I can't tell all that well when it's walking around and when it's in the vents. Hiding in lockers gets annoying and hardly ever works; when it walks right up to me and I have to lean back and hold my breath, I start running out of air, and even when it has walked out of the room, something very sudden happens: either Amanda gasps and opens the locker on her own, or the alien somehow still found me and suddenly rips it open. I can't tell what's going on, it all happens very quickly.

I've started from the same save point so many times, I'm not even scared anymore but just pissed off. I need to get this keycard back to a doctor but I have to backtrack through this entire area it's been stalking me through.

Will it EVER just give up and crawl through the vents to some other part of the station? Is there something very obvious I'm missing? How am I supposed to avoid this thing that I can't reliably track and that always finds me while I'm waiting for it wander far enough away for me to walk down a single damn hallway?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I was really enjoying this game until, ya know, the alien stuff.

The game gives plenty of indicators as to where the xeno is and how it's moving about. It's pretty easy to hear when it's crawling around in the vents. This game is truly designed to be played with a good surround sound system or a headset. Without one of those you're handicapping yourself and you're undoubtedly going to have a harder time. Paying attention to the audio cues is probably the most crucial tactic to surviving, next to using the motion tracker, which you should have out constantly. The alien will never move to another part of the station on its own. The best you can hope for is for it to be searching the other end of the location you're currently in.

I almost never hid in lockers, mostly due to me wanting to always be on the move. When I did hide in them, I never held my breath and it still never found me. Weird that it would find you so easily in there. But yeah, lockers aren't really that useful. It's more useful to hide under desks or something. They're much quicker to get in and out of than lockers.

Also, use the noisemakers if you need to. They work really well. Even on the hardest difficulty I was fully loaded with items and crafting materials the whole game. There is definitely no shortage of that stuff.

Good luck, duder. The game is super stressful and tension-filled, but you will eventually get it down and be able to use similar tactics for the duration of the game.

Fairly certain you can't sit in one place forever, otherwise the Alien just zeroes in on you. Watch the motion scanner, keep shifting position whenever you feel like you have enough time, and be ready to potentially die a lot. It's definitely a game that can be frustrating as hell if you don't have the patience to deal with it.

This alien is a puppy.

I don't think Amanda can automatically get out of the locker... Maybe she can, I am trying to think back. Yeah, maybe that can happen (I forget because you don't use them that often really). The game is about using sight and sound to know where the xeno is. Also, if you have a home theater system, or maybe nice headphones, you'll find that you won't really need the motion tracker that much, and so you use it very sparingly, by taking it out for a few seconds, then putting it away. When you're in the locker, do the same thing. Plus, though I don't believe I ever died by it since I didn't keep it out long, the xeno can hear the motion tracker, so don't keep it on while it's around. I don't know, I never found the game to be frustrating. All it takes is learning how it works, and you're good to go. As long as you're not running through (though there are stretches of time in it that you can), you should be fine. I don't know what to tell you, but... I'm pretty sure it's your fault :).

The only time the game frustrated me to a small extent was later in the game, and there are these vents (not the normal ones) that just didn't want to load and open, so I'd have to go back and forth hoping they'd open. I recommend saving as often as you can; so do a task, save. Every time I would die, I never had to go back in terms of progress. In your place, I guess I would suggest braving it when it's out of sight (yes, even when it's relatively close), and getting to the next hiding place, closer to where you need to be. I would also say lockers are less useful, and less used than other hiding places, like under tables, and almost never used later in the game. Try not to walk or especially run under open vents where you can sometimes see the xeno's drool dripping out of it, even if it's not dripping.

You should also know that, to my surprise near the end of the game on hard (my second playthrough), for the first time I had noticed, the xeno can actually go inside the vent and kill you if it knows you're there, so hiding in the vents aren't always safe, even though they often are. Again, about the lockers. You don't need to hold your breath when in them; the only time to do so would be when the xeno is extremely close, but it doesn't really work since it'll probably get you anyways from what I remember. You don't need to hold your breath, though instinctively, I did lean back as you did, so that's a fine idea. If you don't already, you should buy a home theater system for surround, it helps I'm sure (and the game just sounds amazing).

Thanks for the help, I did put on some headphones and listening for it isn't so bad.

But then it got me from two different overhead vents as I just happened to be moving under them. Then I finally made it to the medbay where there was an explosion, I had to climb a ladder and suddenly died for no reason. Then I eventually made it to the medbay again (because I still had to load from the last save) and instead of the new objective loading up like before, I got a game over screen.

Then I turned it off.

@trancequina: Swearing in thread titles isn't permitted. I've gone ahead and edited it out.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Sorry 'bout that. :(

@trancequina: So... Your game is broken? I know what part you're talking about. There are button prompts you have to press I believe as you climb. Plus, you should have stayed away from under those vents, or at least until it was clear. The xeno was probably hissing there. Sorry, but either your game is broken, or you did something wrong.