I am too much of a scardy cat to play scary games
Me too. Couldn't get past the beginner's levels of
Alien: Isolation. Couldn't even play it for longer than 30mins at a time, truth be told - not for fear-overload, simple
exhaustion. It's ... intense. Trouble is that it's a double game of cat & mouse - the Alien is hiding from you same way that you are hiding from it (Not cause it's afraid of you, but because it knows you're smart prey. Or maybe for fun).
First thing you learn is that when you see it, you're either in cover - in a locker, under a gurney, in a ventilation duct, whatever - or you're food. So your
ears become your primary sense. Don't know about your pair, but human ears are generally
not considered the crowning achievement of mammalian sensory equipment.
You spend a lot of time
just listening. It moves, you move. You stop and listen - and you hear it banging about in a ventilation duct somewhere. You start to walk a little faster. You stop and listen again - and you hear
nothing. There's few things scarier than
not hearing the goddamn' thing banging about. Two out of three times, not hearing it means it's out of range. One out of three, it's either smelled you, or is doing the Alien version of a 'crazy Ivan' - just waiting a few seconds and then it doubles back, quadruple-time. Or it's figured you out and is already sneaking up on you from behind. Or it's went up a ventilation shaft that you
have to pass and is waiting for you to work up the guts to walk past ...
So actually, the best method of preventing it from stalking
you is stalking
it - that way you at least know where it is. Its sense of vision isn't
that good, methinks (like most Terran predators, it's less good than a human at interpreting
still visuals, so standing still is a good tac), but nonetheless: Stalking an alien is ... intense. You get a gun quite early in the game, but that's little use other than for pissing it off. You get a flamethrower later on, but until then, there's nothing you can do except not being seen. Nothing. The sense of
vulnerability is so overwhelming that I found it hard to keep playing more than half an hour. Simply stresses me out so much.
And don't get me started about the friggin' motion detector! It's an additional stressor all by itself. On the one hand, the additional info (besides your ears) is handy. On the other, it has some hefty drawbacks: It has a tiny,
tiny range and it's not easy to interpret ... it's not like a radar. And it's
loud. If you whip out the MD anywhere close to the alien, last thing you'll see is a green dot bearing down on you
fast. So you're always thinking
"Can I risk a peek on the MD?". They've made even a helpful tool into yet another stressor.
And it
learns your strategies. If your preferred method of evasion is hiding in lockers, it starts taking more of an interest in lockers - up to the point were it'll always find you when you hide in a locker. So you've got to vary your evasion strategies, on the fly, using whatever is around you at the time, preferably while stalking
it, because that way, you at least know where the goddamn' thing
is.
