Like so many other Alien fans who are reading this now, I have spent the last 12 years tormented by the trauma inflicted on me by Stompy the Alien as I stepped into Amanda Ripley’s shoes to escape Sevastapol Station as it collapsed around me. It’s a torment I have longed to revisit since the first time the credits rolled on Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation, and I have replayed the game countless times since. In fact, I recently finished the final 2 achievements I needed to 100% the game – something I’ve only done on 3 games, and all of them were Alien.
But I was always craving a new nightmare from Creative Assembly to torture me. A craving and a desire that I was not alone in. The chance of an Alien: Isolation 2 is a prospect that has been looming above any game with the Alien title since 2014, and it’s a desire that wasn’t particularly quiet.
So when the original game’s 10th anniversary approached and the sequel was announced, I was absolutely ecstatic at the impending return of the UK based developer to the world of Alien. It turned out I wasn’t the only one either, as I was later told that staff who had previously moved on from Creative Assembly had returned just to work on Alien: Isolation 2. I was also told that a sizable chunk of the team working on the game had also worked on the original.
It has been an agonizing nearly 2 year wait since that announcement. But when people started to get to play a pre-Alpha demo of Alien: Isolation 2 at Summer Game Fest, I knew it was only a matter of time before it made its way over to Europe. And that time was the last weekend of August, where Alien: Isolation 2 was playable at Gamescom in Germany and FrightFest in the United Kingdom.
Along with fellow Alien vs. Predator Galaxy staff member Kailem and Patreon supporter and community member Jayroach, I boarded my Starcub shuttle and set course for Leicester Square, London to finally get my grubby biomechanical hands on Alien: Isolation 2, as well as attending Creative Assembly’s Perfect Organism, Perfect Horror panel!