Well today I got to the end of the game, something only 15.6% of people have achieved. I found this quite a thing as the vast majority of the people who started it didn’t finish it. Just over half of the people (51.4%) played enough to meet the Alien. I achieved a progress of 61% by this I presume I didn’t pick up all of the collectables that were available… to be honest by the end I just wanted to finish it, so stopped looking for ID tags and archived logs…evidently there were 10 Nostromo ones… I found one! I found the majority of the archive ones

So what did I think? 

Potential Spoilers Ahead

You play as Amanda Ripley who is trying to find out what happened to her mother Ellen. She is told the Nostromo’s flight recorder has been found and heads off to get closure as everyone believes all hands perished on the ship.

I enjoyed the game, even if I did have heart failure on a number of occasions.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I actually had to turn off the music as it was getting me too up tight… proves it was doing its job though.

This game really does have an Alien vibe. Sevastapol Station with its DOS-based computer screens and 70’s style monitors definitely give it that Ridley Scott vibe from the original film.

The station itself has the front of house slick futuristic space station look, but get behind the scenes you have the ducting on the walls and metal flooring. As soon as you arrive you realise that things are not going well. Boarded up shops and graffiti are everywhere. As you make your way through the station proper you start to get voice recordings about people going missing etc and that a lockdown is in place, as a player we know why, we just don’t know when the big, bad beastie will drop out of the ceiling. In my case, about an hour in.

The gameplay is pretty much, sneak, sneak, hide. You have to face the xenomorph, which is pretty much impervious to any weapon you have at your disposal. The only effective one, the flamethrower, merely frightens it off… but I found that the more I used it, then the less frightened it seemed to become… this meant I had to use more fuel to keep it at bay.  The Alien’s movement is unscripted, it doesn’t follow a set pattern and the AI learns what you do to hide. Sometimes I found it would leave a room and slowly move off before suddenly sprinting back into it. Other times it would actually leave. This certainly kept me on my toes. The sound of it moving around in the ducts above was also unsettling. I found myself checking the ceiling for vents before feeling secure in a room.

Another foe to overcome were the Working Joe’s. These were a menace part way in. Up to that point they were just there, doing their jobs. Once Weyland reprogrammed them then they became psychotic killing machines. They took well placed shots to the head to despatch, or using the Stun prod to short circuit them followed by a whack to the head with a wrench. Problem with the former method is that it attracts more trouble. In one case I was under a table whilst a damaged synthetic was commenting on how the Alien on the other side of the table was an unrecognised species. Later on the Working Joes’s started being in some form of shielded clothing which stopped the EMP mine and shock prod being an effective weapon.

The last ‘enemy’ are other survivors. Some, like me just wanted to survive and would avoid contact. Others were armed and would generally shoot on sight. Quite often to their detriment as  the sound of the weapons would attract unwanted attention.

Working Joe’s and the humans tended to follow set routines, so I could work out the pattern to avoid them, unless they spotted you then they chased, or shot.

As you travel the station you find equipment and ammunition for the weapons as well as items to produce IED’s and med kits.

The IED’s fell into three types. Molotov, pipe bombs and EMP mines. I also made noise makers and smoke bombs. You got maximum three each of these. There were also flares, which I never used. Weapons were a pistol, shotgun,flamethrower  and a bolt gun.

The game itself actually became a bit of a slog at times. You would complete something only to find that someone does something either accidentally or deliberately and then you have to go back and do the whole thing again. In one case I sneaked into a room,  avoiding androids and an Alien, turned on a generator  and sneaked all the way back out again only to find the last 20 minutes were wasted as the in game system meant when I opened a door I blew the fuses and had to go back and do it again.

The biggest let down of all was the ending. Sevastopol falls into the gas giant, I escape… yippee… only to find a massive plot hole…somehow an Alien is aboard the rescue vessel. Literally, I used the right thumb stick three times…down, left, right followed by x… and the game ended and there I was floating in space in my EVA suit.

Obviously I survive as Ellen Ripley is told in the film Aliens that her daughter died a few years before she was found.

Would I play it again…nope… I have finished it. The only reason I might is for ideas for the Aliens RPG.

Score 6/10