Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation has its issues, but by-and-large it’s the best stealth game of the year and a stunning tribute to Ridley Scott’s universe.

Scarily good sound and level design make Alien: Isolation the season's best horror game.

Of course, you should play this game otherwise, for the simple reason that it’s fantastic. In fact, it’s one of the best movie tie-ins ever made. We’ve seen tie-ins that try their best to replicate the characters or the scenery of the Alien films – not least last year’s execrable Aliens: Colonial Marines – but we’ve never seen another that works so hard to capture the essence, the visual style or the textures of the film, and not just of the films in general, but the 1979 original in particular.

Alien: Isolation seemed like the perfect Alien game on paper, and for the first handful of hours it even seems to deliver on its promise on the strength of its outstanding art and sound that faithfully recreates the ambiance of the classic horror film. Instead, what was the Great Xenomorphic Hope ends in another disappointment for a license loaded with interactive-entertainment potential. It’s a shame that Isolation doesn’t track stats, because I’d be curious to know how many of its roughly 15-20 hours I spent hiding in lockers, staring at the motion tracker, and, most of all, how many hundreds (yes, hundreds) of times I died without a chance to save myself. It may seem strange to complain that a game’s too long, but when the genuine scares of being hunted by an unstoppable predator are so diluted by repetition and padding, Isolation’s epic length really does work against it. Someday, someone is going to make an incredible Alien video game that checks every box. But, sadly, Isolation is not it.