want the Alien to be near you, and you don't want to confirm that it's near you. Ignorance is bliss, unless you're standing in the fire (speaking from experience here.) This is all topped of with a manual save system, which also acts as your checkpoint system. I liked this, and thankfully the save stations are evenly spaced out. So you won't have to repeat too much if your die. Gameplay wise Alien Isolation exceeds with flying colors, it's terrifying, and it's a lot of fun.
The graphics are impressive. The attention to detail is incredible! When the game first gave me control of Amanda I was running around looking at every nook and cranny. Some textures are pretty low res however; computer consoles, tools, desks, etc. Along with the cut scenes. Which went from stunning to ugly, it was annoyingly inconsistent, and they're littered with a horrible frame rate. Sometimes the facial animation would look alive and believable, but in the next scene all of the characters would look stoned and detached. Same with animations as well. The pre rendered cut scenes are few and far between when it comes to the narrative, so it makes me wonder why they even bothered. Why not just make it all first person with the in game engine? Not that interactions look better there, character animation is stiff and sometimes their lips don't move when they talk. It's obvious that The Creative Assembly focused on the environments more than anything else, which is great and annoying.
Narrative is also where Isolation falls short. The story isn't bad, but it could have been more! It's so disappointing because there was so much potential with the premise. I hardly cared about the characters and forgot all of their names (except for Amanda for obvious reasons.) It's annoying, because the game clearly wants you to care. The only time I was anywhere near emotionally invested was when the plot focused on Amanda's search for her mom, which shockingly takes up a VERY small part of the story. Seriously it's sad how little it's focused on. All of this is coupled with a disappointing ending.
Over all though Isolation is fantastic. Despite my issues with the narrative and it's inconsistent presentation I loved it. It's easily one of my favorite horror games.