i dont know. ive seen Alien a whole bunch of times. its one of my favorite films of all time but just having a game that LOOKS like parts of Alien doesnt mean it captures the same vibe.
Alien has a tension between its characters thats difficult to explain. it was a class, race, and sex thing-it was Parker and Brett being looked down upon as the lowly mechanics assigned to the lower decks, it was Parker being the only black man aboard the ship, and it was Lambert and Ripley being vulnerable to the sexual advances of the males as well as of the alien.
it was about the power struggle between Dallas, Ripley, and Ash.
and it was scary precisely because you rarely saw the Alien, whereas in Isolation you see him all the damn time. i simply cannot be scared by it.
Ah I see where you're coming from. Not sure i'd class that as "vibe" though. That's more specifics of delivery.
For me the vibe (or vibes) of Alien are truckers in space, fear of the unknown, sense of being helpless prey, increasing sense of isolation in face of hostile universe, corporate greed, paranoia, body fear, class tension, sexual tension, etc. LOL that's quite a lot of vibes actually!
In the game I'd say most of those are present and correct however the delivery in different due to game vs film medium differences, So the class, corporate etc tensions and "truckers in space" comes through logs, background files, the rundown, cheap nature of the space station, the Joe's etc.
There are however two strong elements of Alien I think are missing: strong body/sexual fear and interpersonal sexual/class tension.
I think that's invevitable though as not only would a game struggle to match the ease with which the film conjoured the sexual/class tension between Parker & Brett and Ripley and Dallas but the film goes more for Aliens' "where did everyone go and how do I survive this failed colony?" plot that Alien's "ten little Indians in space" plot.
But yeah I can see your point and in that regard it's not matching certain elements of Alien. I'd vibe wise though it's still very, very slavish overall to the original and not just in design.
As an aside I was slightly dissapointed they didn't include essentially Alien the movie as they clearly had all the assets to do so (and with two elements of DLC they delivered cut down "bits" of the film). I'm probably being greedy but if they'd included essentially Alien in its entirety as well as the Isolation narrative I'd have been over the moon (even though they'd have had to compress some stuff to avoid endless cut-scenes early on).
