A 4-part survey of the Alien franchise in computer, video and lightgun games (amongst other things…)
Fall back to Part 1! Retreat to Part 2! Run screaming back to Part 3!
People, we have come full circle, back to the 1979 start of this campaign. It’s time for some Isolation.
In much the same way that the first film unfolded languidly, lurched into terror and then ran screaming toward the final confrontation before peacefully drifting off to sleep for fifty seven years, I sort of feel that the history of Alien games has done the same thing. If Aliens:Colonial Marines was the final, bed-wetting mayhem at the end of the third act, it then comes as a great relief to me to announce that chronologically, we are now in Sigourney Weaver’s peaceful 2014 hypersleep knickers with the thoroughly un-controversial, utterly brilliant Alien: Isolation.
The Creative Assembly (the article is actually part of their name), another team of Brits, was founded in 1987 and spent its first decade porting Amiga hits to MS-DOS. By 1999, they had enough money, clout and experience to attempt their own, original project, and thus the seminal Shogun: Total War was born. The rest, as they say is history — very much so in TCA’s case, as they went on to give us a whopping thirteen of their brilliant historical TBS/RTS Total War games, plus a bunch of expansion packs and spin-offs, which even earned their own TV game show.
Since 2005 though, they’ve been owned by SEGA, which partly explains why they went the Alien route. Alien: Isolation actually began as an in-house project by six of the team, following the release of their 2008 action-adventure Viking: Battle for Asgard. In its original form, it was a small, multiplayer thing made for fun in off-hours. But when they decided to pitch it to SEGA to see what would happen, they fell madly in love with it. This would have been around the time of their initial panic with Gearbox and Aliens: Colonial Marines (see Part 3), so it’s not hard to imagine them jumping on it with glee.
Most of you reading this will probably know all about the game — it’s dedication to having a single, un-killable Alien that operates on exceedingly cunning AI (which has nevertheless been accused of teleporting around the levels), and the scrupulously atavistic recreation of Ridley Scott’s film’s visual and aural aesthetics. It’s a complete return to the Alien’s roots as a thing of mystery, horror and male rape. Most of all though, like Rebellion’s original, classic Aliens vs Predator a decade and a half earlier, it’s just a damn good game. I’ve played it on both PC and PS4, along with all of its DLC, and can confirm that apart from anything else it is probably the most lovingly-crafted homage to anything that I’ve ever seen. Interestingly, story-wise it also borrows a trick from A:CM’s rogue marines, in so far as there are some dodgy robots to deal with in addition to the Aliens. I could write 1,000 more words enthusing about it, but nothing can beat actually playing it for yourself. Actually, let me rephrase that — nothing can beat experiencing it for yourself, because it truly is an emotional experience that transcends the limitations of its form to embed itself in your conscience in the way that only great art can.
So, yes, Alien Isolation is a bit good. Shockingly though, it didn’t do the numbers financially and the original dev team has scattered to the winds, so we’re unlikely to see a sequel anytime soon. Having said that, the game’s star, Amanda Ripley, continues to live on in new products (more on that later). But Alien Isolation wasn’t the only thing 2014 had to offer, as we also saw a new arcade game, Aliens: Armageddon, as well as an Android/iOS mobile game, AVP: Evolution. The first of these is another lightgun game, and hails from Play Mechanix and Raw Thrills, an Illinois-based firm partly consisting of former Midway Games employees. One of these two firms’ previous collaborations was a 2010 Terminator: Salvation cabinet, launched in support of the 2009 film of the same name. (At this point, it should be mentioned that the Terminator has its own history of crossovers with both the Alien and the Predators, due at least in part to the fact that in addition to his Aliens, James Cameron also gave us the original Terminator). I mention these arcade companies here because they’ll be appearing again in a minute.
In fact, the 2010s are largely marked by two things: loads of Predator and AVP games, and the predominance of mobile games and arcade machines as the format of choice. Starting at the beginning of the decade in 2010 with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports of Rebellion’s AvP, there have been 6 purely Predator-based games, and 6 purely Alien-based games (not counting the two Alien VR titles (Alien Covenant In Utero and Alien: Descent), and the forthcoming Amazon Alexa Alien ‘game’, Alien: Offworld Colony Simulator. Of those 12 titles, only 5 are for PC/console. Obviously, mobile gaming is big business now, and it’s easier and cheaper to do a mobile game reasonably well and then make a return on it through in-game monetization, than it is to carry a AAA home formats title to term. From my British/European perspective, though, I’m still quite surprised by the continuing life of arcade machines. Possibly this is a largely Americas/Asia-Pacific thing, because it’s been many years since I saw a real, live arcade machine anywhere. In fact, the last time I did was in Spain, and that was a cabinet fitted with an LCD monitor and a Windows-based media centre running MAME with a central menu of dozens of games. You dropped your coins in, picked a game and had at it. (It was pretty good too!)
