I don’t scare easily. Whether it’s in movies, video games or any other form of entertainment, I find myself to be quite jaded when it comes to horror and all things terrifying. So, it was with great surprise that I found myself nearly jumping into the arms of the poor soul standing beside me on the show floor at E3 2014 when a Xenomorph attacked me head on, out of nowhere might I add, during a demo of Alien: Isolation.
What surprised me even more though was that even after a couple more retries where I suffered the same grisly fate, I kept finding my heart racing every time I came into contact with the creature. Make no mistake about it, Alien: Isolation is one hell of a scary game, capable of going toe to toe with Dead Space, Silent Hill and any other survival horror franchise.
To be clear, the demo I played was on the show floor, and did differ than the one that SEGA was showing behind close doors. However, it still provided a very tantalizing taste of what we can expect when the game drops this fall.
Upon picking up the controller, I was dropped into Challenge Mode, which placed me into a small area on the ship and tasked me with finding a way out. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Nothing is easy when you have a giant Xenomorph hunting you. You see, in Alien: Isolation, the monster goes through three stages. As it was explained to me, the first stage has the Xenomorph present but it isn’t exactly looking for you. As you complete objectives, it becomes more aware of your presence. Once it’s aware of you, it actively starts hunting for you. And that’s when shit gets real.