If I had to choose between oxygen and never being able to play Aien: Isolation again… well, so long breathing. The Creative Assembly’s masterful horror house in space is arguably the greatest licensed video game of all time. Yet it also came out a decade ago, so why am I suddenly bringing it up out of the blue? Let me explain.
Enter the Lofree Block keyboard: an amazing computing peripheral my colleague Peter Wolinski just reviewed. In one of our resident ‘board guru’s humble opinion, the Block is “retro, beautiful and ever so slightly flawed”. Yet I can easily forgive its $169 price tag and subpar software just because of how damn cool it looks. It’s “straight outta Alien”, after all.
Just look at that gorgeous picture a couple of paragraphs above and tell me that board hasn’t just been jettisoned from the USCSS Nostromo… alongside Ripley and her kitty.
The internet ingenious nature of Alien: Isolation is that the studio fully embraced the 1979 aesthetic of Sir Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece. Every clunky piece of tech aboard the Sevastopol space station feels inherently aged and kinda crappy. The game’s approach to how it treats technology is essentially the anti “Star Wars Prequel Trilogy” approach. Things from decades ago shouldn’t look more modern than current day gizmos, in essence.
Alien (be) Ware
Even though the Lofree Block isn’t a gaming keyboard, I still really want to play Alien: Isolation on it. Just the image of scuttling around as a terrified Amanda Ripley with a peripheral that looks exactly like every bit of retro gear Ellen’s daughter encounters is a dreamy notion I can’t shake.
I’m heaping all this love on a keyboard as a gamer who almost exclusively plays with one of the best PC game controllers, too. High praise, right? My longing to test out the Lofree Block can be partially explained not just for my love of the “Alien” franchise — although get in the sea, “Alien: Resurrection” — but for the fact I’ve suddenly become a fan of the best mechanical keyboards.
The Cooler Master MK770 is the current overlord of all the boards, yet I still like my Alienware Pro a whole bunch (in retrospect, I probably scored it too harshly coming from a former place of Team Membrane). Still, $199 is a lot of cheddar to spend on a PC peripheral.
I realize most hardcore PC players consider gaming on a controller as nothing short of heresy, and I get that. Yet when you’ve been playing with gamepads for three decades, it’s a transition that’s daunting, to say the least. And like I mentioned the Lofree Block is a productivity board, not a gaming one, so wanting to play Alien: Isolation on it makes about as much sense as wearing a chocolate watch in a giant freezer.
Nevertheless, I still want to embrace its WASD keys badly.
Wanting to play Alien: Isolation on this keyboard makes about as much sense as wearing a chocolate watch in a giant freezer.
Whether you’re a controller or keyboard player and you’ve yet to experience Creative Assembly’s incredible 2014 survival horror game, please do. I’ve watched so many gory movies in my life that I'm pretty much impervious to on-screen scares, but Isolation is the exception to the non-fraidy cat rule.
This is a game that induces dread like no other. A 12-15 hour exercise in constant unease, it’s scarier than every single Resident Evil combined. Every wheezing vent, creaking corridor and far off (but not nearly far enough off) hiss from the titular Xenomorph will terrify your ears witless. When it comes to the use of sound to profoundly scare, there’s no other video game that does it more effectively than Alien: Isolation.
The next time I find a spare $196 stuffed under my mattress, the Lofree Block is going to find a space on my desk, such is my enduring affection for what objectively is one of the best horror franchises of all time.
In space, no one can hear you type.
