To mark the holiday season, the Epic Games Store has upped the pace of its usual weekly game giveaways to one a day. The 15 days of free PC games continues apace with today’s offering, which is Alien: Isolation. You’ve got 24 hours to grab your copy.
Let’s dispense with the usual throat clearing here: Alien: Isolation is far and away the best Alien experience you can find in games. Even with a few frustrating gameplay elements (hello, rubber-banding xenomorph) and a third act that overstays its welcome, the experience of being alone and hunted as Amanda Ripley in the Sevastopol space station is truly frightening. Developer Creative Assembly put a lot of thought and care into recreating the retro-future environments you’ll encounter on the Sevastopol, down to the padded bulkheads and light-diffusing steam.
It’s on our lists for both the best horror games and best stealth games, as you’ll have to sneak around quietly while the intelligent alien AI searches for any sign of your presence, and will rush to your position if you make a racket. That’s when the horror bit kicks in, since failure means finding out what it looks like in first person to have your head cored like an apple by that vicious little set of secondary jaws.
Fans of the movie series will also be thrilled to know that Alien: Isolation also reassembled almost the entire cast of the original film to provide voiceover work for the game.
In any case, head over to the Epic Store to pick up Alien: Isolation for free. You’ll have until tomorrow at 8:00 PST / 11:00 EST / 16:00 GMT to redeem your copy. Remember, too, that claiming a free game from Epic grants you a $10 coupon to use during the Epic holiday sale (however, you can only have one of these at a time).
Enjoy your stay at the Sevastopol, and remember: the Working Joes are not your friends.