Alien: Isolation

About Alien: Isolation

Alien: Isolation is a first-person survival horror game made by the British studio Creative Assembly and published by SEGA in 2014. It is set fifteen years after the film Alien. Amanda Ripley, the daughter of the film's heroine, travels to the remote trading station Sevastopol because it has recovered the flight recorder of her mother's lost ship. She arrives to find the station in chaos, its people hiding from each other and from something in the vents.

That something is a single alien, and it is the heart of the game. It is not scripted to appear at set moments: it roams, listens for noise, searches lockers and learns where you like to hide. You cannot kill it. A motion tracker shows movement nearby, though its beeping can give you away. You crouch behind crates, slip into vents and lockers, and hold your breath as it passes. Over the game you craft noisemakers, flares and medkits from scrap, and later gain tools that can only drive it off for a moment.

The station is a threat in itself. Panicked survivors may shoot first, and the company's androids, the Working Joes, walk calmly towards you and strangle you if they catch you. Saving is only possible at emergency terminals that take a few seconds to use, so every walk between them is a risk.

The look comes straight from the 1979 film: chunky computer terminals, flickering monitors and humming machinery. It is a long game for the genre, around eighteen to twenty hours, and suits patient players who like stealth and tension more than shooting. It is on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and in versions for iPhone and Android by Feral Interactive.

How to play Alien: Isolation

1. Explore the station in first person, picking up scrap and blueprints as you go.
2. Raise the motion tracker to see what is moving nearby, and lower it when the alien is close so its beep does not give you away.
3. Hide behind cover, in lockers or under desks when you hear the alien, and wait until it leaves.
4. Craft noisemakers, flares and medkits from scrap to distract enemies or heal.
5. Save at the emergency stations on the walls; nothing saves automatically between them.

Screenshots

Tips

• Move crouched most of the time; running draws the alien to you.
• Throw a noisemaker away from your path to pull the alien elsewhere.
• Do not hide in the same place over and over: the alien learns your habits.
• Save at every emergency station you reach, even if you saved a few minutes ago.

Questions