Alien: Blackout is a mobile game, unfortunately

Alien: Blackout is a mobile game where you manage Amanda Ripley and her crew while they’re trapped on a space station. There, best to rip the plaster off quickly. After the trademark appeared and Hideo Kojima and Geoff Keighley seemed to be teasing it just before The Game Awards, some of us—definitely me—may have gotten our hopes up, but it looks like we’ll just have to go back to Alien Isolation. That’ll teach us.

Blackout sticks Ripley Jr. and her crew on a Weyland-Yutani space station where—shocker—there’s a xenomorph hanging around. Players will make “perilous choices”, according to the official site, while guiding the survivors through tasks using only the station’s emergency systems.

I actually quite like the idea of helping the crew from a control room instead of dealing with the xenomorph directly, especially since we’ve already seen the first-person horror done so well. The cameras, a map and a motion tracker are all you’ve got. But I also envision lots of fiddly tapping on maps and tiny buttons, which I definitely don't have the patience for any more.

There is that other new Alien game in the works, however, which we still don't know much about. It's a shooter being developed by Cold Iron Studios and will launch on PC and consoles.

Cheers, Variety.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.