We’ve been playing stealth games for decades now, infiltrating military bases undetected, choking henchmen from behind and packing ventilation shafts with their naked unconscious bodies. But making sneaking fun isn’t easy. Full spatial awareness, how to communicate your visibility, and reliability of tools and AI behaviors are a hard thing to pin down. Luckily, these games pull it off without disturbing a single dust mote. They’re the best stealth games you can play on the PC right now, and what we recommend for players looking to get their super quiet feet wet. 

Deus Ex

Deus Ex' sandbox structure made it a landmark study in open-ended design. The large environments and varied upgrade tree are designed to give you ways to solve tasks expressively, using imagination and forethought instead of a big gun. Nearly every stealth game on this list borrows something from Deus Ex, and it’s easy to see why.

Deus Ex pulled off experimental, player-driven stealth design in huge, tiered environments. It was the cyberpunk espionage dream, and for many modern developers, it still is. The last two entries in the series, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, play with similar, more streamlined design, and while we recommend them as well, they still can’t brush with the complexity and novelty of the original. If you’re not big on playing old games, install some mods like Deus Ex Revision, and give it a shot.

Hitman

After Hitman: Absolution, it seemed that Blood Money would stay the golden standard for silly stealth sandbox shenanigans indefinitely, but IO Interactive surprised us all with Hitman’s new episodic format. For the better part of 2016, we were treated with a new level every month, each featuring a different setting, layout, and pocket universe of NPCs going about their clockwork lives. Agent 47 is the screwdriver you get to jam in wherever you choose. Watching the mechanism break around you (and reacting to it when things go wrong) is central to Hitman’s charm.I like the way Phil put it in his season review: “Strip away the theme and fantasy, and you're left with a diorama of moving parts—a seemingly perfect system of loops, each intersecting to create a complex scene. It's left to you to decide how you want to break it—whether it's by surgically removing key actors, or by violently smashing it all up with guns, bombs and a stuffed moose.”

Supported with a steady stream of updates, including temporary Elusive Targets and remixed levels, it’s still possible to play the entirety of season one in new ways (and season two is already in development). We might be getting a steady stream of Hitman forever, and videogames are better for it.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

In the years since Chaos Theory, Splinter Cell and the majority of stealth games have veered from a focus on purely covert scenarios, and it’s easy to see why. Chaos Theory is a complex, punishing stealth game whose gratification is severely delayed (for the better). Getting through an area without a soul knowing takes pounds of patience and observation, and getting caught is not easy to recover from. It was a slow, arduous crawl, but a crawl unlike any other in the genre, with a level of realism we haven’t seen since. 

Accompanied by a Sam Fisher at peak Jerk Cowboy, as difficult as it was, we laughed through the pain. The multiplayer was also a bold experiment in asymmetry at the time, pitting Sam-Fishery spies against first-person shooting soldiers in a tense game of hide and seek.

Thief 2

Alongside Deus Ex, the Thief series introduced new variables to stealth games that have since been adopted as a standard nearly across the board. Using light and shadow as central to your visibility, Thief made stealth much more than the visible-or-not dichotomy of implied vision cones. 

The Thief series is still unparalleled in the subtlety of its narrative and environmental design. Jody Macgregor sums it up in a piece on the very subject: “Thief II ramps up the number of secrets within each level, but even with as many as a dozen hidden rooms and stashes to discover their placement is always just as subtle. A shooting range conceals a lever among the arrows embedded in the wall behind the targets, a bookshelf is slightly out of alignment, a glint of light pokes through the edge of a stone in a wall. Compare that to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which sometimes hides one of the many ducts you can climb into behind a crate but more often plonks them into the corner of rooms beside a neon sculpture.”

The first two Thief games are interchangeable as the ‘best’ for most players, so be sure to play them both, but the second takes the cake as a best-of recommendation for working out some UI and AI kinks from the original. But with both games, install a few mods and it’s fairly simple to make them easier on the eyes and our modern design sensibilities. 

Mark of the Ninja

The biggest challenge facing stealth games has always been how to communicate whether or not you’re visible to enemies. While we’re still working out the kinks in 3D games, Mark of the Ninja solved just about every problem with two dimensions. 

