Is Alien: Isolation Multiplayer?
Alien: Isolation is a survival horror video game, inspired by the film Alien (1979). Alien: Isolation (2014) was developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. Alien: Isolation has been praised for its atmosphere, immersive environments, scary experience, and overall high quality as a horror video game. Considering that Alien: Isolation (2014) is often considered a classic of the horror video game genre, Alien: Isolation fans as well as horror fans wonder whether Alien: Isolation is a multiplayer video game, and whether it can be played online in multiplayer game modes.
Alien: Isolation is not multiplayer, but a single player game. Although it features different game modes, all of them are single player.
Are There Multiplayer Game Modes in Alien: Isolation?
Considering that Alien: Isolation (2014) features different game modes, and that multiplayer horror video games are quite popular, players may wonder whether Alien: Isolation features multiplayer game modes.
Alien: Isolation (2014) features only single player game modes. Not only is the main campaign a single player campaign, but the additional game modes, such as Crew Expendable and Survivor, are single player game modes as well.
The different game modes of Alien: Isolation (2014) are quite varied. While the main campaign of Alien: Isolation provides replayability through its different difficulty levels, the Crew Expendable game mode provides an additional story-driven campaign for players to experience, while the Survivor game mode provides replayability through a gameplay-focused campaign, less focused on story than the other ones.
Is Alien: Isolation Co-Op?
Considering that multiplayer horror video games, as well as co-op horror video games are often played by horror video game fans, players may wonder whether Alien: Isolation (2014) is a co-op video game and whether it features co-op game modes.
Alien: Isolation (2014) is not a co-op video game. It features only single player game modes. It doesn't feature multiplayer game modes or co-op game modes.
Possible Reasons Why Alien: Isolation Is Not Multiplayer
While some players may have wished that Alien: Isolation (2014) also featured multiplayer game modes, there may be some reasons why it was designed as a single player video game.
Story-Driven Horror Video Game Experience
Alien: Isolation (2014) is a story-driven horror video game, and thus, a story-driven horror game experience. In general, the most successful co-op and multiplayer horror video games are video games that are focused on gameplay, not so much on story. In general, these video games often feature procedurally-generated locations and enemies, or increased replayability through their multiplayer nature, such as a in 4v1 horror video games such as Dead by Daylight. In these video games, story often exists mostly as a context, but most of the experience is not story-driven.
Alien: Isolation (2014) is a story-driven horror video game, not a procedurally-generated or 4v1 horror video game. Perhaps, this was one of the reasons why it was designed a single player video game, not as a multiplayer one.
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Alien: Isolation (2014), such as other single player horror video games, such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010), Outlast (2013), Slender: The Arrival (2013), among others, are in general story-driven video games. While this video games feature engaging gameplay and immersive experiences, most of the experience is driven to following a certain storyline and reaching conclusion. This is unlike gameplay-focused co-op horror video games in which story is mostly a secondary element.
Different Gameplay Experience From Previous Alien Video Games
Alien: Isolation (2014) was not the first video game related to the Alien franchise, or to the Alien vs Predator franchise. Some of the previous video games inspired by these franchises were Aliens versus Predator (1999), Aliens versus Predator 2 (2001), Aliens vs. Predator (2010) and Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013). While these video games provided unique experiences and immersion in the world of the Alien franchise, the Predator franchise, and the Alien vs. Predator franchise, most of these video games were action-focused video game. Indeed, all of these video games cited in this paragraph, with the exception of Alien: Isolation (2014), are FPS (first-person shooter) video games, characterized by the experience of fighting and defeating multiple enemies to progress in the video game, such as classic FPS video games such as Doom (1993) and Quake (1996).
Unlike previous Alien video games and Alien vs. Predator video games, Alien: Isolation (2014) is not an action-focused video game. It is a horror video game with action elements. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, action video games had the tradition of featuring multiplayer game modes, while adventure games and horror games did not.
While the action experience certainly fits well with the Alien vs. Predator universe, perhaps the developers of Alien: Isolation (2014) were looking to deliver a different experience. While Alien: Isolation features action elements, including different weapons and the possibility to fight enemies, most of the gameplay is a story-driven, horror game experience, in which weapons are a secondary element, especially in higher difficulties, and most of the gameplay is related to stealth and puzzle-solving. This is an experience much more similar to classic survival horror video games, such as Resident Evil (1996) and Dino Crisis (1999), than it is to classic FPS video games such as Doom (1993) and Quake (1996). By the late 1990s and early 2000s, many action-focused video games, including successful mainstream FPS video games, prominently featured multiplayer game modes. However, action-adventure video games, as well as survival video games of this time period, most often did not feature multiplayer game modes.
Analysis - Possible Causes for Confusion Regarding Alien: Isolation Being Multiplayer
Players often ask whether Alien: Isolation (2014) features multiplayer, and some players often make assumptions regarding the presence of multiplayer in this video game. In this section, I want to address some of the likely causes for this confusion and debunk them.
Many Previous Alien Video Games Featured Multiplayer
Alien: Isolation (2014), as successful as it has been, has not been the first video game in the Alien franchise. Some of the video games that were released before Alien: Isolation were Aliens versus Predator (1999), Aliens versus Predator 2 (2001), Aliens vs. Predator (2010) and Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013). These are some of the video games that were released most recently before the release of Alien: Isolation (2014), however, there are many more video games inspired by the Alien franchise and by the Alien vs. Predator franchise, that were released before, and some many others that were released in between.
Considering that many of the previously released Alien video games and Alien vs. Predator video games were FPS video games with multiplayer game modes, and considering that Alien: Isolation (2014) is played in first-person perspective, players may have assumed that Alien: Isolation also featured multiplayer game modes.
While there were many Alien video games and Alien vs. Predator video games, it is worthwhile to note that many of these video games mentioned in this paragraph were traditional FPS video games, featuring multiplayer game modes. Indeed, FPS video games of the late 1990s and early 2000s often featured multiplayer game modes, a characteristic that remained for many years and still remains today. Due to the number of releases related to this franchise which featured multiplayer game modes, many players may have assumed that Alien: Isolation (2014) would also feature game modes. Moreover, many of these releases were traditional FPS video games, a genre known for featuring multiplayer game modes, and Alien: Isolation is played in first-person perspective, another reason why players may have assumed the feature of multiplayer game modes.
Many Horror Games Are Multiplayer
While the horror video game genre began mostly as a single player experience, a number of multiplayer horror video games were released during the history of the video games industry. Indeed, horror video games became quite popular among players, to the point of the horror video game genre being often associated with co-op video game experiences. However, this surge in multiplayer horror video games happened during the late 2010s, while Alien: Isolation was released during the early 2010s, in 2014. To be fair, Alien: Isolation (2014) was released just a few years before the surge in multiplayer co-op horror video games, but before nonetheless.
Alien: Isolation (2014) was released a few years before the surge in popularity of multiplayer horror video games, especially multiplayer co-op horror video games and 4v1 horror video games.
Especially with the release of Dead by Daylight (2016), co-op horror video games became a trend, and this genre increasingly became associated with co-op video game experiences. However, even after the surge of co-op video games, story-driven single player horror video games were still released, such as Outlast 2 (2017) and Amnesia: Rebirth (2020), among many others. Nevertheless, the popularity and surge of multiplayer co-op horror video games may be one of the causes some players assume Alien: Isolation (2014) is a multiplayer video game.
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