By the end of the original "Alien" film, warrant officer Ellen Ripley had been attacked by an android, stalked by an extraterrestrial and stranded in space. That's just the beginning of the interstellar mayhem that awaits Ripley's daughter in "Alien: Isolation," a video game out Tuesday that aims to pay interactive tribute to filmmaker Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 sci-fi horror movie.

Other than a brief flashback, the game casts players strictly as Amanda Ripley, who was mentioned in a scene from the 1986 sequel "Aliens." In "Isolation," Amanda is a matter-of-fact engineer solely focused on tracking down the flight recorder from her long-gone mama's ship 15 years after it disappeared.

"For us, there was really only one choice," said the game's creative lead Alistair Hope of the protagonist. "The fact that Ellen Ripley had this daughter and that story hadn't really been told was an amazing opportunity. We wanted to take this character who had never been at the forefront and put her in the spotlight."

The game, from British developer Creative Assembly, mostly takes place on the recently decommissioned Sevastopol , a sprawling space station much larger than the original film's setting, the space ship Nostromo. The hub's enclaves, including a medical facility and a multi-level mall, maintain the retro-futuristic aesthetic of "Alien" - right down to bulky computers that whir to life when they're turned on.

Unlike previous games based on the "Alien" franchise, where alien xenomorphs and facehuggers served as cannon fodder, "Isolation" is strictly a moody first-person tale of survival. If an alien spots Amanda as she maneuvers throughout the space station, there's little she can do to survive an attack. Instead, Amanda must create distractions with gadgets and sneak around.

Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in four "Alien" films, not only gave her blessing to the "Isolation" creators, but also her likeness and voice, a first for a game based on the 20th Century Fox series. She reprises her role as Ripley in bonus levels that allow players to portray Nostromo crew members as they explore the doomed ship and attempt to lure the menacing alien into space.

"I'm always astonished by the depth of feeling people have for these movies," said Weaver. "It's wonderful. I'm not always aware of it, but I'm always touched by it. The idea that they would take this tangent idea, run with it and make an interactive game of it, I thought that's cool because it's breaking new ground, not going over the same old conventions."

While the extraterrestrial species in "Alien" has gone on to wreak havoc in other movies and mediums, Weaver acknowledged the original saga didn't satisfactorily conclude with 1997's "Alien Resurrection," the fourth film that ended with Ripley's clone arriving on Earth. (The original Ripley scarified herself in 1992's "Aliens 3.") Weaver is game for another extraterrestrial encounter.

"Ultimately, we never really finished the story," she said while promoting the 35th anniversary release of the original film on Blu-ray. "That was partially my choice. I really didn't want to go to Earth and have the alien pop out of a haystack. I feel that the story belongs in outer space where no one should be, but it's been an amazing role to get to come back to every few years."

Google might soon roll out a new version of the Google Play app (v5.0), guided by the company's Material Design concept, if the latest screenshots from a leaked early build are to be believed. The company seems set bring more a more vivid palette of colours to its already Material Design-inspired Google Play app, along with a richer visual feel.

The yet-to-be announced Google Play Store 5.0 might flaunt a reworked top bar that merges the section name (for example - Movies, Games and others) with the category tabs like Top Releases, New Releases, Home and others, as seen in the above screenshot. All the Google Play sections namely Apps, Games, Movies, Books, and Newsstand are also seen with the new colour palette combinations that are brighter and more vivid than the current version.

The Mountain View, California-based tech giant, focusing more on the card-based design, seems set to tweak the Google Play app design with the same colour treatment for accents and buttons (seen below), visibly different in the screenshots of the leaked early build sourced by Android Police.

Android Police also notes that promo pages will receive a visual revamp in the store, with the example of Google's Antenna Sampler, a monthly sampler of free tracks from upcoming artists, has also been given a visual boost (seen below). Minor animations, for instance, 3-line icon changes to a 'back arrow' icon on interaction, might also see the light of the day.

While the changes are not a major overhaul over the current version of Google Play, they are completely in-line with the 'Material Design' philosophy of the upcomingAndroid L, which might be officially named as 'Lemon Meringue Pie'.

The website also discovered some new Material Design-inspired Google Play app icons for Music, Movies, Books, Newsstand along with a new Google Play Store icon (seen below), within the files of the app.

In addition, the per-device restoration feature, which was discovered previously by the website, was seen with some changes in the latest string files of the Google Play app. The string files hints a feature that would enable users to choose a device profile (smartphone or tablet) from where a predefined set of apps can be restored when setting up a new device.