Through clear UI cues, it’s easy to tell how much noise you’re making, whether or not a guard can hear it, and what spaces in the environment are completely safe to hide. There’s almost no room for error, at least in how you interpret the environment and your stealthy (or not) status within it. Accompanied by swift, springy platforming control and a robust ninja ability upgrade tree, by the end of Mark of the Ninja the challenge reaches high, but so too does your skill.

Dishonored 2

What surprised me most about Dishonored 2 is the density of its level design. Like other stealthy immersive sims, it features huge levels with any number of potential routes for getting through, but Dishonored 2 is the first to make me want to see every inconsequential alleyway. Nearly every space is as detailed as a room in Gone Home, decorated with natural props and people that tell a specific story. 

There are more systems and choices than ever, and while you explore, how you dispose of or sneak by guards is a playful exercise in self-expression and experimentation. Emily and Corvo have their own unique abilities, and a single playthrough won’t get you all their powers. Summon eldritch tentacle arms to fling psychically chained enemies into the sea, or freeze time and possess a corpse during for a particularly, uh, daring escape. Just make sure not to miss Sokolov’s adventure journals, they’re a treat.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

I think The Phantom Pain’s appeal is best summarized by how everything going wrong typically means everything is actually going well. Samuel’s anecdote from his review is a perfect example: “I forfeited a perfect kill-free stealth run of one mission because I couldn’t get a good enough sniper angle on my target before he took off in a chopper. Sprinting up flights of stairs to the helipad, my victim spotted me just in time for me to throw every grenade in my inventory under the chopper, destroying it, vanquishing him and knocking me over, before I made a ludicrously frantic escape on horseback. It was amazing, and I’m not sure it would’ve been vastly improved had I silently shot the guy and snuck out.” Wish I could’ve seen it, Sam.

For a series to go from weighed down by cutscenes, spouting nonsense about nuclear war and secret Cold War contracts with a few simple stealth sequences to a full blown open world stealth sandbox masterpiece (and on the PC too) was quite the surprise. As a silent Big Boss, there are hundreds of hours of wide open stealth scenarios to tackle in MGS5, despite its thinner second chapter. Systemically, this is one of the most surprising stealth games ever made, and as bittersweet a swan song as Kojima could leave us with before departing Konami for good.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

It took me six months to finish Amnesia. It doesn’t allow you to play stealth games the way you’re used to, and by removing old habits, so goes your sense of security. The sanity mechanic intentionally denies you your habits by distorting your view and slowing down your character while looking at a patrolling enemy monster. Lovely, beautiful, safe, warm light also plays a part. The darker an environment, the sooner you’ll lose sanity, but if you whip out a lantern, guess who’s going to spot it? That gross bag of skin patrolling the halls. The enemy AI isn’t particularly smart or surprising, but in an atmosphere as rich as Amnesia’s you’ll think they were put on this earth to hunt you down, specifically. If you can stomach the scares, it’s a must.

Alien: Isolation

More than an incredible homage to ‘70s futuretech and the world of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece in horror, Alien: Isolation’s chief antagonist is a major step forward in first-person stealth horror design. The alien is a constant, erratic threat. It actively hunts you, listening for every small noise and clue of your presence, hiding in wait above for a sneak attack or—what’s that sprouting from your chest? Nice try. But besides the accomplished alien AI, Isolation makes good on its 25-hour playtime by constantly switching things up. 

As Andy Kelly wrote in his review, “In one level you might lose the use of your motion tracker. In another, the alien won't be around so you can merrily shotgun androids like it's Doom 3. Then your weapons will be taken away, forcing you to make smart use of your gadgets. It does this all the way through, forcing you to adapt and readapt to different circumstances, using all the tools at your disposal.” Alien: Isolation is both a striking, authentic homage to the films, and a consistently creative stealth gauntlet. If you don’t mind getting spooked, don’t miss it.

Invisible, Inc

Invisible, Inc nails the slow tension and tactical consideration of XCOM, but places an emphasis on subversion of enemies and security placements rather than direct confrontation. You’re not an overwhelming offensive force, and getting spotted almost always spells your doom. 

