Making a genuinely scary videogame is no easy task – the most skilled of developers rely on a delicate mixture of scripted moments, subtle audio and video cues, magician-style misdirection and cunning AI in order to keep player nerves on edge. Of course, such efforts must be doubled when you're building a campaign mode that aims to both scare and facilitate co-op play – after all, how can you maintain tension when you've got a buddy chattering away in your headset earpiece and tea-bagging every second enemy you kill?
Valve's Left 4 Dead series manages to keep panic levels high thanks to its dynamic artificial intelligence system, which effectively randomises the locations of enemies and items each time you play through one of its B-movie inspired scenarios. Link Removed - Invalid URL, the maker of Link Removed - Invalid URL, is aiming to achieve something similar with what it has dubbed its "generative scare system".
The generative scare system applies to both scripted horror moments and enemy AI in an effort to enforce an air of unpredictability to both the single-player and co-op experience of F.E.A.R. 3.