Alien: Isolation - 10 Ways To Create The Perfect Experience

10. The Ever-Illusive Xenomorph

One core defining element which made Alien such an outstanding horror film was its use of tension. Like any truly great production of its genre it used its monster sparingly, building up to each appearance and keeping the audience guessing as the heroes tried to develop new plans. Even the action heavy Aliens limited their presence to a few running battles rather than risk overexposing the monsters, and was all the better for it. This can be incredibly difficult to carry over to a video game but it is ultimately something Creative Assembly desperately need for Alien: Isolation to be a success. While the pulsing sense of terror of a hulking monster stalking the environment will be this game's biggest strength, if every level features the xenomorph then it will rapidly become less the nightmare product of H.R. Giger's brilliance and more of a mechanical obstacle in the eyes of player. Even the big successes which have brought the horror genre back into the spotlight like Amnesia and Outlast suffered from this shortcoming. Their iconic abominations were unstoppable, offering no way to beat them beyond cowering until they skulked away, yet after several hours the impact of this wears very thin. The act of hiding from them became so frequent that the high-risk struggle for survival devolved into busywork to further progress towards the end. The Creative Assembly does seem to be taking steps to avoid this problem by adding secondary threats, with rogue androids and scavengers which can be fought off. How effective this will truly be remains in question, as the xenomorph will still show up to fight them and hunt Ripley, still risking overexposing the creature. Furthermore, recent horror titles which have attempted to mix things up with limited combat (namely Daylight) were greeted with a lukewarm reception at best, meaning this is a risky move on the developer's part.