Slick Sci-Fi Directive 8020: Alien Meets The Thing!

Directive 8020 (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £45)

Verdict: Choose your own space-death

Star rating: 4/5 

What do you get if you cross the from the Alien movies with the thing from, well, The Thing?

The answer is Directive 8020, a game in which a malevolent monster assumes the forms of a spaceship’s crew members – and spreads through them, one by one. Though it should be said that any similarities are entirely intentional.

The makers of Directive 8020, Supermassive Games, have built their reputation on games that play with old horror movie tropes. They’ve done slashers. They’ve done ghost ships and witches. Now it’s the turn of spooky sci-fi.

If you’ve played any of those previous games, such as 2015’s Until Dawn or 2022’s The Quarry, this one will be mighty familiar.

Once again, it’s part digitised movie, part choose-your-own-adventure book. More or less recognisable actors – including, in this case, film and TV’s Lashana Lynch – are led through a story by the decisions you make.

Directive 8020 does feel like the slickest of these games, though. There’s an assuredness to its staging and pacing that’s surely born of Supermassive’s now-considerable experience in this medium.

Its motion-captured performances are, technologically speaking, best in class. And it does try some new things with the form. Sneaky-crawly stealth sections have been added so that Directive 8020 is more than just one conversational choice after another.

The gameplay in these sections isn’t revolutionary – and, certainly, it’s got nothing on proper stealth titles like, say, 2014’s Alien: Isolation – but it breaks up the texture nicely enough.

In fact, by the time I’d finished the eight hours of Directive 8020, I was left wishing for something that Supermassive hasn’t really done before: a direct sequel. 

Wax Heads (, Xbox, Switch, PC, £11.99)

Verdict: On repeat

Star rating: 3/5 

You’d have to be mad to run a record store. Various weirdos coming through your door each day to demand that you change their lives with a perfectly selected album. No, thanks.

Or at least that’s how it seems in Wax Heads, a game that casts you as the new junior employee at a cool and thriving shop in some graffitied part of town. You literally have to open the front door each morning and then sell your wares to a surprisingly demanding public. Then on to the next day. And the next.

In a way, there’s not much more to say. That really is the gameplay loop of Wax Heads. The recommending of albums is its own little puzzle. You listen to what the customer wants, maybe decipher some contextual clues from how they’re dressed or what they’re carrying, then pick something off the shelves accordingly. The main challenge comes from the customer not always being right – and you knowing better than they do what will rock their world.

In between, there’s some light chat with your colleagues.

And the story, such as there is one, involves getting to the bottom of the breakup that befell your boss’s once-famous punk band.

It’s all told through eye-catching art that reminded me of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comics. Which is certainly pleasant enough.

There was not a moment in Wax Heads when I wasn’t charmed, but there were some moments when it all felt rather repetitive and stretched too thinly across its half-dozen hours.

I’m sure it would work better at half the length. Or, in record store lingo, if it were an EP rather than an LP.

 Saros (PlayStation, £69.99)

Verdict: Return to Returnal

Star rating: 4/5 

Sometimes, the clue is in the name. And if you’re a space colonist moving to a planet named ‘Carcosa', you’ve got to except a whole lot of trouble – because Carcosa is, in our own world’s horror literature, the realm of the terrible King in Yellow.

And so it proves. The first expedition to this planet has fallen radio silent. It’s up to you, in Saros, to find out what happened – as well as deal with all the various other mysteries, madness and monsters around you.

Saros is the latest game from the makers of 2021’s Returnal, and it’s very much a – ahem – returnal to the same well. It’s got the same ‘roguelite’ structure, where you struggle on as far as you can, inevitably come a cropper to some nasty beastie, then start all over again with greater knowledge of what lies ahead.

It’s got the same challenging combat, in which you’re dodging between projectiles launched by your enemies.

It’s got the same sepulchral tone.

But if that makes Saros sound lazy, rest assured: it’s not. There’s much here that’s a refinement of the Returnal formula – with some new additions, too. The die-and-try-again setup is a little more forgiving, which means that it’s also less dispiriting. While your character Arjun’s forcefield-style shields add new levels of strategy to each punishing combat encounter.

Oh, and then there’s Carcosa itself. For all the horrors in its shadows, this is one of the most beautiful, most memorable locations in recent gaming. Just don’t book a one-way flight out there if you’re a space colonist.