The appeal of tight, single-player games cannot be overstated; the type that stands the test of time, that you can revisit again and again, and that leaves an indelible impression after just a handful of hours of play. Early Resident Evil and Silent Hill, Max Payne, Portal – you know the ones. In fact, outside of megahits like Elden Ring, there seems to be a bit of open-world malaise setting in, opening up the door for shorter, stranger surprise hits like Crow Country and Dredge. For me, one game that has hammered home the importance of not overstaying your welcome is Alien Isolation.
I went back to the horror game before braving a trip to see Alien Romulus, but I came away from Creative Assembly’s modern classic with mixed feelings. Alien Isolation is in many ways a marvel. The atmosphere is electric, cultivating a sense of unease and anxiety before you’ve even come face to face with a Xenomorph or any real threat. I usually hate slow or stealth-focused games. I just run and gun everywhere even when it’s less than ideal, but Isolation has me creeping and crawling about out of pure fear.
You’re stranded, alone, afraid on a sprawling space station that is falling apart around you. You’ll need to find a means of communicating with outside help if you’re going to survive, but the process of doing so is protracted and challenging, doubly so with a Xenomorph in pursuit. While the opening hours are wonderfully tense, the endless complications and fetch quests soon harm the pacing and the scares.
Maybe your earlier entry point is now suddenly blocked, forcing you to find another way around, which in itself requires trekking somewhere else to find an electronic part or other supplies. None of these things need to happen; rather than adding to the story, they sap the tension and remind you that you’re playing a videogame. Isolation’s human cast could also have been thinned, as the station’s security team contribute almost nothing of substance. Refining the focus to purely Ripley, Samuels, and Taylor may have helped to quicken the pace.
An extended flashback scene aboard a derelict Juggernaut ship highlights this central issue. It’s a deliberately slow, linear sequence that forces you to move at a snail’s pace through what amounts to little more than an extended reference to the movies. Imagine instead a taut, strict, 8-hour version of Alien Isolation, one that doesn’t overextend itself to double that runtime. Isolation is a masterclass in atmosphere and dread, but the death of horror is repetition.