Alien: Isolation (2014) was one of the first truly good games to get support for PC VR headsets. If you’re wondering why everyone is still crazy about years later, it’ll only take you $2 to find out.

Thanks to Steam’s one-day ‘Alien Day’ sale, the landmark survival horror game Alien: Isolation is on sale for $2, making for a 95% discount off the original $40 price tag. That’s without DLC however, which can be bought in its entirety in the Alien: Isolation Collection for $12.50. That includes the base game and seven expansions.

So what’s the big deal with a six-year-old game? Oculus had first featured the title when showing off Oculus Rift DK2 back in 2014, bringing a special made-for-VR demo of the game to trade shows that, at the time, was looked to be one of the first ‘AAA’ VR games.

Although developers Creative Assembly never officially added in VR support in the full release—you won’t find a VR headset listed in supported devices on the game’s Steam page—with the simple addition of a few extra lines of code you can actually play the entire game with a SteamVR headset.

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The MotherVR mod, which you drop directly into the game’s folder, is still functional (and free), so if you’re looking to experience a bit of VR history and a few atmospheric chills to go with your alien-driven game of hide and seek, there’s no better time than now.

Granted, the VR adaptation is definitely showing its age. There isn’t support for 6DOF controllers, so you can’t shoot or interact with objects like you would in modern VR titles. Cutscenes are also a bit disorientating, although these are fairly minor gripes in the grand scheme of things.

Check out some gameplay below to get a better idea of what awaits.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • James Cobalt

    I’ve been unable to get MotherVR to work. Certainly not due to a lack of trying. No updates to the package in 2 years. Crazy the developer didn’t revisit with official VR support and sell as a DLC considering all the praise they got for the pancake game and VR demo.

    • Bumpy

      Yeah, MotherVR has many issues and appears to be abandoned so don’t count on the VR like I did. Then again $2 is pittance and I still have VorpX to fall back on.

      I had better luck with older v0.6.0 of MotherVR btw.

    • Austin

      It worked first try for me using Rift S.

      1. Download Beta 0.8.0.
      2. In steam library right click Alien Isolation got to Manage / Browse Local Files
      3. Open Beta 0.8.0 Zip
      4. Drag and drop the dxgi.dll file into the Alien Isolation folder that you opened in step 2.
      5. Start Alien Isolation and go into Options / Mother VR / VR Runtime
      6. Select which headset you have.
      7. Close down game put your headset on and start the game. It should load up in VR.

      • James Cobalt

        Thanks for trying to help. I did this months ago. The game launched. The menu displayed for a split second. Then it went black. Restarting the game went straight to a black screen. Have to remove the dxgi file to get it to work. I can try it again later this week; could have been a SteamVR or Revive conflict that’s since been patched.

        • NooYawker

          You’re using revive? You bought alien isolation on the oculus store? It’s on $2 on steam, give it a try.

          • James Cobalt

            No. I bought Alien Isolation on Steam years ago. I also use Revive; it’s by the same developer and I believe shares some code. Originally Alien Isolation was only intended for the Oculus runtime, so I suspected there may have been a conflict between MotherVR and Revive running at the same time.

            And Revive sometimes creates conflicts with SteamVR in general. Learned this the hard way after hours of troubleshooting with a Steam support rep. Had issues with both rendering and controller latency on many titles – purely a result of Revive. Uninstalling Revive and reinstalling fixed them immediately, thankfully.

          • NooYawker

            That’s good to know. Thanks.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Yeah, I always wondered why they haven’t added VR-support. It would take 1 developer only a small ammount of time to get it up and running to a decent level. And then sell it as DLC for 5 bucks or something along those lines, which ofcourse would sell another 100K units at least of the DLC and ofcourse another extra collections..

      • Moe Curley

        Yeah, it would sell to new users on name recognition alone.

      • brandon9271

        Didn’t they have a Playstation VR version of this game? Maybe I’m thinking of something else.. I know Resident Evil 7 had a PSVR version that never came to PC. What a CROCK!

  • impurekind

    I can’t believe we don’t have a proper VR mode with full 6DoF controller support for this game yet. :-(

    • Unless I am losing my marbles, I’m very sure I played this on my Rift CV1 in December 2018 using Touch controllers, which were surprisingly functional.

  • That’s a great offering!

  • impurekind

    Eh, where is the actual download link on that GitHub page for the MotherVR mod? Am I missing something here, or is it actually as confusing as I think to find the download button/link?

    • James Cobalt

      It’s under Releases. But it’s buggy. A neat experiment if you get it to work but you probably can’t play through the whole game with it.

      • johngrimoldy

        You can play the entire game thru with the MotherVR mod. I know. I have. In VR, this game is VERY similar to Half-Life Alyx.

        • James Cobalt

          I couldn’t get it to run, but I’ll revisit later this week. Another user here said crouching doesn’t work for them and tools are fixed position like in desktop mode – not tied to hands. Was that the case for you? Were you using a Rift?

          • johngrimoldy

            Hey James. It was a couple of years ago that I played with a Vive. I recall that some things were a little fidgety. You did need to use a gamepad instead of the VR controllers. Other things like overlaid text were hard to read at times. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt the game appreciably. I recall that I could crouch.

            I found the graphics to be astounding and the game to be terrifying. I compare it to HLA because this game is also a series of puzzles and many of the same enemies thru the entire game.

            I’d have expected the Mother mod to have matured by now, but I’ve not been paying attention.

            If you can get this to work for you, it will be well worth the time/effort. You can’t get the fear of being chased by an alien any other way.

  • Pampa

    Mother Vr is outstanding beta Vr mod for this game, but sadly not finished, and will certainly never be. Vers.0.8 is not playable in the long time, sorry, if you say so you didn’t really played it. You can’t crouch/throw, or remove crowbar across the doors or you have to use a joypad and both motion controllers. Serioulsy, Mr Hayden did you even try it before making this article ?

  • impurekind

    Just tried it and after playing Half-Life: Alyx I just can’t enjoy it at all. It runs terribly, looks bad (because I’m trying to set things a bit lower to get it to run half decent), controls rubbish (only controller input), and feels like exactly what it is, which is a hack of a game made for traditional controls and screen display.

  • Jerald Doerr

    Thanks for the article!!! Got two DLC copies for me and a friend as a gift!!

  • DjArcas

    “Alien: Isolation (2014) was one of the first truly good games to get support for PC VR”

    “Although developers Creative Assembly never officially added in VR support”

    Sigh.

  • This game in VR is actually terrifying! I got about half way through and couldn’t take it any more, lol.