Alien: Isolation

Box Art

Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega and is based off of the Sci-Fi Horror franchise Alien. The player controls Amanda Ripley from a first-person perspective, and must explore a space station and complete objectives while avoiding, outsmarting, and defeating enemies. Alien: Isolation released on October 7th, 2014 to generally favorable reviews with reviewers praising the games atmosphere, aesthetic, and clear love for the franchise, while criticizing the trial and error progression, the distance between save points, and lackluster story, and poor voice acting from the voice actors.

## Plot

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.

## See Also

* Alien vs. Predator (2010)
* Aliens: Fireteam Elite