The scariest Alien sequel came out 10 years ago — and it isn’t a movie at all

digitaltrends.com:

Alien remains a one-of-a-kind nightmare. There’s just no replicating the dread of Ridley Scott’s 1979 deep-space thriller. James Cameron knew that, and smartly did his own thing with Aliens, fashioning a sequel that traded the original’s ruthless minimalism for bug-hunt spectacle. Scott knew it, too, judging from the direction in which he took the franchise with a pair of prequels, Prometheusand Alien: Covenant, which were heavier on philosophy and mythology than terror. Some of the other entries in the series, including this week’s Alien: Romulus, have gestured toward the primal simplicity of the first, pitting a small group of desperate people against that slimy, sleek killing machine from beyond the stars. But all of them are echoes.

In fact, the only Aliensequel that’s come within spitting distance of Alien— at least in the department of completely shredding nerves — isn’t a movie at all. It’s Alien: Isolation, the 2014 survival-horror game from Creative Assembly.

Unfolding from the first-person perspective of Amanda Ripley, aka the grown daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, Isolationpresents itself as a direct follow-up to Scott’s film. But the game forges more than a narrative connection to its cinematic inspiration. It also leans heavily on the valuesof that sci-fi milestone: deathly quiet, foreboding atmosphere, a tension as thick as the hull of an intergalactic big rig. In doing so, it arguably comes closer to the cold-blooded, white-knuckle spirit of Alienthan any of the big-screen offspring the film has hatched.

Alien: Isolation, which turns 10 in October, would be a great game even without the IP branding. It is, like its title attraction, a marvel of pitiless design — a finely tuned fright machine. Set aboard a sprawling space station (think: Deep Space Nine in disarray, overrun by postapocalyptic scavengers), the game alternates stretches of eerily calm exploration with breathlessly suspenseful stealth evasion. Supplies are limited, both in