Developer : Sega
Release date : October 7, 2014
Synopsis :
Alien: Isolation is a 2014 survival horror game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega for Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Based on the Alien film series, the game is set 15 years after the events of the original 1979 film Alien, and follows engineer Amanda Ripley, daughter of Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley, as she investigates the disappearance of her mother aboard the space station Sevastopol. Once inside, Amanda discovers that the station has fallen into disarray due to an Alien creature on the loose and must find a way to escape. The game emphasizes stealth and survival horror gameplay, requiring the player to avoid, outsmart, and fight enemies with tools such as a motion tracker and flamethrower.
Alien: Isolation was designed to resemble the original Alien film rather than its more action-oriented 1986 sequel Aliens, and features a similar lo-fi, 1970s vision of what the future could look like. It runs on an engine built to accommodate the Alien’s behaviour and technical aspects such as atmospheric and lighting effects. Creative Assembly intended to make Alien: Isolation a third-person game, but used first-person to create a more intense experience. Several downloadable content packs were released, some of which relive scenes from the original film.
Alien: Isolation received positive reviews and sold over two million copies by May 2015. Its retro-futuristic art direction, sound design, and artificial intelligence were praised, while its characters and length received some criticism. It appeared in multiple “best of” lists and won several year-end awards, including Best Audio at the 2015 Game Developers Choice Awards and Audio Achievement at the 11th British Academy Games Awards. It saw ports to Linux and OS X in 2015, Nintendo Switch in 2019, then to Android and iOS mobile devices in 2021. It was also added to the Amazon Luna service in 2021.
In 2137, 15 years after the events of the original Alien film, Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, learns that the flight recorder of her mother’s ship, the Nostromo, has been located. The flight recorder was retrieved by the salvage ship Anesidora, and is being held aboard Sevastopol, a Seegson Corporation space station orbiting gas giant KG-348 in the Zeta Reticuli star system. Christopher Samuels, a Weyland-Yutani android, offers Ripley a place on the retrieval team so that she can have closure regarding the fate of her missing mother.
Ripley, Samuels, and Weyland-Yutani executive Nina Taylor travel to Sevastopol via the Torrens, a courier ship, only to find the station damaged and external communications offline. While attempting to spacewalk into Sevastopol, their EVA line is severed by debris, and Ripley is separated from the others and forced to enter the station on her own. While exploring the station, Ripley finds the flight recorder of the Nostromo, but the data has been corrupted, and also discovers that the station is out of control due to a deadly Alien creature lurking aboard. After regrouping with Samuels and Taylor, Ripley meets the station’s Marshal Waits and his deputy Ricardo. Waits explains that the alien was brought onto the station by Anesidora captain Henry Marlow, who, after recovering the Nostromo’s flight recorder while salvaging its remains in space, was able to backtrack the Nostromo’s path to LV-426 and locate the derelict alien starship, containing within a nest of alien eggs. While inside, Marlow’s wife was attacked by a Facehugger and brought aboard Sevastopol for emergency medical treatment, but died after a Chestburster hatched from her. Waits convinces Ripley to contain the Alien inside a remote module of the station, and then eject it into space. Although Ripley is successful, Waits ejects the module with her still inside. Careening into KG-348, Ripley space-jumps back to Sevastopol using a space suit.
Ripley makes her way back to confront Waits, but Ricardo reveals that the station’s service androids have abruptly started slaughtering the remaining crew, including Waits. Samuels attempts to interface with the station’s artificial intelligence, APOLLO, to cease the rampage. However, the systems’ defensive countermeasures kill him shortly after he opens a path for Ripley into APOLLO’s control core. There, Ripley discovers that Seegson had been trying to sell off Sevastopol to Weyland-Yutani, who instructed APOLLO to protect the Alien at all costs. Ripley tells APOLLO that the creature is no longer aboard the station and demands it cease all activity, but the system refuses, stating that “scheduled reactor scans are unverified”. At the reactor, Ripley discovers a nest with hundreds of Aliens, and initiates a reactor purge to destroy it.
Later, Ripley learns that Taylor was secretly sent to retrieve the Alien from Sevastopol, and that she freed Marlow in exchange for the location of LV-426. However, Marlow double-crosses and takes her hostage aboard the Anesidora. There, Ripley finally discovers the Nostromo’s flight recorder, containing a personal message to her from her mother, thus giving her closure. Meanwhile, Marlow attempts to overload the fusion reactor of the Anesidora to destroy Sevastopol and ensure that no creatures survive; Taylor kills him in an attempt to stop this, but she herself is killed by an electric discharge, forcing Ripley to escape shortly before the Anesidora explodes. The explosion destroys Sevastopol’s orbital stabilizers, causing the station to slowly drift into KG-348’s atmosphere. Ripley and Ricardo contact the Torrens for extraction, but a Facehugger latches on to Ricardo, forcing Ripley to leave him. After making her way outside to help the Torrens detach from the station, Ripley is surrounded by Alien creatures and ultimately thrown into the ship by a blast. Aboard the Torrens, Ripley discovers that another Alien has boarded the ship. When she is cornered in the airlock, she ejects herself and the Alien into space. Adrift in her space suit, Ripley is awakened by a searchlight.
Source : Wikipedia
