SubGaming: Alien Isolation

For the first little bit, nightmare mode plays out like normal mode, Alien Isolation is a hybrid between walking simulator and horror game, and I could walk around a space station for ages. This being my second playthrough, there were opportunities to appreciate how much the game eases you in; introducing every mechanic around sneaking, hacking, line of sight and distraction one by one. 

Once you meet the first survivors who shoot on sight and are very very observant you notice the increase in difficulty. Specifically you notice that you don't have a health bar anymore, because one bullet = one dead Amanda Ripley. Then you think back to how many apparently useless health kits you have in your inventory. And then you think about how many containers you've searched that have been empty and you have almost no supplies to build anything 'useful'. It's when you pick up the motion tracker and it's already broken, right after seeing a loading screen that helpfully explains that the motion tracker is the '...key to your survival' that it clicks. 

Nightmare mode is a private joke between you and the developers. They assume you're familiar with the game from normal mode, so they remove everything you may have come to depend on. And they do it in front of you.

The alien AI has a sort of 'cooldown' in the normal game (or so I've read). basically it'll kick into high gear at a semi random time, circle closer and closer to you, eventually chase you into a closet or a locker and then come menace you for a bit, creating those great gaming moments where you're leaning back into the locker, holding your breath, waiting for it to disappear. (Fun note, on the console version it'll activate your microphone without telling you and the alien will respond to noises the player makes). Once it gets bored and leaves, on the earlier levels anyway, you have some time before it'll wander back.

Even without knowing the exact mechanics of how the timing works out, the game trains you to have this instinct. So on medical, the first time you're really trapped in close quarters with the alien, I noted it was circling the room I was in and popped into a locker for it to pass. It immediately walked up to the locker. tore the door off of it and killed me. 

The alien in nightmare mode is not on any kind of script. It is not trying to scare you or ratchet up tension, it is coming to kill you. It is tracking you, actively by scent. I actually also beat the game without killing a single person because the alien is so close to you that it acts as a sort of bodyguard. This is the first emergent property that actually makes the game a little easier, on alien levels, you only have to worry about the alien. The second way its easier is there is very little ambiguity about what is and is not an alien level because on an alien level it is standing in front of you, sniffing the air for you. Once you know its an Alien level your job is simple, figure out where it is and be somewhere else.

Nightmare mode is actually a much quicker game, firstly because it is so unforgiving, you either do it right or you die. And secondly because there are so few ways to actually do anything. Hiding doesn't work anymore, distractions will buy you a few seconds, the flamethrower (if you can find fuel for it), will keep you alive for one attack but it'll be back in a minute. You spend a significant amount of the game laser focused on the alien. Which provides you with some opportunities you don't have otherwise to observe its behaviour.

It doesn't have eyes. It's hearing is amazing, it'll come and react to a door opening anywhere in a room its in, it can pick up your scent trail and follow you down a hallway, but it's cone of vision is really tight. You can hide in a corner if need be; if you squeeze right next to a door it'll come through, scan the room and then twirl around like a runway model before stomping out. That's the other thing, it's LOUD and HUGE. You can hear it stomping towards you, you can see its tail trailing 8 feet behind it.  The alien's particular sensitivities also make it predictable. Fire a gun and it'll be in that room in 5 seconds. But that means you KNOW where it WILL be in 5 seconds. Just be somewhere else. Ripley crawls completely silent, and walks at a brisk pace generating almost no noise. You have control of the Alien's sensory experience. You quickly learn how to corral it. Tap a wall with your wrench and walk quickly to a good hiding spot. It'll come to investigate and you can crawl behind it. Most of the time it's so close to you that it’s either in the room killing you or in the room next to you, so just be somewhere else.

This is how the game ends up being so different on Nightmare. It's fully a sneaking game now, no clever crafting, no real combat. The only fights you get into really are the androids, and while they're even more frustrating (bullet sponges and melee is no longer a real option) then the regular version you a) never face the androids (in large numbers) and the alien on the same level so if you have to fight it won't immediately draw the alien to you, and b) after successfully baiting and leading the Alien AI tricking a bunch of robot zombies that only walk slowly after you to take the wrong catwalk is honestly kind of funny (I did end up having to kill a bunch of robots, especially in the reactor level which used essentially all my ammunition).

