Has there ever been a good Aliens game? Not as many as there have been bad ones, that's for sure.
Alien: Isolation aims to rectify things by exchanging weapons and machismo for tense survival horror.
Based on the first Alien film rather than subsequent entries to the series, Isolation has more in common with recent jump-scare cult hits Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Outlast than the generally derided Aliens: Colonial Marines of 2013.
In the lead role is Amanda Ripley, daughter of Alien lead Ellen, and while we all know what happened to her mother, Amanda doesn't and is searching for clues.
Thing is, she's doing so aboard an abandoned space station called the Sevastopol, which houses not just the critical information Amanda needs, but a deadly, unseen predator lurking deep within its labyrinth of corridors and shafts.
The project comes from The Creative Assembly, the UK outfit best known for the Total War series of historical grand strategy games — always ambitious, often slightly buggy.
But it won't be the first time the outfit has deviated from the norm: 2008's action adventure Viking: Battle for Asgard saw the studio produce something far more console-friendly.
And if upcoming terror titles like Betrayer, SOMA and The Evil Within might have more experienced developers behind them, Alien: Isolation has the license that everyone knows.
Expect it on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and One as well as PC by the end of 2014. — ©AFP/Relaxnews 2014
