ISOLATION

After years of reducing HR Giger's Xenomorph to jittery cannon fodder, video games have finally decided to play around with the creature as a persistent, singular threat. Alien: Isolation puts you at the mercy of one prowling bug as you desperately attempt to escape from a malfunctioning space station.

There's been a bit of a stink about the player character, you take control of Ripley's daughter, but I'm not sure that it's a deal breaker. Yes, it reeks of a studio notes style hook and messes around with a beat from the Special Edition of Aliens, but we already know there can be no reconciliation. Instead the idea seems to suggest that Creative Assembly are approaching their game as a stand-alone sequel that maybe even replaces Jim Cameron's masterpiece. The first two (three?) Alien films are forever. Even Ridley Scott himself couldn't undermine them. Why not treat chronology as a malleable thing if it takes us new places? It certainly worked for the two dozen Godzilla films I watched recently.

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