[Image Credit: Zen Studios Ltd, Fox Digital entertainment]
Anyway, the glut of Predator games can probably be attributed to 2010’s Predators, starring Adrien Brody of all people, and probably just a general interest in keeping the AvP cash cow well milked. Surprisingly, there have been no games yet for the 2018 The Predator reboot (that I can find). Perhaps Fox has decided to keep supporting media on the down-low, following the twin controversies of the quiet casting of a registered sex offender and the film’s controversial depiction of autism.
At any rate, standing still gets us killed, so let’s move on again, although there’s not really a lot to move on to: 2015 was a quiet year that saw nothing new except the last three of the five DLC packs for Alien Isolation in January, February and March. 2016 then saw the restless twitch of a facehugger’s tail with (brace yourselves) Aliens vs. Pinball. This was in fact not a pinball machine, but an Alien-flavour expansion pack for a PC/console pinball game, Pinball FX 2. Now, this may not sound very promising, but a) Zen Studios’ Pinball FX series (now on number 3) is really rather good for what it is, and b) Aliens vs. Pinball contains 3 different tables to play on, themed around Alien and Aliens, and the first (2004) Alien vs. Predator. If digital recreations of physical games machines are your thing, 2016 was a good year.
2017, on the other hand, suddenly vomited up a whole bucketful of… things. May saw the first of the aforementioned VR ‘experiences’ on Steam, Alien Covenant In Utero (a title just crying out for a colon). A very short film made by Sir Rid himself, it was originally designed for the Occulus Rift VR set and can be viewed with the proper big goggles, or alternatively as one of those 360-degree ‘virtual promo’ films, within which you click-drag to move your viewpoint around. We then, at some point, got an Alien Covenant arcade machine, released in time for the film of the same name. That film was the ostensible sequel to the first of the prequel films, 2012’s Prometheus (another film that went without gaming comment), although in the face of massive criticism for having strayed too far from the formula (and for a number of admittedly ridiculous moments in an over-worked script), Covenant sought to do a neat side-step back onto the usual track. And just as the film was a re-do of a previous concept, so the Alien Covenant arcade machine was a re-do of the earlier, 2014 Aliens: Armageddon arcade machine (See Part 3). Same graphics, same gameplay, just some different coloured LEDs and trim on the cabinet.
The final piece of the 2017 jigsaw puzzle was the Predator Official Fan App. The only thing worth mentioning here is that it was a product of our old mates Fox Interactive, now going by the name of Fox Digital Entertainment, Inc. 2018 then kicks off with another VR jobbie, Alien: Descent. This is actually quite a momentous, uhh, moment in Alien gaming history, because Alien: Descent is a proper, full-blooded, Virtual Reality installation, played with big goggles, electric backpacks and some kind of actual guns. (There have been several other attempts at making live-action Alien ‘experiences’ and so on, most notably when Disney tried to re-tool its generic, sorta-fun, sorta-scary Alien Encounter ride as an actual, licensed Alien experience…). Described on the official website as a “free-roaming VR experience”, you and your friends are equipped with “a first-of-its-kind wireless technology that changes the way users experience virtual reality”, and through the magic of technology have the full pant-filling terror of the films beamed directly into your eyeballs as you realistically fight for your life. Heart attacks, terrified screaming, involuntary release of bladder and bowls, not to mention loads of accidental cuts and bruises from panicking friends smashing into each other — it’s all right there for you to experience, right now.
And if that sounds all too much for you, or like most of the world you don’t live near Orange, California, then 2018 also gave us a “new Amazon Alexa skill” excitingly known as Alien: Offworld Colony Simulator. Full disclosure: whilst I am a loyal Amazon customer, I have no interest in any of their home gadgets, so the words “new Amazon Alexa skill” mean as much to me as ‘radiator cauliflower socket box’. Still, in case you do know what it all means, then the official description reads thus:
“The Offworld Colony Simulator is a turn-based exploration game that challenges you to escape from the sectors of a locked down Weyland-Yutani Space Colony. The objective of the game is to escape as many colony sectors as possible before being trapped by the colony’s quarantine protocol, or falling prey to security hazards.”
