We have been playing Alien Isolation for a bit now, in small doses.
It's one of the greatest games I've played in a while.
It's also mind-numbingly terrifying, to the point of nervous breakdowns.
Alien is one of the greatest horror movies ever created. The other movies are not true horror movies any more. There are good action movies there (well, in some of the cases), but they are no longer pure horror. The first movie manages to be scary every time you see it.
The secret for a movie, and for anything, to be scary, is to not reveal too much. Our imagination fills the voids quite nicely, and we can always imagine really bad things. I think Stephen King mentions that if you fully show a 10 meter mutant monster, people will always breathe relieved and think "well, it could have been worse. It could have been a 100 meter mutant monster".
To do good horror movies, you need to know this and to know about atmosphere. You need to hide the scary things, because our minds will do the rest, but you also need a situation where we, the spectators, feel always tension in the air, danger close by. The place needs to be claustrophobic, as if there's no escape from whatever lurks in the dark.
Alien did all this perfectly, while also being gory for the time, and I believe it's an example of movies as art, an example to follow.
Games, as a new media, are still evolving. However, they tried to make horror as well, now for some time.
Horror in games is achieved slightly different than from movies.
First of all, the game needs to be immersive. If you feel detached from the protagonists, you will not be scared much. You need to stop noticing glitches, bad graphics, and acting issues. If the game does not manage to do that, it will hardly be scary.
For example, in the first Silent Hill graphics were laughable, and the fog was a method to avoid having to show you a full map that the game was unable to draw. However, the game managed to make you forget about all this details by being really scary and immersive.
A second point, very important, is that you need to feel threatened. Resident Evil games (the original ones, not the ones after 4 were they became action films like so many other Hollywood productions) were supposed to be scary. However, some of them failed in that, especially the second one. Most of the time you had abundance of ammunition and powerful weapons that could take care of most enemies in 2 or 3 shots.
Silent Hill 2 is a great game, and its horror is mind horror, very psychological. The game leaves you exhausted and broken (but in a good way!). However, I was not scared as much after noticing most enemies were not very dangerous, some of them didn't even hurt you sometimes and your weapons and health items were also more than enough most of the time. The game is great, and part of the psychological effect was based on that too, but your personal safety of the character does not seem to be very threatened.
Third and fourth points are the same as in movies: You need to show little, and you need to have great atmosphere. For example, Resident Evil shows you the gory zombies, and they may jump-scare you, but looking at them is not threatening. Hunters are another topic related to the second point, but their looks are not scary, because you just see them hanging around. Silent Hill is much better at this: You can see the monsters more clearly, but it's hard to figure out what they are. Faces are covered, movements are erratic, the whole thing seems blurry. By the end of the game, some enemies are merely shadows, hardly visible but deadly.
As per the atmosphere, Resident Evil goes for the use of creepy music and sound effects, while Silent hill uses some jump-scares, noises in the background and really creepy scenery.
So, what about Alien Isolation?
Well, for a start, the game is beautiful, and its on 1st person, so you are quite immersed on it form the start.
Second, you have no effective weapons against the alien. Against some enemies you could be successful, but not like in a proper shooter, mowing down waves of critters. You need to sneak around, you need to keep your items, and you need to avoid encounters whenever possible. And you need to keep well away from the alien. It will kill you, period.
Third point, in this game, was masterfully done: In most situations, if you see the alien up and close is way too late for you. Just now we were playing, and we were running from the alien in plenty of places. But in all these places, we never saw it. We could hear it, crawling on the tubes above us. Walking on some floor. Bleeping on the motion detector, running around and advancing us using shortcuts. At one point we saw its slime pouring slowly from one conduct on the ceiling, while the motion sensor indicated us something was right around the corner, and we could hear it reacting to the bleeping noises, coming closer to us. And we never saw it, not even once. The first time we had a good look on it, in a cinematic, it was not a scary. It went down a tunnel, it killed some stupid humans that were making noise, and it left. and you could see it moving, like some kind of big cat, and from far away it was not especially scary. However, these last minutes where the bleeping and the steps kept following us were absolutely terrifying.
We hid in a closet for a moment, to gain some seconds of air, and when we checked the motion sensor to see if it was close, we could hear the bastard reacting to it and moving. When we left the closet I was sure it would jump on us from one side, but it was even worse...we never saw it. We had to wait for a car to arrive, and the alien was running around, and never saw it. But we were expecting it all this time....it was fucking terrifying.
Finally, the atmosphere. In this game, everything imitates the original ship from the movie, the Nostromo. The technology around you is from the eighties, and everything bleeps and makes modem noises. The ship is dark, and is full of shadowy corridors, ventilation shafts and ceiling openings. You can hear steps, you can hear doors opening, under you, behind you, on top of you...you can hear the ventilators of the air system, and the consoles, and the elevators.
You feel inside the ship. And you have no escape. And something is hunting you.
