[IMG_inline caption="Why do you all hate me?"]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-pc-game-1.jpg[/IMG_inline]It could be the title of a sitcom, 'Everyone Hates The-Original-Alone-In-The-Dark.' Never before has a game been so put upon. The first two sequels chucked out all that puzzle nonsense in favour of gunplay, the 'reinvention' in 2001 might as well have been called 'Alone in the Resident Evil' for how slavishly it ripped the series off, and they let Uwe Boll make not just one terrible movie, but two terrible movies.[IMG_inline align="left" height="150" width="150" caption="Zwei Filme! Ich war auch überrascht!"]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/uwe_boll_finger.jpg[/IMG_inline] I'm not sure why people hate Alone in the Dark so much, especially as it almost single-handedly created the survival horror genre, a genre I thought we rather liked. Perhaps it punches kittens or sets fire to girl scouts, I just don't know.
Regardless of the reason, pure, unfiltered hatred is the only explanation I can think of for the latest iteration of the series; it takes real vitriol to make a game this bad. This might be the game that finally buries the series, which is odd really as Atari kinda need it to do well; with their finances in such a mess, releasing something this poor seems counter-productive. Keep your eyes peeled for Atari executives sitting on street corners with dogs on pieces of string, signs saying, 'I killed Alone in the Dark, need money' and the powerful scent of turpentine hovering around them like flies.
Oh, and flies hovering round them like the powerful scent of turpentine.
If you were being charitable, you'd have to give developer Eden Games credit for attempting to combine disparate game play elements and introduce some new ideas into the admittedly stale survival horror genre; but, as their true goal was to murder the progenitor of the genre at the behest of their dark masters, you'd have to take that credit away and maybe punch them in the ear for good measure.
At the most basic level, the game is a nightmare to play. The controls are possibly the worst I have ever seen. The various button combinations take up four full pages in the manual and if you'll allow me to get metaphorical for a moment, the game is drowning in the control ocean. You have separate schemes for third-person view, first-person view, third-person view in a vehicle, first-person view in a vehicle, climbing, and inventory and unlike a game like GTA IV, which does reasonably well with a limited number of buttons, Alone in the Dark is clumsy and frustrating. That said, difficult controls alone aren't quite enough to condemn a game, although only very good games can get away with them, and while they are certainly worthy of censure, the controls in Alone in the Dark are by no means the worst thing it has to offer.
The box for Alone in the Dark boasts about its 'intense story' and 'exhilarating game play' and before I go any further, it is important to point out that both of these statements are filthy, evil lies. Alone in the Dark's story falls into a number of traps; it's badly paced, poorly written and most importantly, it's stupid and clichéd.
[IMG_inline caption="Hi, I'm Sarah; I'll be your love interest for the evening."]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-20080521104840251.jpg[/IMG_inline]Alone in the Dark's story is a hackneyed little thing involving an ancient evil slumbering under Central Park, an amnesiac protagonist with a mysterious past and a mouth like a wounded pirate and a love story that feels so artificial it might as well be shoring up a porn star's chest. The cast of characters is fairly small, which is a blessing when you consider how bad the dialogue for them is, and they are pretty much all shallow, one-dimensional plot devices with legs. The protagonist, Edward Carnby, suffers especially. It's not exactly a secret that the character you play is the same Edward Carnby from the first trilogy of Alone in the Dark, making him more than a hundred years old. Going into the game with this knowledge makes his profuse swearing all the more jarring. This guy is older than my grandparents yet he swears more than I do, and I swear a lot... fucker.
See?
It makes it had to empathise with Carnby because he seems so unpleasant and false and as he's the only character with any real quantity of dialogue, it means that the whole game suffers.
While they clearly couldn't be arsed doing anything interesting with the story or characters, the structure of their little tale is one area that Eden Games have tried something a little bit different. The game is split up into episodes, like a TV show, so playing the game can be likened to watching a DVD box set. Each episode has a recap at the start, which makes the previous episode or 'level' as I like to call them, look a lot more exciting than it actually was. It's an interesting idea and it has merit because separating the play into smaller chunks means that it is easier to control the pace and tone of the story. Eden have failed to make good use their own idea however, so while the first level and a half are action-packed and actually quite good and the second half of the last level is quite exciting, although not enough to ameliorate the indescribably dull fetch quest that precedes it, the main body of the game is a ponderous drudge.
On the subject of drudge, when it comes to the game play of Alone in the Dark, Eden could be accused of trying to do too much. Personally, I think that's only part of the problem. The other part is that everything they did, they did badly and where they tried to innovate, they did even worse.
