The original film Alien was a sci-fi, horror film produced in 1979 to universal praise. It told the story of a crew aboard a space vessel that are systemically hunted down and killed by an extra-terrestrial organism. Its success spawned an even more successful sequel called Aliens, which was focused more on action than the horrific suspense of the original. The latter film has gone on to inspire numerous video games, mostly in the first person shooter genre, while the original game (?? should this be film??) has flown under the radar with reference to gaming production.

Now a new game has been released called Alien: Isolation which is modeled on the first movie, and which is a survival horror game. The game take place in time-space between the two films, with players controlling the daughter of Ellen Ripley (protagonist of the Alien series) called Amanda as she attempts to track down the flight recorder of her mother’s space vessel called The Nostromo. The latter was destroyed through a self-destruct mechanism by Ellen herself, before escaping on a distress shuttle.

Amanda has tracked the flight recorder to a large space vessel called Sevastopol. However, she finds that an alien organism has infiltrated the ship. She also faces the depredations of an unstable crew and malignant androids; she can utilize weapons that she finds in defence in against these. However, the alien itself is invulnerable to such measures. A measure of wit and guile must be used to avoid it, and a radiant AI has been coded into the alien allowing it to learn and change according to how the player acts. This is very much in line to a similar system utilized in the recent game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor to great effect and allows for a dynamic, non-linear storyline.

The game itself has been lauded by reviewers and praised for its terrifying and intense gameplay. You can find Alien: Isolation on bidorbuy.