Alien: Isolation VR Mod Review And Setup Guide - MotherVR

The Alien: Isolation VR Mod MotherVR is a fantastic way to enjoy Alien: Isolation in VR. With this mod not only can you view and control the game entirely in Virtual Reality, but the Alien: Isolation VR Mod also allows you to use your touch controller buttons to control the game, or you can use a mouse and keyboard or gamepad. Unfortunately you can’t actually move your hands with the touch controllers in the MotherVR Alien: Isolation VR Mod. Still, this is a great VR mod, though it’s not perfect.

Here we’ll go over how you can play Alien: Isolation VR on PCVR by installing the Alien: Isolation Virtual Reality Mod. Then we’ll talk a bit about how good Alien: Isolation is in VR and the strengths and limitations of the MotherVR mod.

Alien: Isolation VR Mod Review

Welcome to the review section of this article. If you’re interested in setting up the Alien: Isolation VR Mod then go down to the “Alien: Isolation VR Mod Setup” section below. Otherwise, here’s what you can expect from Alien: Isolation VR.

On the bridge of the Torrens before everything goes wrong in Alien: Isolation VR

The first thing you will notice is that your Virtual head is not tightly tied to the head of Ripley, our protagonist. Whenever you play Alien: Isolation VR you’ll have to stand in one place as much as possible, or your VR view will separate from your ingame character’s body.

Waking from cryo sleep is very disorienting

This is a little jarring, but you do get used to it, though you might find yourself wandering a little out of place and needing to either recenter your view or shuffle back into your original position. So physically moving is a little tricky, though it can be helpful to put a small carpet or towel in the center of your playspace so that you can feel where you should be standing with your feet. Or you can just play while sitting.

Luckily, despite not being able to physically move without becoming a disembodied head, you can turn physically, and Ripley’s body will turn to face the same direction as yours. This is great, and keeps you from having to rely on snap turning with your right thumbstick, and still gives you some of the usual feeling of freedom of movement that comes with VR gaming.

Hiding from a hostile person in Alien: Isolation VR

Though sometimes when you do an action that changes your view like reading a terminal or using one of Ripley’s many tools on an object or door, then your view gets forcefully shifted back to where you were originally facing. This can be a little jarring, but it’s easy enough to turn back to where you were facing at the start. If you accidentally move your head inside of an object, then your view will turn black until you move your view back into open space. This is definitely the worst aspect of the MotherVR Alien: Isolation VR Mod.

Still, all of the atmosphere and tension of Alien: Isolation is amped up in Alien: Isolation VR just as Virtual Reality always does by making the experience more immediate and immersive. The controls for Alien: Isolation VR are also impressive. You can use a gamepad, controller, or mouse and keyboard to control your character if you like, but there is even full support for using VR touch controllers.

Though the ingame popups with controls will show the gamepad controls. Still, you can view the touch controller keybinds in the MotherVR settings menu, and they cover almost everything.

The Alien: Isolation VR Controls

The one piece that seems to be missing from Alien: Isolation VR’s control scheme is the ability to use a control input to lean. You can try to physically lean, and while that works to see around a corner without being spotted it does compound the issue of getting your view separated from your body. Still, it’s impressive what you can do with just VR touch controls. You can even fire weapons and throw things just like with a mouse and keyboard or controller.

Aiming with a Revolver

Just look at where you want to throw something or shoot at and let it rip. Scavenging is even enhanced in the Alien: Isolation VR Mod. Now to scavenge something or interact with an object you need to look at whatever you want to pick up or interact with. This gives a whole new level of immersion to your surroundings, as even common objects become more interesting to look at as you try to sort the valuables from trash.

Though if you’re expecting to use your VR touch controllers as you would in a normal VR game… well you’ll be disappointed. There’s no way to actually control Ripley’s arms in this game by moving your own arms with the touch controllers, so they’re are more of a convenience than a necessity.

Getting caught by the Alien is terrifying in VR

Also, there is one place where the touch controllers failed. Certain hacking puzzles, luckily ones that are not overly common during the game, use the gamepad left and right as controls. This should in theory match the right thumbstick up and right thumbstick down mappings on the touch controllers, but for some reason that didn’t work. So a few times you might have to reset your view in front of a keyboard to complete those puzzles. It wasn’t a showstopper, but it was very annoying.

Had to use the keyboard for this hacking puzzle

Despite some shortcomings, overall Virtual Reality is a great addition to Alien: Isolation, though it can feel janky to play Alien: Isolation VR sometimes with the MotherVR mod. This is mostly due to your VR view not always matching up with your character’s location.

All in all this VR mod makes Alien: Isolation a fantastic addition to your VR library, and it is entirely possible to play through the whole game in Virtual Reality. Big thanks to Nibre for cooking up MotherVR and giving Virtual Reality gamers a chance to experience this game in VR.

Alien: Isolation VR Mod Setup

Setup of MotherVR, the Alien: Isolation VR Mod, is very straightforward. Unlike installing mods on other games, it’s pretty easy. First go to the MotherVR mod github page. Click the arrow beside “Assets” and then click on the .zip file at the top to download it.

Downloading the Alien: Isolation VR Mod

The mod file will download to your Downloads folder. Go there and unzip the .zip file. If you need more information on how to unzip a file check out this useful article. Once the file is unzipped copy the dxgi.dll file within the folder.

The dxgi.dll Alien: Isolation VR Mod

Then find your Alien: Isolation game folder so that you can copy the Alien: Isolation VR Mod file into it. If you’re using the Epic Games version of the game this can be found at C:\Program Files\EpicGames\AlienIsolation. If you’re using the Steam version of the game it can be found at C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AlienIsolation (if you’ve installed Epic Games or Steam in a different location then just find the “EpicGames” or “Steam” folder and then follow the rest of the filepath).

Once you’ve found the Alien: Isolation folder just paste the dxgi.dll file into it.

The Alien: Isolation installation folder with the Alien: Isolation VR Mod added

Now you’ve installed the MotherVR Alien: Isolation VR Mod! Now when you start the game it won’t be in Virtual Reality just yet. When you’re in the main menu go to Options > MotherVR and then VRRunTime. Select either “Use Oculus” or “Use SteamVR.” Using Oculus is the best idea if you’re connecting to your PC via Oculus Airlink using a Meta Quest device. SteamVR will also launch the SteamVR overlay when running the game, and can be easier if you’re using the Steam version. Whichever way you usually play PCVR games is what you should go with.

Enabling VR in Alien: Isolation

Now quit the game and launch it again. You’ll see a prompt like the one below pop up, just click OK, and the game will launch in Virtual Reality!

The prompt you will get when first launching Alien: Isolation VR

The game may also crash on launch or crash with an error prompt on launch if you’re using the Steam VR version of Alien: Isolation on a PC using Windows 11.

While we don’t have an in depth breakdown of this issue here you can find a fix for it in this thread in the MotherVR github. Many helpful readers have also offered solutions in the comments below. Big thanks to these readers! I would provide the solution as the author of this article, but I have never run into the problem myself to verify the solution. Hopefully if you encounter this problem the fixes described there will help.

That’s all for this Review and Setup guide for the MotherVR Alien: Isolation VR Mod. Have fun experiencing a whole new game in Virtual Reality!