Chris puts it well in our Best Design award from 2015: “To the stealth sim, it introduces completely transparent rules. You always know what your options are, what the likely results of your actions will be, and your choices are always mitigated by resources that you have complete control over. There’s no chance failure, and very little trial and error. You either learn to make all of these totally-fair systems dance, or you fail.”

The turned based format means you get unlimited time to make a decision that would take a split second in a real time stealth game, but because of the extra space for consideration, Invisible Inc. piles on the systems, making every infiltration a true challenge, but one comprised of fair, transparent rule sets. Dishonored may test your sneaking reflexes, but do you have the deep smarts to be a spy? Invisible, Inc will let you know one way or the other.

The Creative Assembly's third annual Franco Jam is set to run this weekend a 48 hour game jam in memory of the late Simon Franco who sadly passed away in 2014. Franco worked at the studio for 10 years as a programmer on a number of Total War games, and as a senior programmer on the esteemed horror survival game Alien: Isolation.

"Creative Assembly s annual charity Game Jam, Franco Jam , in honour of the UK games studios Senior Programmer, Simon Franco, is now in its third year," reads a blurb on the Creative Assembly site. "The weekend-long in-house Game Jam is set to kick off on the 11th November 2016 at 5pm, to once again celebrate the memory of Simon, and to raise funds for a charity of his family s choosing.

"This year, all funds raised are donated to Team Verrico, a UK charity who fund treatment, diagnosis and support for those suffering from rare and hard to treat cancers."

While the Creative Assembly team are hard at work crafting games, those interested can tune in via the Total War Twitch channel where half-hourly game giveaways and back to back streams of the studio's favourite games will take place. Here's some of what CA has planned:

• Game code giveaways every half hour, from indie to AAA titles on PC, Xbox and PS4.
• In-game incentives, including the chance to watch the CA team in a blindfolded Alien: Isolation run!
• Back to back gameplay from our team’s personal archives of favourite titles.
• Regular updates on Creative Assembly’s internal game jam; Franco Jam.

The Franco Jam kicks off at 5pm GMT/9am PT tomorrow, November 11. If you'd like to donate, you can do so via the jam's Just Giving page.

Almost two years after it was released, Alien: Isolation still has secrets left to spill. Web developer and modder Matt Filer whose work we ve featured on PC Gamer before has discovered a huge amount of unused dialogue hidden in the game s files. You can download the whole script here. It s a long read, and not strictly canon, but reveals a lot of extra information about Sevastopol, Ripley, and a number of supporting characters.It s also a fascinating insight into how the game was written, and how the story changed over the course of its development. But the most intriguing revelation is an elaborate, lengthy introduction sequence that was ultimately cut from the game. These disconnected audio logs and subtitle files only tell part of the story, but fill in the blanks and you get an idea of what these sections would ve been like had they made the final cut.

The journalist

There are audio logs and subtitles from a sequence seemingly set on Sevastopol before Ripley s arrival. It s clear the alien is loose at this point, and they describe the turmoil on the station as people try to evacuate.A journalist, Julia Jones, is on Sevastopol to write about the station. I viewed the people here as nothing more than footnotes for my article; something to tug at the heartstrings against the dry facts of Sevastopol s economic failure. She then mentions a ship, the Solace, which we ll hear more about later. We ve just witnessed the Solace leaving Sevastopol. Everyone is rushing to the terminal; if there was one ship there may be another! I can see the Marshals now. They re trying to calm everything, but are being pelted by projectiles The atmosphere is no, no, they re turning people back! (Loses composure and journalistic tone to desperation) ...hey! Let us go! Then, suddenly, there are gunshots. Someone barges into Jones and she drops her recorder. People seem desperate to leave the station (for obvious reasons), and the departure of the Solace triggers a riot.