While Google is yet to confirm any of the details mentioned above, the screenshots and the information gathered from the leaked early build cannot be completely ignored, and do indicate a direction the search giant is looking into. The release date of the Google Play Store 5.0 or the new restoration feature is still not known.

A gaming PC can be a lot cheaper than a console, and you also have a lot more flexibility about your budget - you can skimp now, and upgrade to the monster rig of your dreams later if you choose.

There's an intimidating number of choices available but we can help you to build up a budget rig on your own. Our focus is on building the cheapest gaming rig that still delivers an acceptable experience. Clearly, this machine we'll build will not be for the purists - we'll do that at a later stage - but something that you can use as a reference point if you are looking to take your gaming a little bit more seriously.

You can then choose to step up from there depending on how much you're able to spend and what level of graphical quality you're looking for.

What you need

The basic considerations you need to keep in mind are a CPU, which you'll typically buy from Intel or AMD, a GPU, which would usually come from Nvidia or AMD, a hard drive, and RAM. First, let's talk about some of the different choices, and then we'll move on to our sample configuration.

On the CPU front, AMD does not have anything compelling to offer at the moment, but the excellent Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition (the G3258), is a low-priced monster that runs beautifully on its own, and can easily exceed speeds of 4GHz when pushed beyond its official specifications.

The GPU market is constantly in flux. Prices are not stable, as Nvidia and AMD keep trying new tricks to outdo each other. Nvidia's recently launched GTX 750 and 750 Ti are based on the new Maxwell core which performs well and consumes very little power.

For AMD, it's less clear, but repeated price drops and some pretty interesting deals on free bundled games are promising.

RAM prices have doubled since the start of 2013, and will likely stay this way for a while. As a result, we have to allocate more of our budget to memory or change our expectations.

Hard drive prices are fairly reasonable now, but SSDs are becoming more and more tempting. An affordable SSD that's only enough for the OS and applications will still make a huge difference, but it might not fit in our entry-level build's budget.

We've given ourselves a budget of Rs. 40,000 all inclusive. This will give us modest but consistent performance, and leave the doors open to multiple upgrades over time. Here's the best we managed to do, considering high import duties and a weak exchange rate. Note that prices fluctuate every day and vary from area to area, so you might need to tweak this a little.

The build

If you're looking for a simple list of things to buy, then the table below has you covered. But we also talk about what you can change and tweak in this list, so read on to know more.

This basic build is a little above what we'd budgeted, but you should be able to save some money by using the mouse, keyboard, monitor and PSU if you have an existing PC. Your old HDD and RAM should also be used, if possible, to get the costs even lower.

With this basic setup, you should be able to get 40-60 fps with high detail settings in most current games at the monitor's native resolution. If you want to step up to HD 1080p, you'll need a better GPU and monitor, which would add at least Rs. 10,000 to the budget.

Intel's Core i3s are fast and don't consume a lot of power - they don't quite have the muscle of a quad-core i5 but do a decent job as far as games are concerned. Disappointingly though, the i3s can't be overclocked.

The most affordable motherboard option we were comfortable with were was MSI's H87M-E35. You'll get all the important features such as multiple USB 3.0 ports and a PS/2 port as compared to the MSI board. It also has two more RAM slots, SATA 6GBps, HDMI, and PCIe 3.0.

A year ago, you would have would have been able to fit 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM into this budget, but we have to step down to 4GB due to market forces. The same budget considerations lead us to suggest Sapphire's Radeon HD 7770. It is a potent GPU for the price, and should handle gaming at 1366x768 quite well.

As expected, we can't include a solid state storagedrive, but if you already have a hard drive, you could get a small SSD to install Windows to, for quick booting.

Corsair's VS450 is a nice, affordable and stable power supply, with ample enough PCIe, SATA and Molex cables for a budget build.

If you don't have an LCD monitor already, the AOC unit we've listed is a good place to start. A 1080p monitor like Dell's S2240L is a nice option for Rs.9,000 but it requires a more powerful graphics card as well.

The rest of the parts are pretty standard, and even if you choose another DVD drive or cabinet in the same budget, it should make a difference.

Upgrade options

As far as the motherboard is concerned, you may want to step up to a more feature complete board like the Gigabyte H87M-DH3. Overclockers should consider something with the Z prefix, like MSI's Z97 PC Mate, which appears to be the cheapest 9-series chipset available. Again, this depends on what savings you can make from using parts from your older desktop, unless you're ready to expand the budget.

RAM is simple, get DDR3-1600 with timings of 9-9-9-24 or tighter, but don't pay extra for anything beyond this, because it's usually not going to be worth it as far as games are concerned. G.Skill, Corsair and Kingston are good choices.

