7 Things Alien Isolation Does Way Better Than Colonial Marines

7. Respecting The Source Material

Set several months after the nightmare on LV-426, Colonial Marines was pitched as the long awaited, interactive sequel to James Cameron's 1986 film, Aliens - a much better sequel. You may have thought its surprisingly accurate recreations of Hadley's Hope, the Sulaco and a few half-android and audio-log Easter Eggs would do the trick, but without a soul, the recognizable husk of something we love never became anything more. The (literal) execution of Marine's story hinged on a vast oversimplification of what made Aliens' marriage of "action" and "terror" so distinguished. Instead of authentically retrofitting Cameron's best ideas in a creative and organic way that elevated the storytelling advantages of both mediums, Gearbox's half-gestated mess failed hard on both fronts, with level-design that bolstered its recognizable set-pieces to no substantial effect and cameos that not only fudged established cannon, but felt about as natural as a baby Xeno sprouting out of our chest. What good is any one point of source material accuracy if it's built on the foundation of a glaring facade? Alien: Isolation lovingly takes its cues from Ridley Scott's relatively restrained original film, with stylistic legitimacy and thematic integrity that finally does the franchise justice, right down to the (optional) VHS film-grain. Rather than cutting-and-pasting famous sets and doing nothing special with them, Isolation painstakingly borrows core elements of the Alien universe design palette and seamlessly welds them together in a sensibly layered and altogether thrilling fashion. Chunky 80s CRT tech, a deceptively open map-layout and dynamic human, android, and Alien A.I. coalesce to form a believable play space and achieve a sensory experience that truly surpasses the the sum of its parts. We've had plenty of games that look and sound like an Alien movie... and now we finally have one that feels the part.