Mystery man

Another chain of events involves a character known only as EIS . Characters in the game have an unseen 'code' name (Verlaine is VAR, for example), but other than that, no one knows what this guy's name was. Marie, listen to me very carefully. I want you to leave work now, collect Claire, head home and pack a bag of essentials. I ve found a way off Sevastopol. Don t talk to anyone, don t tell them where you re going. Just meet me at the spaceflight terminal as soon as you can. Later he describes locking his family in a room somewhere to protect them, and we see another mention of the Solace. I only locked them in to keep them safe, but then we lost power. They must have woken up in the darkness. Sealed in huh? No no, please, no! They ve started screaming again. Can you hear? [the recording shows that there are no screams, just the groans of the Solace] Stop! Stop! It seems the mysterious EIS was one of the people who escaped aboard the Solace, but the ship has become overcrowded. People are fighting over hypersleep berths. We drew up a hypersleep rota to save resources. Then we find that son-of-a-bitch jumping the queue, busting open one of the berths. We tried to stop him, but he attacked the captain. I panicked, grabbed a scalpel and [beat] My wife and daughter are in there. Can t trust anyone, so I m going to lock Medical. Keep them safe. Shouldn t have left Sevastopol.

Tools of the trade

There are some snippets that suggest this section was, at least at one point, intended to be playable. It seems whoever you played as would, like Ripley does later, get their hands on a hack tool and tracker.One is from Hughes, a character heard in audio logs in the main game, and the playable character of the Safe Haven DLC. If anyone finds this I ve adapted a tracker to spot larger targets; they re used to find rats so you should be able to sniff me out inside. And the other is from Ricardo, a Colonial Marshals deputy who Ripley ends up working with in the final game. I ve put together a hacking device and left it in the usual place. You should find this message on one of your patrols. It still needs a little work, but hopefully one of you should get it fixed.

Android torment

There s also a scene where a pair of unidentified NPCs torment a Working Joe android, much to the annoyance of another character.NPC: Guys, can you stop tormenting the Joe ?"NPC: Sure we can. Hey, you getting this on tape? NPC: Yeah, do it. Android: [*bzzt*]NPC: *laughter*NPC: *laughter*NPC: Guys! Knock it off!

The bad guys

The files also reveal more about the characters who, inevitably, want to try and capture/study the alien. Because that always works out so well in these stories, doesn't it?A doctor called Lingard, who s the playable character in the Trauma DLC, seems to be fascinated by the discovery of the facehugger attached to Foster.The life-form is incredibly valuable, a career maker; the research paper alone could set me up for life. But it could also be killing its hosts and I don t know how to remove it. In the final game we discover Lingard was under pressure from a Seegson corporate stooge called Ransome, who wanted in on her interesting find. If these files are anything to go by, Ransome initially had a much larger role in the story. In one conversation he instructs Sevastopol s central AI, Apollo, to protect the data at all costs presumably meaning the alien. Ransome is the equivalent of Aliens similarly slimy Carter Burke, it seems.RANSOME: Apollo, from this point in time Seegson executive presence on board Sevastopol will be limited. I am leaving the station. The data you re recording, and decoding, is vital to the future of the company it needs protection until I return. Maintain Seegson confidentiality at all costs station-wide. Use the Working Joes. Isolate the incident. Watch everything. Record everything. Protect everything. Corporate interests must be protected at all times. Do you understand? APOLLO: Yes. RANSOME: Then: initiate. And get me launch codes for the Solace. Yep, that s the ship Julia Jones saw departing before the riot, and the one EIS and his family escaped on. Ransome seems to have launched it, as well as removing the safety protocols on the station s Working Joes. That explains why they re so aggressive when Ripley encounters them.APOLLO: Apollo core maintenance mode: now active. Current Sevastopol status: Alerted. Synthetic safety parameters: Disengaged.

