Fear creeps through the shadows in these Alien: Isolation images

By Adam Rosenberg Published October 13, 2014

Read our full Alien: Isolation review.

In Alien: Isolation, Total War developer Creative Assembly casts off the action flavor of past video game efforts in the series in favor of survival horror. The creeping dread of director Ridley Scott’s 1979 film seems to have been capably translated, at least from what we can tell in these screens. Players step into the role of Amanda Ripley, daughter of Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), in a story that picks up 15 years after the events of the original film. There’s just one Xenomorph hunting you, but that’s a terrifying prospect when you don’t have a magic bag filled with guns to rely on.

Adam Rosenberg

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

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The biggest gaming news of 2024: Concord flops, Palworld vs. Nintendo, and more

2024 was a rough year for the game industry. It was dominated by layoffs, significant strategic shifts from some of the biggest companies in the industry, and gigantic live service flops that demonstrated just how hard that space is to break into. In last year's iteration of this article, I wrote that it felt like I was covering a "video game industry bound to head into an odd 2024 that lacks the known quantity bombshells of this year and continues to reel from layoffs." That certainly proved to be true.

That's not to say it was all dour. Some fantastic games were released, with some surprise viral successes like Palworld and Black Myth: Wukong showing how the right games since have the potential to resonate with millions of players. The video game industry is hurting, though, and looking toward 2025, the launch of Nintendo Switch's successor and Grand Theft Auto VI will have to do a lot of heavy lifting to get the industry out of this rut. These news stories shaped the video game industry's tumultuous 2024.
Layoffs did not slow down

Gaming

Half-Life jumps to over 5,000 concurrent players thanks to a brutal new mod

Half-Life has its fair share of gore and horror elements, but it was never the splatterhouse experience some shooters can be. Of course, part of that was due to graphical limitations in 1998; trying to go overboard with gore just looked silly. A new fan mod changes that, though, as Brutal Half-Life will take you on a much bloodier, more violent experience.

Players have flocked back to the classic first-person shooter since the mod's release, with player counts reaching more than 5,000 concurrent players in the last 24 hours. At the time of this writing, there were more than 4,400 players online at once -- a big jump from the 2,000 concurrent players the game maintains on average, according to PCGamesN.

Gaming

One of 2024’s most underrated games is free on Epic Games Store right now

A prison guard shoots aliens in Redacted.

Epic Games Store's holiday giveaway continues today with Redacted, a roguelike-spinoff of The Callisto Protocol that takes heavy inspiration from Hades and other similar titles. It has a totally different vibe than its source material, though, and it's a game that you can get a lot of enjoyment out of -- especially for free.

Redacted is a roguelike where players must fight their way through Black Iron Prison to the single remaining escape pod, finding loot and skills along the way. It has strong progression systems, as Redacted lets players increase their character level and upgrades between each run, but it adds a bit of a twist: You're racing more than just hordes of enemies.

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