[IMG_inline align="left" caption="A rare shot of me not crashing into a tree...that I stole from IGN"]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-20080509034018048.jpg[/IMG_inline]The first and possibly most important innovation is the sloughing off of the usual linear style of survival horror, the style that works very well for this type of game, and instead attempting a sandbox style game. This is certainly a bold move, and if done with a great deal of care, could make for a very compelling experience. The problem with Alone in the Dark's sandbox is that it's not really a sandbox. Sure, it looks like a sandbox, but the incentive to go and explore is almost totally absent. Unlike games like Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto, you aren't going to find anything interesting or fun when you go for a jaunt around Central Park, just more of the same stuff that you'll find everywhere else. It's also been designed without a thought about the general tone of the game. Nothing is more detrimental to invoking an atmosphere than being able to wander off whenever you feel like. Lastly, it necessitates some mode of transport, such as cars. Not a bad thing in itself, but the driving sections in Alone in the Dark are intensely irritating. If you aren't crashing into things, you're trying to get rid of the monsters that you can only shake off by driving really fast, which is almost impossible, or crashing into things, which, as I mentioned, is much easier but damages both you and the car.
But as poorly done as the sandbox is it's really just a distraction from the real meat and drink of the game, which is disappointing puzzle-based third-person adventure with the aforementioned ropey controls, dull combat, more climbing than you would think and far too many things that kill you with a single hit. I'll get the climbing out of the way first, because it'll take the least time. in a couple of parts of the game the climbing is used to really good effect, like when you hanging from a cable on a cliff face with a helicopter that is on fire teetering precariously above you, but most of the time it just seems like an arbitrary addition, and let's face it, watching someone climb is rarely an avenue for heart-racing action. There are a few games that make climbing look awesome and Alone in the Dark is certainly not one of them.
Still, it could be worse; it could be terrible like the combat or puzzles. Combat in Alone in the Dark can be done in one of two ways. You can either shoot at things in first person, or swing objects at them in third person. Note, that with a few exceptions, you cannot do it the other way round. I could praise Eden Games for only putting two guns in the entire game, but I don't like them, so I'm not going to. Besides, they put about a bajillion bullets in, so any restraint on actual ordinance is made up for by the surplus of ammunition. The gun play in the game has a completely unsubtle auto-aim component, making it almost trivial. However, each bullet needs about five or six buddies following closely after it to be of any use on even the weakest enemy and even then they need to be on fire. Melee combat, on the other hand, has a certain visceral appeal; wrapping a chair around some zombie-analogue's head is fun and I just wish that it didn't suffer so much at the hands of the clumsy controls; so much, in fact, that you rarely do it because it's an invitation to get killed. But, what's truly depressing about the combat in Alone in the Dark is that the most effective way to deal with most enemies is to walk into them holding a burning stick.
I wish I was joking.
When it comes to the puzzles in Alone in the Dark, we must turn our gaze once again to the deceitful box. The offending text is simple, 'improvise to survive.' In brief, you can combine the items in your inventory to solve the brain teasers you encounter. The puzzles are heavily inventory based, and are much more like Monkey Island, in tone if not quality, than Silent Hill or Resident Evil. Inventory management has always been an important aspect of survival horror. Not having enough stuff to deal with all the monsters helps emphasise the 'survival' part of survival horror, hell, it's a genre staple. It's astounding then, with so many other games to reference, that Alone in the Dark manages to mess it up so badly.
[IMG_inline align="left" caption="Fortunately, all of these things burn."]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-20080602095040378.jpg[/IMG_inline]The inventory system of Alone in the Dark was one of the things that was really touted in the pre-release hype, along with the 'Real World Rules' that go hand in hand with it. The basic premise is that objects in Alone in the Dark react like their real world counterparts. So if you find some cloth and some flammable liquid and a stick, you can make a torch to light your way, or if you find some flexible cable and a golf club, you can construct a crude grappling hook to help you climb. Perhaps you want to protect yourself from enemies with a ring of flames, so you pour some lighter fluid on the ground and set fire to it. Doesn't that sound great?
Sure it does, but I've been taking lessons from the box and I am lying freely and with ease. You can't do any of those things, except for the last one, because Eden seems to have an obsession with fire. There is not a single puzzle in the game were the solution isn't fire or if not fire, an explosion. Oh, and before naysayers start calling me out on it, I do not count shining a torch on something to be a puzzle. The problem with telling people that your game has 'real world rules' is that then the onus on you to actually make it true. The very limited way you can interact with the items in your inventory doesn't create the illusion of a real world, it highlights all the things you can't do.
