Alien: Isolation Is Just The First Of The Age Of Terror Games

When I played Alien: Isolation for the first time, I got sick to my stomach. It was a physical necessity that I stop playing – and I hadn't even seen the Alien itself yet. Now is the next age of the horror game. Not just horror for the gamer – not just a place where you can get out an tune out. Instead you're trapped in a space station with the perfect organism, one that cannot be killed, one that's never been so real to you as it is here and now, discovering you having a nervous breakdown in a staff locker.

In this game, the developers at Creative Assembly concentrate on two elements. The first is a true reverence for the original ALIEN film. Taking cues from that film, and that film only, Alien: Isolation summons a retro-futuristic landscape the likes of which we've literally only ever seen once before – in that original film.

Alien: Isolation is, I think, the first in a line of next-generation horror games that cross over into terror. I'm referring to the interviews done with the creators of the film for the Blu-Ray set. In it, they describe how the film transcends horror and becomes terror.

The inhabitants of the film represent the filmgoer, and they're trapped in space with the perfect killer. One by one, they die.

Here in Alien: Isolation – you are alone. There are humans on the space station you walk through, and there are droids, but even when you find an ally, he ... well... click here if you want to be spoiled.

Next we'll find another entry in the universe of terror games: Silent Hills. Unlike past entries in the series and indeed any horror games before, game creator Hideo Kojima suggests that in making this game, they entered a new era.

"At first we didn't want to make a game that will make you pee your pants," said Kojima in the reveal of P.T., aka the Playable Trailer for Silent Hills, "but we changed out minds. Now we're making a game that will make you sh** your pants."

Kojima also described the power of horror games – how in the past they'd held back because a horror game too scary would make people stop playing. "But for this game we're ignoring that limit," said Kojima, "if you don't want to play it, we don't care."

Finally there's The Evil Within, a game that creator of the original horror game Resident Evil, has worked on to destroy the rest of the horror gaming universe. Describing his "disappointment" with the "current state of horror games", Shinji Mikami will bring The Evil Within, a "true survival horror game ... in which the player confronts and overcomes fear."

Looking forward to the lot? Make sure you've overcome your heart condition by the time you fire up any of these titles. Alien: Isolation is out now, while The Evil Within comes October 14th, and Silent Hills remains TBA.