It boils down to how much RAM you want to add and how much you want to pay for it. We'd recommend 8GB at the minimum, if you can afford it. Try and buy RAM sticks in identical pairs to ensure a stable dual channel configuration.

Graphics is a highly scalable market. The more you pay, the more performance you usually get, so it comes down to how smooth you want your gaming to be and at what resolution.

While the 7770 is good till 720p resolutions, we'd recommend getting at least a GTX 750 Ti for higher ones (900p or 1080p). It is priced between Rs.10,500 and 11,500 online, and we certainly wouldn't pay more.

The next step up would be an AMD R9 270X at around Rs.14k, and it's a solid deal considering it's basically a higher clocked Radeon HD 7870.Note that you still won't always get 60 fps at 1080p. The GTX 760 is a good way to mostly achieve that; prices start from 17k.

Finally, the R9 280X and GTX 770 are the highest we'd mention in this article; both cost around 25k and provide a solid 1080p gaming experience.

As far as HDDs are concerned, Western Digital and Hitachi are known to be reliable, so just pick any, really, if you simply want a secondary storage drive. For the boot drive, pick an SSD from Intel, Samsung or Corsair, and you should be good to go.

Cabinets are 80% functionality and 20% personal taste and aesthetics. A decent cabinet can make the difference between bruised fingers and awkwardly crammed components, and a nice, clean, easily serviceable system.

While the Elite 311 will get the job done, look towards cases from Fractal Design, Antec, NZXT, Corsair or higher end cases from Cooler Master itself, like the HAF 912 Advanced.

Easily removable filters, good airflow and fan/water cooler mounts, relevant front panel ports (e-SATA will go waste, as will FireWire), a bottom PSU mount and space for cable management are all things to look out for. The case should be tall enough to accommodate the CPU cooler you want to use, and long enough for the graphics card of your choice. Removable drive bays and a CPU cut out are good ideas too.

CPU Coolers are fairly simple: From a pure functionality standpoint, the Hyper 212 EVO from Cooler Master sells for around Rs. 2,000 and is quite excellent. Noctua's Noctua NH-D14 is probably the only other air cooler you should consider; it's one of the best there is (but over twice the price of the Hyper 212). Of course, smaller cases may need smaller coolers like Noctua's NH-L9i 95mm SSO2, or you may want something fancy looking like the Cooler Master V8 GTS.

Note that if you're not overclocking, the boxed cooler is usually sufficient, but if it spins up too often and is too noisy, or the CPU starts hitting temperatures above 80*C, you may want to consider getting a third party one.

Power supplies are mostly simple too. Antec, Seasonic, Corsair, and certain Cooler Master PSUs are good choices, usually. You won't usually need more than 550W for a single GPU build, unless you're using a GTX 780 Ti and Ivy Bridge-E CPU together, where it would be on the safer side to consider a 600W PSU.

Otherwise, just make sure you have the appropriate connectors (especially PCI-e for the graphics card) and that they're long enough to route behind the motherboard tray. 80%+ efficiency is also a good thing.

With that in mind, consider the Corsair VS 550, Seasonic ECO 500 or Antec VP 550, among others. You may want a modular PSU, to reduce wire clutter and increase airflow inside the case, or for Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX enclosures. Such PSUs are appropriately marked (usually with an 'M' somewhere in the name, like CX430M or M12II 520) and usually more expensive. Try and avoid fully modular PSUs (in which all wires can be removed), as some undesirable electrical characteristics can be more pronounced on the higher power rails with such designs.

Last point to consider

If you're considering sinking 20k into a GPU today, we say save another 10 till the end of September and go for the GTX 880 when it launches. It'll be well worth it.Of course, it means that your budget gets a little bigger, but the difference in performance will be equally noticeable.

We hope this guide serves as a guide for inexperienced DIY gamer and also serves as a refresher and template for more advanced users returning to the field after a long time. If you have some suggestions about different components, tell us via the comments.

With over 54 million copies sold, Minecraft represents the biggest niche audience since gaming itself. News that Microsoft has acquired Minecraft maker Mojang for $2.5 billion should have gotten your attention, so let's take a look at what Minecraft is. The game itself was released nearly five years ago, so this isn't an in-depth explanation - just a quick guide to get non-gamers up to date with what the hype is about.

1. Minecraft is a video game

This should be obvious, but Minecraft is a video game that was first released in an "alpha" state in 2009. You might be familiar with the concept of a beta, where software is released but continues to be developed to remove bugs. An alpha is what comes before the beta - where you're not just testing for bugs but still developing the key features, and creating art, sound and other assets in case of video games.