The bottom line is, the only reason to buy or rent Alone in the Dark is if you have a morbid urge to see a franchise die. I can only hope that a developer with some actual talent takes the few good ideas that Eden had and use them with the kind of skill that Eden apparently lack.
Regardless of the reason, pure, unfiltered hatred is the only explanation I can think of for the latest iteration of the series; it takes real vitriol to make a game this bad. This might be the game that finally buries the series, which is odd really as Atari kinda need it to do well; with their finances in such a mess, releasing something this poor seems counter-productive. Keep your eyes peeled for Atari executives sitting on street corners with dogs on pieces of string, signs saying, 'I killed Alone in the Dark, need money' and the powerful scent of turpentine hovering around them like flies.
Oh, and flies hovering round them like the powerful scent of turpentine.
If you were being charitable, you'd have to give developer Eden Games credit for attempting to combine disparate game play elements and introduce some new ideas into the admittedly stale survival horror genre; but, as their true goal was to murder the progenitor of the genre at the behest of their dark masters, you'd have to take that credit away and maybe punch them in the ear for good measure.
At the most basic level, the game is a nightmare to play. The controls are possibly the worst I have ever seen. The various button combinations take up four full pages in the manual and if you'll allow me to get metaphorical for a moment, the game is drowning in the control ocean. You have separate schemes for third-person view, first-person view, third-person view in a vehicle, first-person view in a vehicle, climbing, and inventory and unlike a game like GTA IV, which does reasonably well with a limited number of buttons, Alone in the Dark is clumsy and frustrating. That said, difficult controls alone aren't quite enough to condemn a game, although only very good games can get away with them, and while they are certainly worthy of censure, the controls in Alone in the Dark are by no means the worst thing it has to offer.
The box for Alone in the Dark boasts about its 'intense story' and 'exhilarating game play' and before I go any further, it is important to point out that both of these statements are filthy, evil lies. Alone in the Dark's story falls into a number of traps; it's badly paced, poorly written and most importantly, it's stupid and clichéd.
[IMG_inline caption="Hi, I'm Sarah; I'll be your love interest for the evening."]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-20080521104840251.jpg[/IMG_inline]Alone in the Dark's story is a hackneyed little thing involving an ancient evil slumbering under Central Park, an amnesiac protagonist with a mysterious past and a mouth like a wounded pirate and a love story that feels so artificial it might as well be shoring up a porn star's chest. The cast of characters is fairly small, which is a blessing when you consider how bad the dialogue for them is, and they are pretty much all shallow, one-dimensional plot devices with legs. The protagonist, Edward Carnby, suffers especially. It's not exactly a secret that the character you play is the same Edward Carnby from the first trilogy of Alone in the Dark, making him more than a hundred years old. Going into the game with this knowledge makes his profuse swearing all the more jarring. This guy is older than my grandparents yet he swears more than I do, and I swear a lot... fucker.
See?
It makes it had to empathise with Carnby because he seems so unpleasant and false and as he's the only character with any real quantity of dialogue, it means that the whole game suffers.
While they clearly couldn't be arsed doing anything interesting with the story or characters, the structure of their little tale is one area that Eden Games have tried something a little bit different. The game is split up into episodes, like a TV show, so playing the game can be likened to watching a DVD box set. Each episode has a recap at the start, which makes the previous episode or 'level' as I like to call them, look a lot more exciting than it actually was. It's an interesting idea and it has merit because separating the play into smaller chunks means that it is easier to control the pace and tone of the story. Eden have failed to make good use their own idea however, so while the first level and a half are action-packed and actually quite good and the second half of the last level is quite exciting, although not enough to ameliorate the indescribably dull fetch quest that precedes it, the main body of the game is a ponderous drudge.
On the subject of drudge, when it comes to the game play of Alone in the Dark, Eden could be accused of trying to do too much. Personally, I think that's only part of the problem. The other part is that everything they did, they did badly and where they tried to innovate, they did even worse.
