I picked up the game the game on sale, assuming I'll have some "fun" hours playing it - looking back at those assumptions I have to say: how foolish of me! Since then, I played through the game 8 times and finished all DLC's aswell as the main story on the hardest difficulty multiple times already...

You play as Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley's daughter, who is invited to join a retrieval mission of the Nostromo's flight recorder who recently got discovered and brought to "Sevastopol-Station" in orbit of the gas-giant "KG-348". The story takes place in the year 2137, 15 years after the events of "Alien". You, as Amanda Ripley, get to board the station unconventionally - the station seems to have some damage on the exterior and communication to it is nearly impossible - by doing a spacewalk towards the station. Being severed from the rest of your crew, you start exploring the station on your own, soon encountering the Xenomorph in your battle to survive, find out what happened to your mother's ship and to escape the station!

The story oftentimes takes you back to specific locations you have previously explored, therefore making you recognize certain parts of the station from time to time. Characters are diverse in their motives and don't seem stereotypical in most instances, you even care for some of them. To complete the story for the first time (DLC's not included) you will need approximately 10-20 hours.



The Xenomorph is strictly inspired by Ridley Scott's original alien, having a very biomechanical look. Its animations are great, feeling realistic and heightening your fear.
The alien is controlled by a complex AI, challenging you and your decisions to the point, where you could believe it's actually learning, adapting to your playstyle.
You start to fear it simply due to its presence.
The AI is programmed that way that it moves around the level in no particular order, often backtracking on itself. If the Xeno moves away from you, it is almost guaranteed that it will return and even though it doesn't know your ultimate goal, it will find a way to interfere.
Whatever the alien does though, you've got to remember: even though the alien is smart, you are smarter!


The game's graphics are just marvelous, putting you straight into the game and assisting the presentation. Misty and flickering lights aswell as low ceilings make you feel claustrophobic in the cramped corridors. The game's levels seem to be heavily inspired by 1979's Alien movie, reenacting the feelings you first had when watching the movie. The materials used for certain objects are highly detailed and feel real thanks to the usage of displacement- roughness- and imperfection-maps. These incredible graphics thankfully don't affect your framerate, the game is beautifully optimized, not even dropping below 60fps on my mid-range setup on ultra graphics.



Over the course of my more than 100 hours playing this game thus far, I've encountered multiple bugs, some minor some quite major. I'd have to say though: for some bugs to occur you'd defininetly have to provoke them, attempting to break the game. This isn't true for all bugs. You can spot minor or nearly unnoticeable bugs or gameflaws in almost every level. Thankfully this will not influence your experience with the game, because most bugs are simply not severe enough for you to notice.


If you choose to buy the DLC's clearly depends on if you are a fan of the original movie or not. Specifically the DLCs Crew Expendable aswell as Last Survivor will give you quite a lot of joy, since they reenact some events from the original 1979 Alien-movie.
The other DLC's are new levels and scenarios for the survivor mode - as long as you do not really enjoy them, I'd advise you not to buy them.




If you are a fan of the Alien-franchise, you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. Its ~ 15 hours long story has great replayability, due to the hardly predictable Alien-AI, which challenges the player over the course of the game. I highly recommend you play this game at hard difficulty, making the game a tense and challenging experience.

9/10
I highly recommend buying it

© gBoad 2018