Alternate Torrens

And then we re back to Ripley, who wakes up aboard the Torrens as she does in the final game but with a bit of a difference. She wakes up alone in the hypersleep chamber in the game, but here Verlaine (the Torrens owner and captain) is waiting for her and gives her a medical check.VERLAINE: Hey, looking a little shaky there. Thought you were used to space travel? RIPLEY: I was. I am. Guess I stood up too fast. VERLAINE: It happens to the best of us. Let me check you over. RIPLEY: You said something had come up? VERLAINE: Follow the torch, please. Then commences a classic first-person game camera calibration test, to determine whether you use normal or inverted controls. She asks No problems with your vision? and then offers you a choice between the two camera modes. None of this made it into the final game.RIPLEY: Ugh, feels like something crawled inside me. VERLAINE: You just need to walk it off. Come to the canteen when you recover. Just follow the signs. There s also some unused text that would have appeared on the screen, perhaps over an establishing shot of the Torrens, reminiscent of the introduction to the Nostromo in the film. Note that Nina Taylor's first initial is E here rather than N. Last minute name change?Official Number: MSV-7760Name: USCSS TorrensM-class starshipCaptain: VERLAINE, DianeNavigator/Comm Officer: CONNOR, WilliamOwner: VERLAINE, DianePassengers: C.Samuels, A.Ripley, E.TaylorNumber of Decks: twoNumber of Crew: twoInterstellar communications antennaLong haul hypersleep chamberCommercial passenger/cargo ship retrofitted from a tow rigHeavy duty tow array still present

The Solace

But Ripley isn t going to Sevastopol yet. The crew of the Torrens are awoken from hypersleep before they reach the station by a distress beacon just like the crew of the Nostromo. The beacon is from the Solace, which Ripley boards to investigate.RIPLEY: Verlaine, do you read me? I m inside the Solace. Gravity s out, no lights, no power. VERLAINE: "Do you think you can restore systems?"RIPLEY: "Hard to say, I need to see the engine room."Your first objective is to restore power to the Solace. Ripley notices that someone has broken the door to Medical, which we know EIS did to protect his family. And as she explores she finds a log."Wright, 20.10.2137. Task: Engine's been complaining all day, and it's making everyone nervous. I warned them we were pushing her too hard. My turn in the freezer soon. If anyone needs to make another issue sweep while I'm knocked out, door keycode is 4510."This is almost certainly a reference to 0451. Ripley discovers the ship has no FTL drive. She restores power and gravity and notes that the ship wasn t designed for deep space travel. And then she finds the crew.RIPLEY: Oh no. My god. Verlaine? Verlaine? I ve found some of the crew. They re dead. Frozen. It uh, it wasn t quick. VERLAINE: Okay, Ripley. Come back to the Torrens. If something happens before I get you to Sevastopol, Weyland-Yutani will want blood. RIPLEY: Bodies. Squashed into the hypersleep berths. Oh god. The Solace came from Sevastopol. These people died trying to get away. Then we find another audio log by EIS, who seems to be showing signs of mental decline, hearing screams that aren t there."I hear screaming, but I rewind and there's just the hiss of the tape. I don't know when the others stopped answering; I've lost all track of time in the darkness. Has it been days? Or just hours? Even my voice sounds too loud, harsh and grating against the silence. But if I can record it and play it back I know this is happening. Listen, the screams have started again... [the recording shows that there are no screams, just the groans of the Solace]."Ripley uses a tool (probably the plasma cutter) to break into Medical and discovers more frozen bodies. She seems to see something and exclaim, but brushes it off when Verlaine asks her what it was. Could this have been a first glimpse of the alien? Or just a red herring? Ripley sees a blood trail and follows it. Verlaine protests. She finds yet another log by EIS."We created a hypersleep roster; didn't know how long it would be before we reached safety and there weren't enough spaces for all of us. One of us thought he was more deserving than others and kicked up a fuss. Couple of days later I find the son-of-a-bitch, crowbar in hand, trying to prise open one of the berths. He attacked me with the crowbar and I grabbed a wrench in self-defence. I swung it and... (beat) My wife and daughter were in there. Can't trust anyone now, so I'm going to lock the door to medical. Keep them safe. I'm going to try and repair the broken hypersleep berths. "Either this is a writing error (remember, this isn't a finished script), or EIS has killed two people for allegedly breaking into his family s hypersleep berths: one with a scalpel, then another with a crowbar. It seems likely that he s imagined the whole thing, and may have killed two innocent people (or no one at all?). The non-existent screaming seems to back this theory up.

The escape

The Solace begins to break apart and Ripley makes her escape.VERLAINE: Emergency. Ship stability critical. Evacuate immediately. RIPLEY: What the fuck was that?

