In space you can hear no one complain about smoking

My gaming friends and I are taking a short break from Pathfinder and Rise of the Runelords to check out the Alien RPG. We're playing the introductory scenario, "Chariot of the Gods".

The game system has two modes of play: cinematic and the other one. The latter is for lengthy campaigns or multiple scenarios where you can expect your character to survive for a while. Cinematic play is more like the movies and your character is likely to die a heinous, painful death before too long.

"Chariot of the Gods" is a cinematic story where we are playing the crew of a freighter who awaken from hypersleep only to find that our ship's computer has taken us far off course to investigate the long-lost ship, Chronos, which had been found while we slumbered. We broke our fasts and, in honor of the first couple movies, chain-smoked furiously as Mother explained the situation.

The Cronus' synthetic isn't quite right, most of its crew is gone, and the ship has the scars of chaos and death with claw marks, pools of blood, and other traditional signs of xenomorphs everywhere. The remaining crew come out of hypersleep and we learn about what happened to the Cronos.

And of course there are human-Xenomorph mutants called Abominations running around.

This is a really scary tale and, despite being a fan of the movie franchise and knowing what to expect, more or less, playing this game is a genuinely eerie experience. I like how the motivations of many characters are unclear, at least a couple are drug addicts, and just how playing the scenario is one extended creepfest.

We're about two-thirds of the way through and my character is dead. She was infected by some alien spores, apparently via a vaccine that was supposed to prevent such an infection, and turned on her shipmates. Was she infected by the medic, Flynn, on purpose? Or was this just a case of the vaccine, which was hastily thrown together in an emergency, not working as intended? Regardless, I am now playing an NPC and suspect more characters will bite the dust soon.