About 3 minutes into Alien Blackout I exclaimed “Holy Sh*t, it’s Double Switch!" While my wife and 4 month old were not nearly as amused by this revelation, I was sold… but I’m getting ahead of myself. Full disclosure: Alien is my favorite fictional franchise of all time. I will take Ridley Scott’s recent attempts at horror-relevance over your “Gotta Throw this Ring into the Volcano" buddy-flick any day of the week. I love Alien. So, when the teases for a new Alien game started to surface, I was over the moon.

Then, they announced it was a mobile-only sequel to 2014’s Alien Isolation and I wasn’t so sure. I loved Alien Isolation, but it was very much a “game for fans of the series", not everybody. It completely captured the ambience and character of the 1979 classic, but there were times where it just wasn’t fun to play. In addition to that, Alien Isolation was a Console/PC game. How could a mobile-only sequel live up to that" Well, funny you should ask…
Alien Blackout takes place an indeterminate amount of time after the ending of Alien Isolation. You play as Amanda Ripley, the daughter of series heroine (and all around bad-ass) Ellen Ripley. Amanda Ripley, interestingly enough, was not invented for this series. She made a brief appearance in the Special Edition of 1986’s Aliens. Alien Isolation and Blackout try to fill in the holes of what Amanda Ripley did after her mother ...