Alien Isolation: Not a Date-Night Game
How do you make a non-gamer play games with you? That’s a hell of a question, but a pertinent one when you’re a Billy No Mates like me. Having left my “one of the lads” days behind me years ago, swapping pints and parties for nappies and bills, my gaggle of giggling idiots has dwindled – mostly because they’re all knee-deep in nappies too.
But I was always the only gamer anyway, probably because I come from an era that existed before gaming was cool, or even socially viable. I was a geek way back when, and I’m still one now, but every now and then I want to play a game with someone, share that camaraderie I had with my brothers growing up, laugh, cheers, swear, maybe moon the person sitting next to me while simultaneously tea-bagging them on-screen.
But who to turn to? Well, with the only adult in the house besides me being my long-suffering best friend, confidante, life partner and baby mama, it fell to my wife, Lyd, the least gamey person in the UK, to warm the pad with me.
So, with the lure of a Domino’s pizza, the opportunity to see me in my drinking helmet and the promise to not moon her, at all, even one time, I convinced her that not only should she play with me, but that she should play Alien: Isolation with me. I know: ain’t I a stinker? So against the original plan to fill the house with “lads”, I had my first gamer’s night in with my wife. It wasn’t entirely what I expected it to be.
While she usually refers to the PS4 as “that thing under the telly” (she knows what it is, but regards it almost as another woman, a rival for her affections), tonight she had to actively indulge it, a menage a tois over which HR Giger’s extra terrestrial killing machine would preside.
Within minutes she affected to look bored, but across a rather wide slab of pepperoni-laden lovliness I could tell she was impressed by the atmosphere. I was, of course, not helping, slurping lucozade through a big clear straw while gripping the pad so tightly my knuckles were white. I offered her the pad, which she glared at like I’d just dropped my trousers in Asda. “You play, I’ll supervise,” she said. “And eat.”
It didn’t take much to persuade her to feed me as my fingers rattled against the pad and I struggled to stay alive in the terrifying nightmare aboard the Sevastapol. Struggled to survive, and to keep pizza sauce off my chin.
It was around a half hour in that something magical happened. As I watched the Alien’s tail ruin Amanda Ripley’s flightsuit for the third time in five minutes, Lyd suddenly chimed in. “Try taking your time,” she said, a mite testily, I thought. “You charge everywhere, it’s going to hear you a mile off.”
“I’m not charging,” I retorted through a mouthful of bread and cheese and glory. “I’m trying to be efficient.”
“Yeah, well,” she replied, with an edge to her voice that suggested to my Obi Wan style gamer’s instinct that she was starting to GET IT, “you’re fucking it up.” Such an angel. In response I hunkered down, focused, flicking a slice of pepperoni off my chin with a questing tongue. It was on now. It was on.
“Go left,” she ordered as I headed towards yet another dark intersection, motion tracker in my trembling hand. “No,” she explained as poor Amanda Ripley was eaten once again, “the other left.”
And so it went on. After an hour or so, we approached crunch time. I knew that by now she would be getting bored guiding my sorry ass through a medium that she had little to no interest in, and I was getting frustrated with my own incompetence, my concentration not helped by the drinking helmet and bulging belt buckle.
“Give it here,” she said suddenly. “Which button makes you duck?”
I’d like to report at this point that she took to the pad like a Canadian to an ice-rink, that she displayed a supernatural competence that surpassed human understanding, that she cleared Alien: Isolation in record time. Sadly, though, that didn’t happen. She died, within minutes, and threw the controller back at me with a nonchalant shrug, before disappearing into the kitchen for more napkins. Ah well, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it survive a hostile alien menace.
We played a bit more, until the atmosphere all got too much and my suggestion to play some GTA V together and bus’ some ho’s didn’t go down too well. Still, it was worth it, just for those few minutes of bonding as she crossed over, briefly, to join me on the awesome side where us gamers reside. It may have been mostly about the pizza and the silly hat, but it was also about quality time. I enjoyed it more than she did, maybe, but it was good for us, a tent-pole moment. It didn’t convince her to become a gamer, but it did prove one thing: I’m shit at games, but I look damn good in a drinking helmet.
