Alien: Isolation was announced for Nintendo Switch at E3 this past June, and though several progress reports have assured eager players it's still on track for 2019, people rightfully grew skeptical as the end of the year approached. Today, though, SEGA has confirmed the game's release date, and as promised, you'll be able to play it before you ring in the new year. Alien: Isolation arrives on Switch on December 5th.
The release date was announced alongside a new trailer which either introduces players to the somewhat overlooked game or reminds past players of the horrors they perhaps tried to forget.
While the game was originally developed by Creative Assembly, the Switch port will arrive thanks to Feral Interactive who is best known for porting games to Mac. It's often the case that ports of this nature are handed to secondary studios. The port will take advantage of some of Switch's special features, such as gyroscopic aiming and HD rumble.
The game is considered canon to the famous film franchise and stars Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen, who goes searching for her mother after receiving a black box signal that seems to mean she may be alive. Critics and fans alike enjoyed the mechanics of dealing with the titular xenomorph, who can not be defeated and must merely be sneaked past or scared off temporarily. The game's hide-and-seek nature arrived around the time the whole horror genre was utilizing such mechanics, as seen also in games like Outlast and Amnesia.
Though initial reception for Isolation was mixed, the game settled into a respectable critical average of 80 here on OpenCritic with a majority of critics (73%) recommending it for play. It feels like the game has only increased in popularity since then, as players now hope for a sequel, though those wishes have so far seemed to fall on deaf ears at SEGA, the publisher owning the rights to the IP.