[IMG_inline align="left" caption="A rare shot of me not crashing into a tree...that I stole from IGN"]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-20080509034018048.jpg[/IMG_inline]The first and possibly most important innovation is the sloughing off of the usual linear style of survival horror, the style that works very well for this type of game, and instead attempting a sandbox style game. This is certainly a bold move, and if done with a great deal of care, could make for a very compelling experience. The problem with Alone in the Dark's sandbox is that it's not really a sandbox. Sure, it looks like a sandbox, but the incentive to go and explore is almost totally absent. Unlike games like Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto, you aren't going to find anything interesting or fun when you go for a jaunt around Central Park, just more of the same stuff that you'll find everywhere else. It's also been designed without a thought about the general tone of the game. Nothing is more detrimental to invoking an atmosphere than being able to wander off whenever you feel like. Lastly, it necessitates some mode of transport, such as cars. Not a bad thing in itself, but the driving sections in Alone in the Dark are intensely irritating. If you aren't crashing into things, you're trying to get rid of the monsters that you can only shake off by driving really fast, which is almost impossible, or crashing into things, which, as I mentioned, is much easier but damages both you and the car.
But as poorly done as the sandbox is it's really just a distraction from the real meat and drink of the game, which is disappointing puzzle-based third-person adventure with the aforementioned ropey controls, dull combat, more climbing than you would think and far too many things that kill you with a single hit. I'll get the climbing out of the way first, because it'll take the least time. in a couple of parts of the game the climbing is used to really good effect, like when you hanging from a cable on a cliff face with a helicopter that is on fire teetering precariously above you, but most of the time it just seems like an arbitrary addition, and let's face it, watching someone climb is rarely an avenue for heart-racing action. There are a few games that make climbing look awesome and Alone in the Dark is certainly not one of them.
Still, it could be worse; it could be terrible like the combat or puzzles. Combat in Alone in the Dark can be done in one of two ways. You can either shoot at things in first person, or swing objects at them in third person. Note, that with a few exceptions, you cannot do it the other way round. I could praise Eden Games for only putting two guns in the entire game, but I don't like them, so I'm not going to. Besides, they put about a bajillion bullets in, so any restraint on actual ordinance is made up for by the surplus of ammunition. The gun play in the game has a completely unsubtle auto-aim component, making it almost trivial. However, each bullet needs about five or six buddies following closely after it to be of any use on even the weakest enemy and even then they need to be on fire. Melee combat, on the other hand, has a certain visceral appeal; wrapping a chair around some zombie-analogue's head is fun and I just wish that it didn't suffer so much at the hands of the clumsy controls; so much, in fact, that you rarely do it because it's an invitation to get killed. But, what's truly depressing about the combat in Alone in the Dark is that the most effective way to deal with most enemies is to walk into them holding a burning stick.
I wish I was joking.
When it comes to the puzzles in Alone in the Dark, we must turn our gaze once again to the deceitful box. The offending text is simple, 'improvise to survive.' In brief, you can combine the items in your inventory to solve the brain teasers you encounter. The puzzles are heavily inventory based, and are much more like Monkey Island, in tone if not quality, than Silent Hill or Resident Evil. Inventory management has always been an important aspect of survival horror. Not having enough stuff to deal with all the monsters helps emphasise the 'survival' part of survival horror, hell, it's a genre staple. It's astounding then, with so many other games to reference, that Alone in the Dark manages to mess it up so badly.
[IMG_inline align="left" caption="Fortunately, all of these things burn."]http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q294/nilcypher/alone-in-the-dark-20080602095040378.jpg[/IMG_inline]The inventory system of Alone in the Dark was one of the things that was really touted in the pre-release hype, along with the 'Real World Rules' that go hand in hand with it. The basic premise is that objects in Alone in the Dark react like their real world counterparts. So if you find some cloth and some flammable liquid and a stick, you can make a torch to light your way, or if you find some flexible cable and a golf club, you can construct a crude grappling hook to help you climb. Perhaps you want to protect yourself from enemies with a ring of flames, so you pour some lighter fluid on the ground and set fire to it. Doesn't that sound great?
Sure it does, but I've been taking lessons from the box and I am lying freely and with ease. You can't do any of those things, except for the last one, because Eden seems to have an obsession with fire. There is not a single puzzle in the game were the solution isn't fire or if not fire, an explosion. Oh, and before naysayers start calling me out on it, I do not count shining a torch on something to be a puzzle. The problem with telling people that your game has 'real world rules' is that then the onus on you to actually make it true. The very limited way you can interact with the items in your inventory doesn't create the illusion of a real world, it highlights all the things you can't do.
The bottom line is, the only reason to buy or rent Alone in the Dark is if you have a morbid urge to see a franchise die. I can only hope that a developer with some actual talent takes the few good ideas that Eden had and use them with the kind of skill that Eden apparently lack.