It's awesome.
It's one of the greatest games I've played in a while.
It's also mind-numbingly terrifying, to the point of nervous breakdowns.
Alien is one of the greatest horror movies ever created. The other movies are not true horror movies any more. There are good action movies there (well, in some of the cases), but they are no longer pure horror. The first movie manages to be scary every time you see it.
The secret for a movie, and for anything, to be scary, is to not reveal too much. Our imagination fills the voids quite nicely, and we can always imagine really bad things. I think Stephen King mentions that if you fully show a 10 meter mutant monster, people will always breathe relieved and think "well, it could have been worse. It could have been a 100 meter mutant monster".
To do good horror movies, you need to know this and to know about atmosphere. You need to hide the scary things, because our minds will do the rest, but you also need a situation where we, the spectators, feel always tension in the air, danger close by. The place needs to be claustrophobic, as if there's no escape from whatever lurks in the dark.
Alien did all this perfectly, while also being gory for the time, and I believe it's an example of movies as art, an example to follow.
Games, as a new media, are still evolving. However, they tried to make horror as well, now for some time.
Horror in games is achieved slightly different than from movies.
First of all, the game needs to be immersive. If you feel detached from the protagonists, you will not be scared much. You need to stop noticing glitches, bad graphics, and acting issues. If the game does not manage to do that, it will hardly be scary.
For example, in the first Silent Hill graphics were laughable, and the fog was a method to avoid having to show you a full map that the game was unable to draw. However, the game managed to make you forget about all this details by being really scary and immersive.
A second point, very important, is that you need to feel threatened. Resident Evil games (the original ones, not the ones after 4 were they became action films like so many other Hollywood productions) were supposed to be scary. However, some of them failed in that, especially the second one. Most of the time you had abundance of ammunition and powerful weapons that could take care of most enemies in 2 or 3 shots.
Silent Hill 2 is a great game, and its horror is mind horror, very psychological. The game leaves you exhausted and broken (but in a good way!). However, I was not scared as much after noticing most enemies were not very dangerous, some of them didn't even hurt you sometimes and your weapons and health items were also more than enough most of the time. The game is great, and part of the psychological effect was based on that too, but your personal safety of the character does not seem to be very threatened.
Third and fourth points are the same as in movies: You need to show little, and you need to have great atmosphere. For example, Resident Evil shows you the gory zombies, and they may jump-scare you, but looking at them is not threatening. Hunters are another topic related to the second point, but their looks are not scary, because you just see them hanging around. Silent Hill is much better at this: You can see the monsters more clearly, but it's hard to figure out what they are. Faces are covered, movements are erratic, the whole thing seems blurry. By the end of the game, some enemies are merely shadows, hardly visible but deadly.
As per the atmosphere, Resident Evil goes for the use of creepy music and sound effects, while Silent hill uses some jump-scares, noises in the background and really creepy scenery.
So, what about Alien Isolation?
Well, for a start, the game is beautiful, and its on 1st person, so you are quite immersed on it form the start.
Second, you have no effective weapons against the alien. Against some enemies you could be successful, but not like in a proper shooter, mowing down waves of critters. You need to sneak around, you need to keep your items, and you need to avoid encounters whenever possible. And you need to keep well away from the alien. It will kill you, period.
Third point, in this game, was masterfully done: In most situations, if you see the alien up and close is way too late for you. Just now we were playing, and we were running from the alien in plenty of places. But in all these places, we never saw it. We could hear it, crawling on the tubes above us. Walking on some floor. Bleeping on the motion detector, running around and advancing us using shortcuts. At one point we saw its slime pouring slowly from one conduct on the ceiling, while the motion sensor indicated us something was right around the corner, and we could hear it reacting to the bleeping noises, coming closer to us. And we never saw it, not even once. The first time we had a good look on it, in a cinematic, it was not a scary. It went down a tunnel, it killed some stupid humans that were making noise, and it left. and you could see it moving, like some kind of big cat, and from far away it was not especially scary. However, these last minutes where the bleeping and the steps kept following us were absolutely terrifying.
We hid in a closet for a moment, to gain some seconds of air, and when we checked the motion sensor to see if it was close, we could hear the bastard reacting to it and moving. When we left the closet I was sure it would jump on us from one side, but it was even worse...we never saw it. We had to wait for a car to arrive, and the alien was running around, and never saw it. But we were expecting it all this time....it was fucking terrifying.
Finally, the atmosphere. In this game, everything imitates the original ship from the movie, the Nostromo. The technology around you is from the eighties, and everything bleeps and makes modem noises. The ship is dark, and is full of shadowy corridors, ventilation shafts and ceiling openings. You can hear steps, you can hear doors opening, under you, behind you, on top of you...you can hear the ventilators of the air system, and the consoles, and the elevators.
You feel inside the ship. And you have no escape. And something is hunting you.
It's awesome.