[Image Credit: FoxNext VR, VRsenal]
It does sound like it could be interesting, anyway, and there is some mention of character sheets and graph-paper maps, so that’s always good. But if this is still not tickling your fancy, then all you’ve got is Predator VR, courtesy of FoxNext VR and VRsenal (if you’ve ever seen Fruit Ninja in an arcade, that was them), and hardware suppliers Phosphor. This is a distinctly less exhausting proposition than the complete lunacy described above, and was unveiled at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions 2018 expo for possible release in February 2019. Resembling nothing so much as a very high-tech bedroom mirror, you stand in front of it with a wired headset and gun that are suspended over your head on an arm (just visible in the picture here), and shoot things in a floor-length screen… As Ian Holm’s Ash once said, “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.” Still, the brave reporters at Aliens vs. Predator Galaxy who attended the show and captured this video of the game in action, also say that 2020 might see a similar thing developed for the Alien, as well as a release on “other formats”.
Well, before we close the lid and go to sleep for another six decades, there are two more titles to consider. The first of these is the recently-released Alien: Blackout, which is credited to FoxNext and three other companies, including Finnish developers Rival Games. As promised earlier, this game sees the return of Amanda Ripley in a story that, while deliberately not referencing any times or dates, could be seen to follow on from Alien Isolation in so far as Ripley ‘wakes up’ aboard a space station that has a wee bit of a problem… (Some sources are calling it a sequel, some not. Take your pick).
Your job as Ripley is to guide four crewmen around the station collecting parts to fix something, presumably in order to escape. This is done remotely, as you’re actually crouched in a corner somewhere directing their movements via CCTV and comlinks, etc. Alien: Blackout very excitingly blends the look and feel of Isolation’s graphics and UI with the ‘guide the marines around remotely’ aspect of Software Studios’ classic 1986 Aliens: The Computer Game (which we looked at back in Part 1). Not only that, but there’s every chance Mr. Alien will find you hunkered over your tablet ordering the crewmen around. But to even realise that, let alone react to it, requires raising your view from your tablet screen and actually looking up… Five Nights at Freddy’s style. All format prejudices aside, this already sounds infinitely more terrifying than all the VR stuff we’ve looked at (except that California one, that sounds truly horrifying).
While Alien: Blackout does cost about 5 or 6 of your Earth moneys, you can whet your appetite for it (and totally spoil the plot of Isolation) for free, by sitting down with the seven 10-minute-long episodes of the Alien: Isolation Digital Series. If all goes well, I’ve embedded part one for you below, so do feel free to check it out (but again, it will spoil the story of the game for you. You have been warned. Twice!). Essentially, it’s all the cinematic cutscenes from the game (and they are hugely cinematic) glued together with specially-made new bits to tell one narratively logical and complete story. It’s a little bit janky in places, and as some commenters have pointed out, you lose something by marching through the story at such speed (whereas playing it can take a long time and is much more immersive). But it’s still pretty good and well worth a look. And if you don’t want to do that, but you do want some more Amanda Ripley in your life, then Dark Horse Comics have you covered with a new miniseries starring Ripley Jr, Aliens: Resistance.
May 2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the original film, so it’s perhaps no surprise that Fox are once again happily spreading the Alien love around. Although the films seem to have stalled for the time being, with Blomkamp’s Alien 5 reboot cancelled to make way for Alien: Covenant and further prequels that now look sort of unlikely anyway, on the gaming front at least, Giger’s creation is still going strong. FoxNext Games (quite a snappy name they gave themselves there) and Fox’s internal dev team, known as Cold Iron Studios, are currently working on an as-yet untitled ‘online shooter’ set in the Alien universe. Very little is known about it, other than that like Activision’s recent Destiny games, it’ll be an FPS with a strong online component. They’ve apparently been working on it since early 2018, giving us a small tease about it in a Tweet in January this year (that’s 2019 to you, Future Reader). So, no title, no release date, no idea other than a vague hint at the genre. But based on the tweet, it does seem like we’ll be seeing a lot more of Ripley’s progeny, and if they can keep the quality up, the future of the Alien in gaming looks very bright indeed.
This is Guy Cole, last surviving Features Writer, signing off.
