Where do I begin? Let's address the negative reviews this game has garnered since its release. It's been labeled as a game that often has you doing repetitive backtracking and not enough actual Alien encounters. For those of you who are teetering on playing this because of the above, disregard the haters.
Yes, there is some backtracking and you often come back to areas you've already navigated through, but when you do the developers have usually introduced something so that it feels like a whole new situation. The space station throughout the story is a character itself, consistently in a state of degradation and chaos. As things fail and fall apart around you. Your environment changes and you basically witness real-time atrophy of a situation beyond the control of the station inhabitants trying to hold it together.
The designers did an INSANE job with the details in this title. When I play through Alien: Isolation, feelings that I had first playing System Shock 2 come rushing back. The art direction, the overall atmosphere, and the loyalty to Ridley Scott's Alien universe really immerse you into a game that's finally worthy of a standalone Alien story.
The most noticable above-and-beyond feature of this title is the sound and music composition. The music is incredibly effective, conveying the eerieness of the abandoned space station or the intensity of your task at hand. The sound of weapons, androids, and of the Alien are incredible. THIS GAME SOUNDS AMAZING.
I could talk forever about this game. The fire and space effects look great, the Alien and other AI can be very unpredictable so adapting to situations is often tense, and you're basically as vulnerable as a lone individual in a hostile environment should be and you definitely feel it the whole time.
This deserves game of the year, and is probably one of my favorites of all time. The story itself could be its own movie.
9/10 - I've done three playthroughs (two on Nightmare difficulty) and have played most of the DLC. PHENOMENAL!