Tips and Tricks for Playing Alien: Isolation

Life is fragile in Alien: Isolation. As players do their best to navigate the creepy corridors of Sevastopol Station, they will encounter obstacles and adversaries that will challenge the game’s protagonist, Amanda Ripley, in every way imaginable. The enemies are formidable, the objectives taxing and the journey long. These are things we discovered first-hand, and being that it’s our business to make your experience more enjoyable, here are some tips and tricks we picked up along the way.

• Prima’s Free Alien: Isolation Walkthrough and Guide
• How to Escape and Evade the Alien

The Right Tool for the Job

If you’ve played enough video games, it’s no secret they tend to give you new gizmos and gadgets at the best possible moments. Finding a big ammunition cache is usually a good sign that a gunfight is just around the corner.

Alien: Isolation is exactly the same way. Every job has a specific tool that will make life easier, and the game tends to give you that tool just before you need it. For example, players will pick up the Motion Tracker and EMP device just before sneaking past a batch of Synthetics. Since the Motion Tracker can pinpoint locations for you and the EMP can temporarily disorient Synthetics, this is not a coincidence. The same applies a little further down the line when you’re introduced to the Flamethrower, then have to use it to scare the Alien away in one of the game’s most intense missions.

The point in all of this is that if you find the right tool for the job, your life on Sevastopol will be much easier.

Pick Up and Craft Stuff

The crafting system in Alien: Isolation isn’t the least bit complicated, but there are still best practices to keep in mind.

First of all, if you try to pick something up and get a message that the item is maxed out, try crafting something that requires that item — be it a Medkit or EMP — in order to free up extra space to carry more bits and pieces.

Of course, crafting is something that should be done in the privacy of a vent, or at the very least in a room and at a time when the Alien isn’t hunting you. The last thing you need is to have to craft a Medkit while a group of Synthetics are telling you to calm down as they punch you in the heart.

Motion Tracker + Objective Marker

There’s nothing more hilarious than watching a tough-as-nails adult walking down a dark corridor in Sevastopol, only to view their Motion Tracker and dive into a locker for 30 minutes to calm down. Yup, that’s the kind of scary that Alien: Isolation brings to the table, the brand of terrified where you don’t even have to see the creature in order to fear it.

The Motion Tracker isn’t just a way to figure out whether or not you’re alone, though, it’s also a way to find your objective in a huge hurry. It won’t just point in the general direction of your objective, it will work nearly like a GPS, updating and telling you where to go each time you pass into a new room or corridor. Based on how lost people seem to be in the game thus far, this is a tip you should probably share with your friends.

Who Needs Directions?

The short answer… you do.

However, since we know that stopping to ask the possibly-friendly-but-likely-a-jerk Synthetic isn’t really your style, our suggestion is to pick up every map that you possibly can. These little gems of information will reveal areas you haven’t visited yet, and they often show points of interest or even an alternate route to your objective. In fact, since you’ll end up visiting most places more than once, you’ll find that putting in the extra work to collect these maps early on will pay off later in the game. You’re welcome.

Sevastolink Terminals

This tip is a bit more specific, but in just about every mission you’ll be asked to find a passcode in order to open a door, and these are commonly found in the various Sevastolink terminals scattered throughout the station.

These high-tech super computers — Ha! — don’t just provide numbers, however, they are often used to restart or boot-up systems, or even reveal tidbits of information that Ms. Ripley wouldn’t have otherwise found herself in possession of. The point in all of this… read the terminals.

Save Your Game

Save your game… We repeat… Save your game.

You know those cool looking pay phone like deals that say Emergency on them, hanging off walls all over the place? Yeah, walk up to those and save your game as often as you possibly can, especially if you’re crazy enough to play this game on Hard. There’s nothing more frustrating than finally getting through a rough patch only to die and do it all over again.