CORE MECHANICS
- CRAFTING
- STEALTH
- PUZZLE-SOLVING
— CRAFTING, & RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
The crafting system is vital to ISOLATION's design. Throughout the game, the player can collect scraps and various materials to craft items that will either make the game easier or significantly harder, if you fuck it up.
At first (on the less punishing difficulties) parts will seem aplenty, but trust me, by Mission 17 you'll wish you picked up that extra Blasting Cap three missions ago. Craft craft and KEEP CRAFTING until your inventory is full.
You can craft items such as a Medikit, which is essentially ISOLATION's health potion, or a literal Molotov, which'll only work on the Xeno a handful of times before it remembers it's basically unkillable and fucks you up while engulfed in flames anyway.
However, you'll need to keep in mind that the Xenomorph is not the only threat on the station, and that craftable items such as EMP mines and smoke bombs can still be incredibly handy when going against... other, non-Xenomorph enemies.
— STEALTH, EVASION & DISTRACTION
I'm sure you could probably damn near skip stealth altogether if you're on Novice.
If you're playing on any other difficulty, and you hate stealth games, you are shit outta luck, my friend.
Hiding under desks, rubble, operating tables, etc. is crucial to making it through the missions. ISOLATION is a lethal, unforgiving game of cat and mouse— you don't typically live to see the outcome of your mistakes as you'll be Xeno fodder before you even notice you did something wrong.
Keep aware of your surroundings at all times, abuse the shit out of the motion tracker if you're not on Nightmare, and use distractions such as the craftable Noise Maker to keep hostiles far enough away for you to safely sneak your way around them.
— PUZZLE-SOLVING, & MINIGAMES
Amanda Ripley is an engineer who knows her shit. This is made very clear early in the game, so it only makes sense that the player would have to put her expertise to use.
At some point early on in the story, you'll come across a device that lets you hack through gates/doors/etc. and you're gonna be using this thing a lot, so you better get good at it. Obviously it's not realistic but you spend the game on what is essentially a floating high-traffic international (intergalactic?) space station orbiting Jupiter 2: The Squeakuel, you're gonna have to suspend your disbelief.
Alright so I've been working on the code for this page for weeks on-and-off. You know what a minigame is. You know what a puzzle is, and that it takes steps to solve them. So basically imagine that + you're in space. And that Ridley Scott's depiction of Cool Space Stuff is haunting you. I'm tired. I'm gonna go have some Ben & Jerry's.
MY THOUGHTS ON ISOLATION'S GAMEPLAY AND GAME DESIGN
ISOLATION is certainly not a game for the impatient. Many knocked on it for its use of set save points, preventing the player from dipping in and out of the game however they please. Many disliked that the Xbox/PS3's inclusion of the mic sensor, making it so that the Xenomorph can literally hear you at any given time.
The set save points are mandatory for a game like this, in my opinion. You are made to feel that you are constantly on the brink of fucking up, that the Xenomorph is right on your tail. If you could just jump in and out whenever you want, then the immersion is broken. Even if you abuse save points and reload saves constantly instead of simply dying (like me teehee), there's the punishment of having to restart all of that progress, which persistently keeps the stakes high.
As for the mic detection thing. I thought that shit was the coolest tech in the goddamn world when I first played this game on my brother's Playstation 3. It's completely optional, too, no one's forcing you to use the feature. Games that use certain mechanisms of the console's hardware to their advantage, whether it be to further the story or deepen the immersion (or both) are cool as fuck and always will be.