But the ships never came, and the crew was trapped. And they weren’t alone. There was something out there, something terrible…something that seemed to be made of shadows. People starting disappearing, and then the crew splintered off into societies, vying for control of precious supplies.

Fear took hold as more and more people starting disappearing into the vents. Whatever was out there, it was hungry, and it whipped the survivors into a frenzy.

Soon neighbor turned on neighbor, friend turned on friend, and everyone was attacking one another while the nefarious hunter picked them off one by one by one. Soon the Sevastopol was all but a graveyard with elegies written crudely in blood and gore.

Soon the only ones who were left alive were the lifeless Working Joes that went along their routines and duties, oblivious to the death around them.

Alone in the dark: The shadows are your friend

When you first encounter the alien, the suspense is palpable to the point where you can almost taste the dread, that tangy acridity of fear. Here is one of your worst nightmares made real before your eyes: a fearsome menace that stalks the broken space station in search of its prey, which so happens to be you.

The environments play a substantial role in the fear factor, as the areas are so devoid of life that the ship has its own sort of eerie sentience. It’s as if the ship is alive, a sort of mute idiot that’s oblivious to the horrors that befell its crew.

Even still the Sevastopol is a beautiful entity that radiates with careful precision and dedication. In many ways I think that the Sevastopol is Creative Assembly’s baby, as it’s so perfectly maintained, rendered and portrayed that it looks like something right out of Ridley Scott’s imagination.

The real magic of the game lies in the intensity of the suspenseful overtones achieved by the alien itself. You feel like its always there, somewhere, watching and waiting. It knows where you are…it can see you, smell you, and is just waiting to gnaw away at your soul.

This feeling of being hunted is powerful and truly brings a sense of mingled awe and dread–awe at the fact that a game can make you feel this way, and dread well…because…you’re terrified.

Ripley soon finds that the best way to fight the alien is with her wit. As an engineer she has valuable expertise in this regard, and can craft a number of helpful tools like noisemakers to draw out the beast as well as EMP mines to dispatch Working Joes.

For all its strengths, the alien is like a rabid animal. It is intelligent in some ways but it is also wild, and this is its downfall. It can be tricked with cunning and subterfuge. This is the heart of surviving encounters with the alien, and perfectly mirrors how Ellen Ripley ultimately conquered her foe.

Essential success in Alien Isolation is not through confrontation, but general smarts, creativity, and hiding. Getting caught by the alien will lead to death every single time, and the flamethrower will only stall its attempts.

You’ll want to crouch and sneak wherever you go, and you get a helpful motion tracker (the same one from Aliens) that pinpoints anything nearby, whether it be alien, human or synthetic. This is your lifeline to survival.

Isolation does a fantastic job emulating the basic principles of survival: opportunity, luck and adapting to your environment.

Many times you’re going to die, die, and die again–but every death serves a purpose as it shows you what not to do. Some levels can only be beaten by figuring out the best path, which makes a good portion of the game a sort of tedious trial-and-error test.

The environments usually offer an array of hiding spots for Ripley should the alien come stalking by. She can hop into a locker or a supply cubby, or even under desks to avoid being seen.

You always want to keep your eye on the sinister sable sadist at all times, especially if it’s close, and the leaning function is great for this. The alien can hear the motion tracker and it’ll root you out of your hiding spot with effortless precision.

One of the major flaws in the game is how many times you’ll have to restart certain areas. This is largely due to the sparse save stations, which are the only checkpoint system the game offers outside of area transitions.

Dying over and over can be downright frustrating, but it’s always good to experiment and try out different things. Don’t be afraid to use the items you craft, that is that they’re there for, after all.

Persistence, awareness and calm are all prerequisites to conquering Alien Isolation. You have to be able to keep your cool under dire situations in order to progress. There will be times where the alarms are going off and the alien is clambering in the vents above while you hopelessly sneak in the shadows, and in those times you have to keep focused. Or you’ll die. And die. And then die some more.