If anybody out there is still perpetuating the myth that Nintendo consoles are designed for children and children alone, fingers crossed that this shuts them up for good. Alien: Isolation, one of the most edge-of-your-seat terrifying games of the last decade, is making its way to the Nintendo Switch more than five years after it was originally released.
Alien: Isolation will be creeping its way onto the console on December 5 with gyroscopic aiming and HD rumble. As is usually the case with long-delayed ports, the game will be making its Switch debut with all seven DLC packs released since it first hit PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4 back in October 2014. Check out the Switch trailer below.
The Aliens franchise has had a very up and down relationship with video games over the past four decades. 2013’s Aliens: Colonial Marines, in development for six years, was a massive disappointment that even led to a lawsuit over false advertisement after the finished product looked nothing like earlier demos shown at trade shows.
Fortunately, Alien: Isolation, released a year later, debuted to great reviews and all but wiped away the bad taste left by Colonial Marines. The game was praised for its stellar graphics and atmosphere, as well as being genuinely terrifying, though many felt the campaign was unnecessarily long and that by the end of the game the scares became annoyances. Regardless, Alien: Isolation received several awards, namely for its audio. It also appeared on some year-end best-of lists and a few outlets ranked it as one of the best horror games of all-time.
Fans of the films are in for a special treat as Alien: Isolation manages to work its way into the film narrative in a way that’s both earned and genuine. The game could have easily been a cash-in, riding on the popularity of the franchise without adding anything new. Instead, Creative Assembly found a way to work it into the universe – into the core story, no less – in a way that compliments the films while leaving their narrative intact and untouched.
You play as Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, the protagonist from the film series. 15 years after your mother went missing aboard the Nostromo, you learn that the ship’s flight recorder has been recovered, and is being held aboard the space station Sevastopol. Thus begins your quest to find the recorder and, hopefully, find out what happened to your mother all those years ago.
