10 Most Effective Jump Scares In Sci-Fi Video Games

Alien: Isolation provides an interesting point of contrast with the previous entry (and not just because Isolation is actually good). In Doom 3, your heavily-armed protagonist was the deadliest character in the game. In Alien: Isolation, that's very much not the case.

Playing as Amanda Ripley - daughter of Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley - the player is made extremely aware of their powerlessness in the face of the game's eponymous xenomorph. From its masterful introduction onward, the titular Alien acts as an implacable, unstoppable foe for the duration of the game.

This is, quite simply, horror done right. Horror games should make you feel helpless against the foes arrayed against you - why would you be scared of something you have the advantage over? Alien: Isolation excels at this, and the result is a game fraught with tension.

Every room you enter is pregnant with fearful anticipation of the xenomorph materializing in front of you. Due to the game's evolving, unpredictable AI, you can never get comfortable as you are all too aware that you're constantly being hunted.

And when the Alien finally bursts forth from its hiding place like a bat out of hell, it takes a stronger person than this writer not to panic and flee in sheer, manic terror.