10 Awesome Video Games That Fail In The 3rd Act

Much as those who wish to wring every last second out of their games in the pursuit of "value" might scoff at the idea of any game being too long, Alien: Isolation is a textbook example of a game that suffers from "spectacle fatigue."

Given that the bulk of the game is a claustrophobic cat-and-mouse chase between protagonist Amanda Ripley and the Xenomorph, it feels like a concept best suited to a shorter play-time of, say, around six hours.

But a first playthrough of Alien: Isolation can easily run double that, and during those final three or four hours it is a game that becomes exhaustingly padded and overcrowded with set-pieces.

From fending off those annoying androids to contending with more Xenomorphs amid a series of increasingly outlandish set-pieces, it goes from feeling like Ridley Scott's original film to a sequel directed by Michael Bay.

There's always something else the player needs to do in order to press forward, and the result is a game where less would've certainly been much more.

Developers Creative Assembly clearly wanted to leave players exhausted by game's end, but probably not to the point that continuing forward felt like a genuine grind.