Alien: Isolation - 10 Ways To Create The Perfect Experience

9. Noise And Learning From Mistakes

Even in a film where the first victim dies from a monster exploding out of his chest, the fates of Lambert and Parker as they hunted for supplies stood out as an especially grisly end. Drawn by the noise the duo were making as they were completely focused upon their task, Lambert was caught unprepared and pinned down by the creature. A bloody slaughter soon followed. It's a situation countless players have found themselves in before in horror games, where the unstoppable monster lurks on the room's threshold and there is no way out, and it's a situation the developers seem to be making an integral part of their game. Along with encouraging stealth above all else, press events have emphasised how sound will carry, as the xenomorph will actively investigate strange disturbances. This can be anything from the quiet ping of the player's motion tracker, the decompression alarms of an air lock's outer door swinging open and even the noise of an grate being pulled away, all of which have varying chances of drawing it in. Allowing the player to realise they have completely damned themselves is easily one of the most effective scares thanks to video games' unparalleled of interactivity, accomplishing something film and television can never replicate. What exactly the alien will go out out of its way to look into however - that differs from level to level. Early showings have revealed that the xenomorph is seemingly drawn at random to certain disturbances. On some levels it will come running to find out just what caused a pipe explosion, while on others the player can engage in a lengthy melee without it ever rearing its multi-mouthed head. This is a step towards what made the films so great, forcing the players to continually learn and pay attention to their enemies rather than become complacent, but there is a wealth of opportunity behind this gameplay element. Imagine for a moment that this also carried over to the environments as well as certain enemies or even specific items. It would be a chance to really force the player to alter their tactics every playthrough, with certain alarm systems being inactive in some runs of a level but fully functioning in others. Perhaps the game could even offer the chance for cobbled together items Ripley carries to fail or misfire while using them. It would boost the game's replay value and seriously force players to treat every environment as a new, hostile area no matter how many times they had played the game; elements which would help it truly capture the desperation of the original film's predicament.