7 Things Alien Isolation Does Way Better Than Colonial Marines

6. A Smart Script And Understated Acting

The first two Alien films narrowly side-stepped the pitfalls of your average B-movie monster mash by capitalizing on every aspect of their A-movie potential. Arguably, the most important tool in Scott's and Cameron's toolboxes were their world class acting ensembles and largely understated scripts. Tonally, each film found an unforeseen, grounded balance within a fresh sci-fi paradigm that managed to subvert their slasher and action-heavy sentiments with a subdued and industrial approach to character and setting respectively... all of it stuffed in an air-locked pressure cooker. Aliens: Colonial Marines must have missed the memo. Boasting some of the most generic dialogue this side of the bro-shooter handbook, Gearbox's hackneyed scene-work didn't have a natural bone in its narrative body. Marines aped a sloppy understanding of contrived, human interaction in a context we never fully understood as a blatantly transparent means to shuttle us from one shooting gallery to another. Embracing gaming cliches to the point of painfully bursting, Aliens: CM crashed and burned in its efforts to provide players with a relatable point of reference for an already ham-fisted approach to storytelling. Isolation knows enough to steer clear of such tom-foolery, granting fans a nuanced script rooted in realistic, filmic-isms and understandable motivations. If H.R Giger's Alien is our worst psycho-sexual nightmare, Sigourney Weaver is the heart and soul conduit through whom we've grown to fear and love the horrid creature, and Amanda's journey mirrors her mother's experience beautifully. In lesser hands, the direct parable of Ellen Ripley's grown daughter facing the same fate would feel too on-the-nose, but Creative Assembly touches these stark similarities earnestly without smothering your face in them. The justification for just about every single piece of fanfare is handled meticulously and the narrative conceit for Alien as an interactive experience is accessible, deep and thematically pure for the first time. Most importantly, it never gets in the way of the game's razor sharp focus on staying alive... and every desperate measure that entails.