10 Needlessly Hard Early Video Game Bosses

Alien Isolation’s story and tone are a direct follow-up to the original film. Before the waves of Xenomorphs that Ripley and company had to fight off in 1986’s Aliens, there was just the one H.R. Giger-designed extra terror-estrial and that was enough to strike fear into our hearts.

Alien Isolation succeeds in doing so much with so little, with just one Xenomorph stalking the abandoned station hunting its humanoid prey.

Despite being the big, bad boss of the piece, the Xenomorph becomes the crux of Alien Isolation’s gameplay about an hour in and over the ensuing chapters makes its presence felt. If it catches you, you’re almost certainly done for and if you can’t fight it off with fire then it really doesn’t matter how much health you have. If that alien grabs you, it’s game over.

Avoiding the Xenomorph’s one-hit kill requires keen stealth sensibilities; sneaking past, hiding in lockers and distracting the beast with items. Sometimes however, all the skill and patience in the world can’t avoid situations where you are thrown into combat with humans and droids and get taken out by the Xeno as it's attracted to its suddenly very loud and very exposed lunch.

With no way to kill the thing until a certain point in the story, you’ll feel like it's plaything more than a few times along the way.