Alien: Isolation can appeal to COD players, claims dev

The slow, methodical gameplay of Alien: Isolation can still end up appealing to the typical Call of Duty player, according to senior designer Gary Napper.

Creative Assembly's take on the Alien franchise is a survival horror game with protagonist Ellen Ripley being hunted down by a single Xenomorph.

Napper admits he was initially worried with players getting too frustrated with the difficulty, but a simple play test put an end to those fears.

"I think one of my concerns was it might be too hardcore," he told ArabicGamers. "It might be too hard and it might be something that people would get frustrated with.

"But luckily people's reactions have gone down really well. We got a group of people in who are big fans of Call of Duty and Battlefield and things like that, and we wanted to see their reactions.

"They picked up the controller, they sprinted and then they died. And then they did it again and they died.

"Then all of a sudden they started moving slowly, they started crouching, using the motion tracker, not firing the weapons. They got so into it and I thought actually, this does have a lot more appeal then I give it credit for. So I was happy with that."

Napper went on to say that there was a fine balance between making the game challenging and leaving players frustrated.

"It's definitely trial and error to stop doing the things that are getting you killed," he added.

"That's the key thing to be on the right side of frustration, if you know it's something that you've done then you'll want to try again. But if you think, 'How did he kill me? That was really unfair...', that can be frustrating."

Alien: Isolation launches 7 October. Look out for more Alien coverage, including a preview, very soon.