When someone says a game is only really worth playing for fans, it's often a backhanded comment meaning "the game is subpar, but if you want to engage with the source material have at it." While I think this game is really only for fans, I think it's punching well above its weight.

Alien: Isolation is a passion project to its core. Creative Assembly was clearly inspired in its pursuit in creating an immersive Alien game that outpaces quality of the majority of canon films and games.

The atmosphere, setpieces, and impressive Xenomorph AI all all parts of a fantastic experiences catered explicitly for fans. It's such a passion project, that I'm afraid it gets lost in the sauce and ends up being about twice as long as it needed to be.

I think that's the main critique here, there was no exercise in constraint and the game long overstays its welcome. Still, it matches the atmosphere of the original movie fantastically, and is better than the latter 4 movies in the franchise. I'm sad Creative Assembly never got to take another swing at this, because despite its misgivings, their debut FPS adventure can go toe-to-toe with Arkane and Irrational Games. SEGA royally squandered so much potential here.