Alien: Isolation delivers a dose of real sci-fi terror

The videogame, inspired by the sci-fi horror movie Alien, is set 15 years after the events of the film.

The alien from the video game Alien: Isolation. AP Photo/Sega

Ridley Scott's influential sci-fi horror movie Alien has inspired dozens of video games since its debut in 1979, but Alien: Isolation is the first in a while that has aspired to matching the claustrophobic terror of the original film.

Is Isolation as bone-chilling and nerve-racking as its big-screen ­inspiration? Well, not quite – but it does deliver some thrills.

The game takes place 15 years after the events of the film. The protagonist, Amanda Ripley, is searching for her mother – Ellen Ripley – when she follows a lead to the Sevastopol, a decommissioned space station. Unfortunately, the joint has also attracted a visit from one of the toothsome alien xenomorphs that wiped out Ellen Ripley's crewmates on the spaceship ­Nostromo.

The Sevastopol is a fascinating ­environment, with a retro-­futuristic design that looks like something you’d see in, well, a 1970s sci-fi movie. The computers run on a primitive version of DOS. The emergency check-in points – where you save your progress – look like wall-mounted pay phones. There aren’t any high-powered plasma rifles – the most effective weapon you’ll find is a flame-thrower.

Amanda has to scavenge everything she needs to survive, including medical equipment, bullets and the materials to build bombs. There are a few friendly humans still on-board, but most have degenerated into a desperate survival mode and aren’t too welcoming. Worse, the androids that help run the station have gone haywire and are more likely to strangle you than assist you.

Of course, the nastiest threat is still that hungry alien. You can’t kill it, and if it sees you, you have only a few seconds to live before it turns you into lunch. You do, however, have a hand-held motion detector that starts beeping and displays a moving dot if the xenomorph is in the vicinity. When that happens, your best option is to stay hidden until the beast goes away or finds someone else to chomp on.

It’s a unique game mechanic that requires a lot of patience. If the alien kills you – and it will, frequently – you are sent all the way back to your last save point, which can mean losing up to a half-hour of progress. I’ve had few gaming experiences more frustrating than being inches away from the next save point, only to suddenly realise an alien claw had just penetrated my intestines.

Your overall goal is simple – get off the Sevastopol – but Isolation requires you to go back and forth across the space station so many times that it becomes awfully ­repetitive.

The 20-hour mission could easily have been cut in half and still been rewarding. And I never jumped out of my seat like I did while watching the movie in the cinema decades ago.

Still, fans of the original film will find much to savour – even as the beast is sinking its teeth into them.

• Alien: Isolation, from Sega, is available now for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PC