***This review contains spoilers of Signs by M. Night Shyamalan. Really.***
Mutually Assured Realisation. You know the end of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, when it turns out the aliens are fatally allergic to water (and don't take too kindly to baseball bats either)? As that plot twist awkwardly coughed itself into being, and any respect one might have harboured for the director doffed its cap and shuffled uneasily out of the room, people sitting in cinemas across the world turned to their neighbours and uttered these fourteen words, pausing only to allow an ellipsis, hyphen and question mark to catch up:
"Fatally allergic to water...so they invade a planet two-thirds covered in it?"
That's MAR. It's a mass epiphany, a group conclusion arrived at independently but in perfect unison- it's the "Just How Stupid Do You Think We Are?" effect, manifest. I'd imagine it's going on right now in your head, concerning whether I'm ever going to get on topic and talk about the game.
Alone in the Dark has its own MAR moment. This game's beasties have an allergic reaction to fire: think "burst into ash within seconds if exposed to a naked flame, leaving just enough time for an anguished bellow" allergic. So, what better way for them to make themselves comfortable in their invasion of our realm than by...
...setting fire to every bastard thing in sight? You'd think it would be a handicap, being a demon from Hell with such a dramatic intolerance for fire, but mark my words: you don't know terror until you've walked around Central Park, poking monsters in the face with a flaming rake.
Luckily, for humanity and blurb writers alike, this game boasts "Fire Propagation Technology." Fire spreads (sort of) like real fire (um...ish).
The implementation of this technology smells a lot like gimmickry. Since "gimmick" is a contentious word, let's turn to the OED:
"gimmick- n. a trick or device intended to attract attention or publicity rather than fulfill a useful purpose."
Fire spreading? Gimmick.
Manual blinking? Gimmick.
Inventory in a coat? Gimmick.
Item combination? There's a precedent here.
A gimmick is a prepubescent mechanic. It's not that these gimmicks aren't employed- many scenarios make use of them, from blinking goo out of the character's eyes, to combining yourself a nice Molotov Cocktail out of a stapler and some string- but they never convince that their presence is necessary. For instance, the player can wave items around with the right analogue stick. Although used to solve puzzles contrived for such waving, the process never quite graduates from quasi-comedic, sub-semaphoric physical farce to "Sweet zombie Jebus, why don't they put this in all games immediately?" epiphany.
That "inventory in a coat"...
...though you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a screenshot from some peculiar Japanese flashing simulator.
The outcome of this innovation with the inventory is awkwardness. The nightmare that is turning off and unequipping your torch and switching weapons in the middle of a fight is a horror that mere prose can never hope to convey (although the strangled metre of this paragraph's first sentence made a brave attempt). Most player deaths are ultimately slapstick, borne of clumsy tank controls. This does not lend to the air of terror: it does lend to an inclination to record these deaths on Fraps, speed them up, and loop the Benny Hill soundtrack over them.
The propagating fire, that never precisely propagates properly; the inventory in a coat that proves, in practice, much more cumbersome than a standard inventory screen. Atari is a shaky prosecution lawyer, calling on the testimony of witnesses to convince the jury. Ostensibly, the witnesses are there to strengthen the case; really, their presence is intended to distract the jury from the gaping holes in the prosecution's argument.
With this penchant for first-person simulation putting the player in the character's shoes, jacket and eyes, one could assume AitD is angling for immersion. However, the perspective shifts constantly and without warning, from first to third person and back again. It suggests immersion isn't that much of a concern. Many situations can only be resolved in third person (fighting, or interacting with the environment) thus severing the connection with the protagonist's viewpoint.
Half-Life handled this peerlessly. Valve never allowed the player to leave the protagonist's perspective, even if it would have made the environmental puzzles easier to depict or the story easier to tell.
The exception to the rule, I guess.
Crucially, they also made Freeman a reticent specimen, instead of giving him free rein to spout cringeworthy, cuss heavy dialogue. AitD, conversely, is all too happy to sacrifice the immersive benefits of the first-person if the situation asks it. The first playable sequence in the game ends with the player staring at the protagonist's reflection in a mirror, only for the camera to jump to third-person for some platforming. Does the game want us to "be" Edward Carnby, or to play as him? You can't have your cake and eat it, Atari.