It's when you realize that nightmare is funny, and that the only thing to worry about is the alien (and sometimes the working joes) that the game crosses from frustrating to fun, and I'd say maybe more fun than the regular modes. I still got killed a bunch. But there's something relaxing about the alien being completely implacably, unstoppably deadly. You're not worrying about looting enough equipment or setting up an elaborate trap. It, and its awareness of you, is the only thing you need to worry about. If it sees you your dead, don't let it see you. Be not where it is, even if the range of 'not where it is' is just the other side of a crate (I evaded the thing several times by just crouching and doing a do-si-do around a crate with my jaw clenched tight the whole time.)

The last few levels after the nest are built to essentially force you to use distractions and fire, since there's a few bottle necks where you and the alien have to be in the same space. On normal mode I remember these being kind of dull, the difficulty spike felt artificial. Amanda can navigate a nest full of aliens but this set of locked doors is the killer? It's samey and kind of disappointing (more on this in a second).

On nightmare the last round of alien levels is more engaging since it's basically a final exam, getting through the bottlenecks isn't just a matter of using the flamethrower fuel you saved (the nest used that up) or the distractions (at this point they buy you a few seconds at best). You need to corral and control the alien, not suggest where it should go but know where it'll be at the moment you need it to be there or not there. The game by denying you the tools you'd use otherwise but by also making your relationship to the alien much closer has created a new relationship with the alien and taught you to exploit it. By virtue of being what it's hunting, you can bait and lead its behaviour. It is extremely satisfying. Which is good, because the thing is, the game kind of isn't that satisfying on normal mode.

The nest is a great level, but ultimately, it only kills SOME aliens and in the end you're captured and brought to another smaller nest which you escape again. The whole narrative exists in a cul-de-sac where everything Amanda does is meaningless for reasons that feel more arbitrary than challenging. She kills the alien, there's more. She kills the whole nest, there's more. She escapes, no she doesn't. The problem is that if Amanda had never come to the station nothing would have been different. Even in the first movie Ripley gets to save the damn cat. The rising tension of the game gets extinguished when you just get to harder and harder versions of very samey looking environments. I guess sometimes they're on fire but that's about it. On normal mode it's Amanda Ripley's shitty weekend as an OSHA inspector. She ultimately only escapes from danger that she put herself in.

Nightmare mode jacks up the tension enough that you never really feel in control of the situation so it's just kind of a joy to survive long enough to get to a save point. Its not just harder enemies or something like that, the topography of the game is changed. Sections that took me forever on normal mode I blew through on the first try. Sections I didn't even remember they were so easy had me stuck for hours. The balance of the game is thrown so out of whack the emotional experience is different. You get the satisfaction that the game denies you on normal mode. You appreciate it as a game that you are challenged by and winning. You feel like you beat something. 

This is what makes the game satisfying in a special way on nightmare. You learn to work with the alien looming over you, not just potentially, but actually just in the next room. It keeps it from being frustrating or boring because you feel like you're always having to adapt but those adaptations can work. The alien becomes the physical instantiation of a goal's resistance to being achieved and that's what makes the game cathartic, not the plot or the ending, the actual gameplay. Every lock burned, computer system hacked or complicated mechanical job done is still just an arbitrary mini game, but it's one accomplished with an active antagonist that you are regularly overcoming. The game is playfully working against you, standing in front of you and jacking up the difficulty with every empty supply crate and security guard who'll take a break from being eaten alive to open fire on you.

In underlining the arbitrariness of the challenge of the game by making it flatly unfair it stops being an experience of a narrative and more like a personal challenge to you the player, and thusly in its success, a feeling of real victory and even a sort of lesson that can be taken away.

There is always a failure scenario. Just be somewhere else.