I'm not sure what she's referring to here. It could be the sound of the ship being destroyed, but I wonder if she catches another glimpse of whatever made her jump earlier. Did an alien end up on the Solace?VERLAINE: Get out now! The ship s coming apart! Coughs and generic exertions/exclamations needed here SAMUELS: I detected a lifeform, I thought RIPLEY: Never mind, let s get out of here. And this, it seems, is when the Torrens finally arrives at Sevastopol. The developers apparently wanted you to get to the station much more quickly in the final game. The Solace sequence does feel slightly unnecessary. I can understand why it was cut. There s a lot more unused story in Filer s script dump, from the very beginning to the end of the game, so it s worth reading if you re a fan of the game or you want more insight into how it was written.

Alien: Isolation is one of my favourite games you can read my review here but one of the main criticisms I had was the storyline. I found the characters insubstantial and the plot derivative. But reading this mass of cut content, I wonder if it suffered because of rewrites, time and budget constraints, or pressure from Alien owner Fox. Ultimately, it doesn't matter. The game is a lovingly made, worthy homage to a sci-fi classic, but I can't help but wonder what it would be like if this stuff made it in.

Two years later, I'm still playing Alien: Isolation. The Creative Assembly's homage to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic is a great horror game, but it's the urge to revisit Sevastopol and the Nostromo, and soak up that chunky retro-futuristic aesthetic, that always lures me back.

For someone as obsessed with the production design of the movie as I am, the opportunity to explore a painstakingly authentic recreation of that world is hard to resist. And today I decided to head back to take some 4K screenshots of what is, for me, one of the most beautiful games on PC.

Thanks to Cinematic Tools for the camera mod.

EVA suits in storage.

View full size

Ellen Ripley on the bridge of the Nostromo.

View full size

Marlow's salvage crew explores the derelict.

View full size

The Nostromo's computer, MOTHER.

View full size

The alien.

View full size

Hypersleep chambers on the Nostromo.

View full size

KG-348, the gas giant Sevastopol orbits.

View full size

Marlow discovers the derelict's pilot.

View full size

The alien.

View full size

A Working Joe android on fire.

View full size

The alien.

View full size

A victim of a rogue Working Joe.

View full size

Computers on Sevastopol.

View full size

The alien.

View full size

Lambert in the Nostromo's dining room.

View full size

The alien.

View full size

Close up of a Working Joe.

View full size

The alien.

View full size

One of Marlow's crew and the pilot.

View full size

Exploring the surface of LV-426.

View full size

In this week's Mod Roundup, the Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings 2 gets its v1.0 release and a GTA 5 mod lets you buy additional houses and rent hotel rooms in Los Santos. You can also explore the fantastic environments of Alien: Isolation—without that damn determined alien chasing you around—and begin a new life in Skyrim as a skooma addict or traveling merchant.

Here are the most promising mods we've seen this week.

 A Game of Thrones, for Crusader Kings 2

One of the best full-conversion mods of all time is even better. The Game of Thrones mod for Crusader Kings 2, which transforms Europe into George R. R. Martin's Westeros, has released version 1.0. It's been a while since I've played it, but there are lots of improvements in the latest version that make me want to dive back in. You can download it here.

No Alien, in Alien: Isolation

Obviously, this isn't meant to be a true alternative way to play the horror game, but instead a way to explore Sevastopol and take in all the incredible details of the environment at your leisure and without fear of being horribly impaled by the dreaded Xenomorph's tail. Chances are, you missed something while you were busy creeping, hiding, and dying the first time through. Details and download here.

New Beginnings, for Skyrim

There's a great mod for Skyrim called Alternate Start, that lets you skip the opening sequence at Helgen and begin a new game as a homeowner, a guild member, someone living at an inn, a bandit living in the wilds, and so on. In other words, it gives you the chance to play as a simple citizen of the world instead of the fabled Dragonborn. New Beginnings expands on that, letting you start the game as a lowly skooma addict, a beggar, a traveling merchant, a prisoner in the jail of your choice, a vampire who was recently laid to rest, and others. You can find it here.