More accurately, you can't eat your cake and have it.
This jumping perspective suggests an aping of the "cinematic." Dramatic camera angles and helicopter explosions showering flaming debris all over the hero as he dangles from a cliff are the stuff of action films. The excessively bump and normal mapped face of the protagonist even bears passing resemblances to certain pockmarked film stars.
A very weak effort, Atari. He's obviously CGI.
Regrettably, AitD makes the Michael Bay mistake of thinking that lashings of "cheap thrills" will magically transmute into a handful of "rich thrills". It?s constantly shouting, grabbing you by the shoulder and pointing at things:
"Ohmigod! A falling bus! Watch out for potential crushing!"
"Ohmigod! Water and electricity! What a perilous confluence!"
"Ohmigod! A flaming gas canister! Be wary of the possible conflagration!"
There's no alchemy here: when the ingredients are cheap thrills and gimmicks, the outcome is gimmicky cheap thrills. Conservation of Energy, guys: it's a *****.
The most obvious cue comes from DVDs of 24 or Lost. The credits and cliff-hangers that close each chapter of AitD hint at this, but it's most explicitly shown by the game's DVD style "Chapter Selection", replete with "Previously On..." montages.
The merits of "Chapter Selection" in gaming are open to debate. Despite not being a difficult game, giving the player the ability to skip to any section they want to clearly kills any semblance of challenge. On the plus side, it opens up the game to everyone. On the minus side, it opens up the game to everyone.
Hell, if a "fair" system means the player is denied the rest of the game when they become stuck at a certain point, largely on the inscrutable whims of the developer, maybe it's acceptable to kill the challenge. Like Oblivion's fast travel, the option is there, but the onus is on the player. I suppose the point is that, once there?s the option to skip a difficult section, you'll start to wonder what the point is in struggling with any section. Of course, if the game were fun to play, that would be a justification in itself- AitD sort of falls down there.
What else are games, though, if not difficulties? They're scenarios with obstacles. If you don't want difficulties, rent a DVD. Perhaps this is a bad omen for gaming's future, a sinister and self-defeating pandering to accessibility. Or perhaps GameFAQs are the only people losing out in the long run.
It certainly improves the chances of people seeing the game's disappointing endings. Frustrating "damned if you do, damned if you don't" affairs, the damnation in effect here is of a literal, Biblical, brimstoney flavour. There's a "bad" ending; there's also another "bad" ending. One is a sliver less bad, although the fact that both seem to end with the imminent destruction of the human race means discussing degrees of "badness" would seem to be splitting hairs. Different shades of grey, really [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.60739]. Atari knew many more people would see the ending of this game than most other games- the least they could do is provide a satisfying conclusion for those who did slog their way through to it.
Still, if it ends dreadfully, it opens memorably. The player gains consciousness in a skyscraper falling to pieces, in a city following suit. Much of the spectacle of the game's opening is borne from an obvious source: events in New York, six and a bit years ago, hang just offstage; specific emotions are tacitly stirred up by watching a city fall apart. This is not to accuse the game of tastelessly capitalising on human suffering- it's an allusion, although only Atari can say how intentional it was. Unfortunately, the adrenaline-injected fear it creates is so much more arresting than anything else the game has to offer that, once the game has settled into its survival horror groove, tedium is the result. It's a pity that the game has to persist beyond its beginning.
The opening is the most terrifying part of the game because it infuses fantastic events into a familiar setting, always acknowledging that the fantastic informs and defines real-life fears. Central Park in the dark strikes me as a fairly spooky setting in real-life, even with an absence of pyrophobic demons scuttling around. Watching a building fall to pieces from the inside is far more alarming than heavy fog and monsters spitting poison at you. It's no coincidence that, as the preposterousness of the narrative increases, so the fear experienced by the player decreases. It seems this:
Is not half as scary as this:
AitD's underfed narrative and overblown delivery leave it lopsided. Its obsession with introducing gimmicks but not considering whether it really needs to is married to and marred by ill-considered controls. It's a difficult game to recommend, particularly in a world, and genre, shared by specimens as superior as Resident Evil 4.
Don't touch AitD with a clumsily manipulated ten-foot flaming bargepole.
