88 Macworld • February 2022MAC GAMING
SHOOTING &
ACTION GAMES- Alien: Isolation – The
Collection
Price: £34.99 from fave.co/3dE8fOx
Most of the games based on the
Alien films have been pretty awful –
in fact, Alien: Colonial Marines even
prompted a lawsuit back in 2013 from
disgruntled customers who felt they’d
been misled by the advertising for the
game. Fortunately, as our friends over
at GameAgent recently remarked,
Alien: Isolation is one of the “good
Alien games”.
Originally released for the PC
in 2015, Alien: Isolation has arrived
on the Mac and does a great job of
capturing the tension and atmosphere
of that very first Alien film. The game
is set 15 years after Alien, following
the discovery of the black-box flight-
recorder from Ellen Ripley’s ship, The
Nostromo. Ripley, of course, is still
missing, so her daughter Amanda
heads off to recover the black-box
from the space station that found it.
No prizes for guessing what
Amanda and her team discover when
they arrive at the space station: a
toothy xenomorph on the loose, and
gradually working its way through the
terrified crew. Your task as Amanda is
not to go in with all guns blazing, but
simply to avoid the alien and stay alive- hiding inside a locker, or creating
a distraction that will draw the alien
away for a few crucial seconds.
The game creates a real sense of
tension, and the computer-controlled
alien is smart enough to provide a
really formidable foe. This ‘collection’
also includes a number of bonus
missions, including Crew Expendable,
which re-enacts
events from
the original
Alien film.
However, the
game’s system
requirements are
pretty high, so
you should check
that your Mac is
up to it before
- buying the game.