Summer Game Fest Play Days featured a ton of new titles this year, with developers and publishers giving lots of chances to see, and play, a variety of games coming to PS5. I visited SGF Play Days this year to see these upcoming titles in action, and go hands-on with many of them. Here’s everything I played and saw at Summer Game Fest.
Publisher: Sega | Developer: Creative Assembly
More than a decade after the original was released, Alien: Isolation 2 slithered through a vent to terrify at SGF. I played the game’s prologue, taking on the role of a Weyland-Yutani executive who just arrived on the remote colony planet that serves as the game’s setting. As you’re riding in a rover with two other characters, there’s suddenly a flash and a nearby explosion. The three of you pile out of the rover and you set out into the woods to try to find out what happened.
As you make your way through the barren forest, you soon come across the site of what looks like a crashed ship. Alien: Isolation fans will quickly realize this isn’t a ship, it’s the Project KG-348 lab that Amanda Ripley jettisoned from Savastopol station in the first game. That’s the lab where she trapped the alien that had hunted her for the entire first half of Alien: Isolation before she sent it off into space. Of course, the ill-fated group of humans venture inside.
After you spend some time exploring and restarting the lab’s power with similar chunky, tactile controls as in the original game, like mashing X to start a generator, the creature reveals itself, dropping from the vents above and stomping away, barely missing you.
At least in this prologue, Alien: Isolation 2 feels just like its predecessor. You can crouch to stay tow and quiet with Circle, keep out of sight by ducking behind objects and under tables, and peek around objects to get an eye on the creature by holding L1 and using the analog stick. You can also use tools to distract the xenomorph; in the prologue, I found a couple of flares that could be lit and thrown to draw its attention.
But with no motion tracker, you have to rely on your senses to keep