Mutually Assured Realisation. You know the end of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs, when it turns out the aliens are fatally allergic to water (and don't take too kindly to baseball bats either)? As that plot twist awkwardly coughed itself into being, and any respect one might have harboured for the director doffed its cap and shuffled uneasily out of the room, people sitting in cinemas across the world turned to their neighbours and uttered these fourteen words, pausing only to allow an ellipsis, hyphen and question mark to catch up:
"Fatally allergic to water...so they invade a planet two-thirds covered in it?"
That's MAR. It's a mass epiphany, a group conclusion arrived at independently but in perfect unison- it's the "Just How Stupid Do You Think We Are?" effect, manifest. I'd imagine it's going on right now in your head, concerning whether I'm ever going to get on topic and talk about the game.
Alone in the Dark has its own MAR moment. This game's beasties have an allergic reaction to fire: think "burst into ash within seconds if exposed to a naked flame, leaving just enough time for an anguished bellow" allergic. So, what better way for them to make themselves comfortable in their invasion of our realm than by...
...setting fire to every bastard thing in sight? You'd think it would be a handicap, being a demon from Hell with such a dramatic intolerance for fire, but mark my words: you don't know terror until you've walked around Central Park, poking monsters in the face with a flaming rake.
Luckily, for humanity and blurb writers alike, this game boasts "Fire Propagation Technology." Fire spreads (sort of) like real fire (um...ish).
The implementation of this technology smells a lot like gimmickry. Since "gimmick" is a contentious word, let's turn to the OED:
"gimmick- n. a trick or device intended to attract attention or publicity rather than fulfill a useful purpose."
Fire spreading? Gimmick.
Manual blinking? Gimmick.
Inventory in a coat? Gimmick.
Item combination? There's a precedent here.
A gimmick is a prepubescent mechanic. It's not that these gimmicks aren't employed- many scenarios make use of them, from blinking goo out of the character's eyes, to combining yourself a nice Molotov Cocktail out of a stapler and some string- but they never convince that their presence is necessary. For instance, the player can wave items around with the right analogue stick. Although used to solve puzzles contrived for such waving, the process never quite graduates from quasi-comedic, sub-semaphoric physical farce to "Sweet zombie Jebus, why don't they put this in all games immediately?" epiphany.
That "inventory in a coat"...
...though you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a screenshot from some peculiar Japanese flashing simulator.
The outcome of this innovation with the inventory is awkwardness. The nightmare that is turning off and unequipping your torch and switching weapons in the middle of a fight is a horror that mere prose can never hope to convey (although the strangled metre of this paragraph's first sentence made a brave attempt). Most player deaths are ultimately slapstick, borne of clumsy tank controls. This does not lend to the air of terror: it does lend to an inclination to record these deaths on Fraps, speed them up, and loop the Benny Hill soundtrack over them.
The propagating fire, that never precisely propagates properly; the inventory in a coat that proves, in practice, much more cumbersome than a standard inventory screen. Atari is a shaky prosecution lawyer, calling on the testimony of witnesses to convince the jury. Ostensibly, the witnesses are there to strengthen the case; really, their presence is intended to distract the jury from the gaping holes in the prosecution's argument.
With this penchant for first-person simulation putting the player in the character's shoes, jacket and eyes, one could assume AitD is angling for immersion. However, the perspective shifts constantly and without warning, from first to third person and back again. It suggests immersion isn't that much of a concern. Many situations can only be resolved in third person (fighting, or interacting with the environment) thus severing the connection with the protagonist's viewpoint.
Half-Life handled this peerlessly. Valve never allowed the player to leave the protagonist's perspective, even if it would have made the environmental puzzles easier to depict or the story easier to tell.
The exception to the rule, I guess.
Crucially, they also made Freeman a reticent specimen, instead of giving him free rein to spout cringeworthy, cuss heavy dialogue. AitD, conversely, is all too happy to sacrifice the immersive benefits of the first-person if the situation asks it. The first playable sequence in the game ends with the player staring at the protagonist's reflection in a mirror, only for the camera to jump to third-person for some platforming. Does the game want us to "be" Edward Carnby, or to play as him? You can't have your cake and eat it, Atari.
More accurately, you can't eat your cake and have it.
