The recent slew of Alien: Isolation videos populating YouTube’s recommendation algorithm caused me to both start a new playthrough (of course) and check out the game’s Nexus Mods pages. I didn’t find a lot on the Nexus compared to something like Skyrim or Cyberpunk 2077, and there’s even less when you skip over the reshades and simple balance changes, so it wasn’t hard for me to spot the outlier:

Yes, that’s Thomas the Tank Engine. As the Alien.¹

I soon realized that I’d seen this modder, Matt Filer, mentioned before; he’s the one who put a CS:GO map into Alien: Isolation. So he has an admirable amount of skill, a love for Alien: Isolation, and that sense of humor.

And he hasn’t stopped.

He’s shortened the campaign to “around a minute in length” “in order to please IGN.” And he isn’t exaggerating; here is a complete walkthrough of the modded game.²

That wasn’t his first try of an “impossible” mod, either. In a preview for the unreleased “Aliens: Isolation,” a player “armed” with a revolver and a flare was confronted with seven or eight aliens at once. Progress was… minimal.

OK, his attempt at a third-person perspective looks like its animations could use some polish. And his porting of Sevastopol Station over to a COD game’s zombies mode might not be to the average Alien fan’s taste, though if you like both games or at least think the map is cool…

I may never use any of his mods, but he looks like he’s having a lot of fun.

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1. If you’ve seen Thomas the Tank Engine somewhere else, like Skyrim, and you’re wondering if there’s some sort of “Thomas the Tank Engine” meme in the modding community… apparently there is.

2. What happens if you don’t make noise with the maintenance jack right away? Reportedly, multiple aliens happen.