Minecraft was originally released as a PC game, but over the years as its popularity grew, it was ported to more platforms. Today, you can get Minecraft for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita.

2. Minecraft isn't really a video game

While Minecraft has many game-like elements, it's really much more like digital Lego. The game itself doesn't really have a goal - you can explore the world, and build what you want. In Survival mode - which is the closest Minecraft gets to a game, you have a health bar which can be depleted by attacks from monsters, starvation, suffocation and more events.

You can make armour and weapons, and build defences, breed animals and more. Then there's Creative mode, where you have access to most of the resources through a menu, and you can fly around the world. You're free to build large projects, and just have fun.

3. Minecraft has sold over 54 million copies

Whether you think that Minecraft is a game or not, there's no denying that it is a success. Taking into account all platforms, Minecraft has sold over 54 million copies. You can play Minecraft by yourself and create things on your own, and if you want, you can connect to this huge community in multiplayer worlds, where you can work together to build things.

4. It looks like first-person Lego

Minecraft has a unique visual style that has inspired quite a few imitators by now. Everything is made up of blocks - including your character, and even the water looks blocky. This is a deliberate stylistic choice, although some players use mods to change the way Minecraft looks. Funnily enough, while Minecraft has been described as digital Lego at least partly for this reason, there are now official Lego Minecraft sets you can buy.

5. There is mining, and crafting

In survival mode, you start the game empty-handed and need to hit blocks to collect them. So you can hit a tree, and get some wood, for example. That's the most basic thing you can do though. The next step is to use the crafting grid to turn those blocks of wood into planks. From there, you can turn the planks into a crafting table, where you can make more complex items - such as a wooden axe, with which you can get wood faster. Keep crafting and your mining becomes better.

The more you mine, the more materials and combinations become possible, and after that, you can start to build highly complex structures. People have made reproductions of Hogwarts and real world locations like the Eiffel Tower, giant Mario's bestriding the blocky tiles, and even simple towers to protect themselves. Using special "redstone" blocks that can have more than one state, people have built calculators and even computers, investing a huge amount of time and effort to work it all out and then put them together.

6. You can play Minecraft inside Minecraft

You know how we mentioned that using redstone blocks you can create binary switches and make computers? Setting up several thousand of these blocks, some people have even made a very basic 2D Minecraft that you can play - inside Minecraft. The scale of the work required to do this honestly boggles the mind, and that's just putting it all together.

First, someone had to figure out how to make this whole system of tens of thousands of bricks to work together.

7. The world of Minecraft is 9 million times the size of Earth

The world of Minecraft is theoretically infinite - the areas are made up of chunks that are loaded as required. There are some technical limitations to the total space possible, and therefore, the total surface area is 4.7 quadrillion kilometres squared. The Earth is "just" 510 million kilometres squared, making Minecraft effectively over 9 times bigger.

8. Minecraft helped popularise the "early access" model

Today, paying for a game that is still a work in progress isn't a big deal. There's Kickstarter of course, where you might pay for something that's barely an idea. And then there's something like Steam Early Access, where you can pay for games that are still being made.

Minecraft is probably the most famous example of the trend - players could buy the game in the initial development stages, the alpha and later the beta, all the way up to the final release. At each stage, the cost of the game went up, but if you bought an older version of the game, you were assured a copy of the final game at no additional cost, along with other benefits. Games like DayZ would come along later and cement the model, but Minecraft is certainly one of the games that set the early trend.

9. Minecraft has a huge fanbase, with merchandise and meetups

There are Minecraft conventions, including the official one - MineCon, which has taken place in locations like Washington, Las Vegas, Disneyland Paris and Orlando, Florida. These events were heavily attended and show how involved the community is. On the Minecraft website, you can buy a lot of merchandise as well, ranging from soft toys to vinyl figures, foam swords, blocky torches, mugs, posters and clothes.

Minecraft might have started as a digital distraction, but it is very much present in the real world today.

10. Minecraft has applications well beyond Minecraft

Minecraft has been discussed as a teaching tool for Computer Aided Design, and for other educational tasks. It can be used to build virtual designs for 3D printers, for example. This year, the Danish Geodata Agency recreated all of Denmark at a 1:1 scale in Minecraft, a virtual world anyone can visit. Minecraft has also been introduced in several schools to teach subjects such as history and science. For example, teachers have taken advantage of the popularity of the game to build multiplayer servers where they can recreate the pyramids, and other monuments, together in Minecraft.