This jumping perspective suggests an aping of the "cinematic." Dramatic camera angles and helicopter explosions showering flaming debris all over the hero as he dangles from a cliff are the stuff of action films. The excessively bump and normal mapped face of the protagonist even bears passing resemblances to certain pockmarked film stars.
A very weak effort, Atari. He's obviously CGI.
Regrettably, AitD makes the Michael Bay mistake of thinking that lashings of "cheap thrills" will magically transmute into a handful of "rich thrills". It?s constantly shouting, grabbing you by the shoulder and pointing at things:
"Ohmigod! A falling bus! Watch out for potential crushing!"
"Ohmigod! Water and electricity! What a perilous confluence!"
"Ohmigod! A flaming gas canister! Be wary of the possible conflagration!"
There's no alchemy here: when the ingredients are cheap thrills and gimmicks, the outcome is gimmicky cheap thrills. Conservation of Energy, guys: it's a *****.
The most obvious cue comes from DVDs of 24 or Lost. The credits and cliff-hangers that close each chapter of AitD hint at this, but it's most explicitly shown by the game's DVD style "Chapter Selection", replete with "Previously On..." montages.
The merits of "Chapter Selection" in gaming are open to debate. Despite not being a difficult game, giving the player the ability to skip to any section they want to clearly kills any semblance of challenge. On the plus side, it opens up the game to everyone. On the minus side, it opens up the game to everyone.
Hell, if a "fair" system means the player is denied the rest of the game when they become stuck at a certain point, largely on the inscrutable whims of the developer, maybe it's acceptable to kill the challenge. Like Oblivion's fast travel, the option is there, but the onus is on the player. I suppose the point is that, once there?s the option to skip a difficult section, you'll start to wonder what the point is in struggling with any section. Of course, if the game were fun to play, that would be a justification in itself- AitD sort of falls down there.
What else are games, though, if not difficulties? They're scenarios with obstacles. If you don't want difficulties, rent a DVD. Perhaps this is a bad omen for gaming's future, a sinister and self-defeating pandering to accessibility. Or perhaps GameFAQs are the only people losing out in the long run.
It certainly improves the chances of people seeing the game's disappointing endings. Frustrating "damned if you do, damned if you don't" affairs, the damnation in effect here is of a literal, Biblical, brimstoney flavour. There's a "bad" ending; there's also another "bad" ending. One is a sliver less bad, although the fact that both seem to end with the imminent destruction of the human race means discussing degrees of "badness" would seem to be splitting hairs. Different shades of grey, really [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.60739]. Atari knew many more people would see the ending of this game than most other games- the least they could do is provide a satisfying conclusion for those who did slog their way through to it.
Still, if it ends dreadfully, it opens memorably. The player gains consciousness in a skyscraper falling to pieces, in a city following suit. Much of the spectacle of the game's opening is borne from an obvious source: events in New York, six and a bit years ago, hang just offstage; specific emotions are tacitly stirred up by watching a city fall apart. This is not to accuse the game of tastelessly capitalising on human suffering- it's an allusion, although only Atari can say how intentional it was. Unfortunately, the adrenaline-injected fear it creates is so much more arresting than anything else the game has to offer that, once the game has settled into its survival horror groove, tedium is the result. It's a pity that the game has to persist beyond its beginning.
The opening is the most terrifying part of the game because it infuses fantastic events into a familiar setting, always acknowledging that the fantastic informs and defines real-life fears. Central Park in the dark strikes me as a fairly spooky setting in real-life, even with an absence of pyrophobic demons scuttling around. Watching a building fall to pieces from the inside is far more alarming than heavy fog and monsters spitting poison at you. It's no coincidence that, as the preposterousness of the narrative increases, so the fear experienced by the player decreases. It seems this:
Is not half as scary as this:
AitD's underfed narrative and overblown delivery leave it lopsided. Its obsession with introducing gimmicks but not considering whether it really needs to is married to and marred by ill-considered controls. It's a difficult game to recommend, particularly in a world, and genre, shared by specimens as superior as Resident Evil 4.
Don't touch AitD with a clumsily manipulated ten-foot flaming bargepole.
Paraphrased from the Gamespot Ninja Gaiden II forums: if you don't want reviewers to complain about your games [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/84594], try making the games suck less.