The Savehouse Mod, for GTA 5

We know Michael, Franklin, and Trevor each have their own home in GTA 5, but why stop there? Let your millionaires buy a whole bunch of houses around Los Santos to serve as alternate save points and hideouts. This mod also allows you to rent rooms at hotels and create other savepoints around town. You'll find it here.

I love Alien: Isolation, and recently felt the urge to replay it—primarily to revisit that amazing retro-futuristic setting. But then I remembered the stress of my first experience and decided not to bother, until I had a thought: what if there s a way to mod out the alien and just explore the environments? And there is!

This modified file created by Steam user Thark alters the alien s behaviour so that it doesn t chase you around, leaving you free to explore Sevastopol at your leisure. It ll still be there in the world, but will never emerge from the vents it loves to hide in. Androids and humans can still kill you, though, so it s not completely safe.

And this got me thinking: is there a mod community for Alien: Isolation? I had a look around, and found a handful of files on Mod DB. There s nothing that majorly changes the way the game plays—or any player-made missions/levels—but enough small tweaks that could add some variety to a second playthrough of the game.

Life Savers

This mod overhauls most of the game s weapons and tools, making them more effective against the alien. Now the stun baton will stun it briefly, or even scare it away, and smoke bombs do a better job of obscuring your movements.Download

Unpredictable Alien

If you thought the alien in the vanilla game wasn t a challenging enough adversary, this mod mixes up its AI to make it more unpredictable. It removes the leash that keeps it near Ripley, giving it more freedom to scare the shit out of you.Download

Motion Tracker Remover

Do you find evading the xenomorph too easy? Then try playing without the help of Ripley s motion tracker. This basic mod simply stops it from working, meaning you ll never really know how far away, or close, the creature really is.Download

Flaming Bolt Gun

A modification for the bolt gun, making it more powerful and adding secondary flame rounds. There s an acid version too if you d prefer. Interestingly, these mods also make it so that, when attacked, the alien s acidic blood damages Ripley.Download

Overpowered Pistol

This pistol mod is comically overpowered, but ideal for anyone who wants to make enemy encounters less stressful. It kills humans and androids in one hit, and damages the alien so much that it runs away, similar to the flamethrower.Download

Silent Movement

Another mod designed to make the game easier, this time making your footsteps completely silent. This means you can sprint around Sevastopol and never alert the alien or other enemies, so long as you stay out of their line of sight.Download

If you want to make the game look prettier, try this mod by AngelGraves, which adds an extra super option to a few graphics settings. It improves, among other things, LOD range and reflections, and adds 4K resolution shadow maps. This, combined with supersampling, really improves the look of the game.

And if you want to take screenshots without worrying about getting impaled by the alien—and access to a free camera with adjustable FOV and depth of field settings—here s a Cheat Engine table by the Dead End Thrills community.

In my day, Mac games were limited to playing tag in your raincoat, so it's always great to see the Macintosh's relatively tiny game library expand. The latest big-budget developer to offer a Mac version of one of their games is Creative Assembly, whose Alien: Isolation is coming to Mac—and Linux—next week.

Feral Interactive are handling conversion duties, and they're bringing it to Steam for both Mac and Linux on September 29. (It's also coming to the Mac App Store sometime in October.) It's the 'Alien: Isolation - The Collection' version of the game, meaning it includes all the DLC. Here's a trailer:

The minimum system requirements for both versions are below.

Mac

• 2.0Ghz CPU with at least 4GB RAM
• 1GB or better graphics card
• Mac OS 10.10.4 or later
• AMD 5000 series graphics card or better, NVIDIA 600 series or better and Intel Iris Pro series graphics card or better

Linux

• 2.6Ghz Dual-Core CPU with at least 4GB RAM
• 1GB or better graphics card
• Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) or SteamOS
• The game requires an NVIDIA 600 series graphics card or better running Driver version 355.11 or better. Intel AMD and GPUs are not supported
• A Steam account is required

Consolidated financial statements are a great way to lend an air of legitimacy to the job of writing news about games. It means I get to use phrases like "year-to-date", "equity in earnings" and "operating income for the previous fiscal period"—thus sounding like a serious journalist, even when four years of professionally writing about games has left me grossly unable to report on basic real-world journalistic concepts like law, politics, money or the comings and goings of reality TV stars.

That was a long opening paragraph. Sorry. Here's the news: Sega's full-year financial report for the 12-month period ending March 31 shows, in their words, "weak" performance in packaged game software—a category that, confusingly, includes digital PC sales. In total, the publisher sold 12.3 million units, which, while a year-on-year increase, was clearly below their expectations.

Breaking it down further, we can see sales totals for the company's releases. The multiplatform Alien: Isolation, for instance, shifted 2.11 million copies. The PC-only Football Manager 2015, meanwhile, sold 810,000 copies.

It's a shame that Alien: Isolation sold—from a multi-year AAA-project perspective—so little. It's a great interpretation of the Alien formula, and deservedly our game of 2014. Hopefully the less enthusiastic commercial reception won't stop Creative Assembly being able to do more with that team—as a recent job posting suggests they would like to do.

Thanks, GamesIndustry.

Organizers of the Game Developers Conference have generously posted many videos of the sessions recorded at this year's show online. You need to be a member to see some of them, but there's no shortage of fascinating talks that are available for free. After looking through them, these are some of the free sessions we think you shouldn't miss.

VR for Indies

Virtual reality was without a doubt the theme of GDC 2015. Sony had a new Morpheus model, Valve demoed Vive, and Carmack was on stage talking up mobile VR. However, the most down to earth, realistic session I saw about VR at GDC was VR for Indies, where Darknet developer E McNeill, Max Geiger, Ben Kane, Holden Link, and Vi Hart talked about how smaller developers can take advantage of this new technology, or if they even should. They weren't there to pitch you on a new product. They just talked honestly about what can be done now, and can hopefully be done in the future.

The Power of the Abstract

In this session, indie developer and game critic Liz Ryerson makes a really strong case for why we should stop chasing super realistic graphics and games that aim to emulate reality as closely as possible and instead consider the power of the abstract. It's not only a fascinating perspective, Ryerson also mentions several interesting games during her talk that you can download and play right now.

Growing the Participation of Women in eSports

Ever wonder why there aren't more women in eSports? This talk from professional players, Blizzard's Kim Phan, and Heather "SapphiRe" Mumm from the ESEA will not only tell you why, but what we can do to fix the problem.

The Dawn of Mobile VR

Look, I'm not even going to pretend that I understand what John Carmack is saying half the time, but I do know when I'm the presence of genius. Carmack made Doom, he dabbles in rocket science just for kicks, and he's doing a lot of important work on the current resurgence of virtual reality. Here he's talking about mobile VR, but you'll learn a lot about Oculus in general, and it's always interesting to hear him talk.

Divinity: Original Sin Postmortem - Success Stories and Lessons Learned

Divinity: Original Sin was easily one of the best games of last year, and a perfect example of what makes PC gaming so great. In this session, Larian Studio's Swen Vincke explains how they created Divinity. Spoiler alert: it wasn't easy.

Building Fear in Alien: Isolation

Speaking of some of the best game of last year, this session will tell you all about how Creative Assembly created PC Gamer's 2014 Game of the Year, Alien: Isolation. One of the coolest things about this session is that at some point Creative Assembly considered making Alien: Isolation a third-person game, and there's even the footage to prove it.

Building a Sport: The Design Philosophy of League of Legends

If you play League of Legends, watching this session should be mandatory. Ryan "Morello" Scott, League of Legends' Lead Designer, and Frank Lantz, the Director of the New York University Game Center, discuss how Riot Games designs and balances an eSports sensation that over 70 million play every month. Lantz is a big fan of the game, Scott is surprisingly open, and it's really interesting to hear them nerd out about the design decisions, big to small, that make League of Legends tick, even if you don't play it.

#1ReasonToBe

2014 was a pretty difficult year for women in the games industry. In the #1ReasonToBe session, game developer Brenda Romero hosts a panel including game critic Leigh Alexander, developer Adriel Wallick, Uncharted writer and current creative director at EA Amy Henning, and others who work in different parts of the industry. They discuss the highs and lows of their experience in games, and how to create a more inclusive way forward.