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Alone in the Dark
Text Review
The original Alone in the Dark was a true milestone in gaming history; it set the standards for what would eventually become the survival horror genre. The first three sequels stayed more or less true to the genre the original helped create, but for whatever reason, the developers decided to take this fifth game in a totally new direction. I sort of understand this decision since no game series, or gaming in general, can remain fresh forever unless you at least change it a little bit from time to time. But the problem is that instead of taking a few new ideas and implementing them, the developers let the idea bucket flow over leaving little more than a big mess.
You play as series veteran Edward Carnby, who as the game starts, wakes up in a New York apartment with amnesia and chased by a group of people apparently plotting to kill him. Thanks to some supernatural interventions, he manages to escape and fight his way out of the building with a couple of other survivors, but the rest of the city turns out to be just as hostile as the building he just escaped from. It's a kind of a clichéd storyline - even worse, the character dialog is very poorly written and the voice actors are unconvincing to say the least.
I have more mixed feelings about the gameplay, and mixed really is the keyword here. Like I mentioned earlier, this game has a seemingly endless stockpile of gameplay mechanics to force feed you with and some of them are actually pretty cool, but sadly most of them are not. One of the worst parts of the game is the combat system, which is a big problem since it's a very huge part of the game. The enemies are zombie like creatures that can only be killed by fire; even if you work an enemy over with a fire axe, it will still get up and attack you again unless you burn it afterwards. The fire idea is not exactly terrible but the problem is that there’s not always any fire around, and this is where another terribly executed idea comes into play, the inventory system. You can collect lots of small items through the game, which can be combined to makeshift weapons which are pretty cool, but the big problem is that you only have an extremely limited number of inventory spaces; the inventory management itself is very sluggish. The worst part is that the game doesn't even pause when you open the inventory, so if you run out of fire weapons while fighting enemies, you will be forced to go into the inventory and start combining items while the enemies are free to sneak up and rip you to shreds.
Strangely enough the game also has a huge sandbox style map in the form of Central Park, which is both totally unnecessary and very poorly implemented. At the beginning you only need to use this map to move between missions, but later on you will be forced to spend a considerable amount of time there, which is by far the most boring part of the game and when you run out of items to create fire, you will be forced to run all over the huge map to find replacements.
However, like I mentioned earlier, there are some good parts in the game as well. It has a very cool fire physics system, which makes fire spread realistically over burnable surfaces; it's not used nearly as much as it deserves to be though. There are a few really smart puzzles too, some of which use the aforementioned fire system, and where you get to just walk around and explore for a while without being attacked by hordes of enemies. The game can actually get pretty atmospheric, but sadly these parts never last very long. The graphics look very good for the most part, and there are lots of nice little details such as visible wounds on your character after having been attacked.
The PlayStation 3 version of the game was released later than all of the other versions and fixed a few of the problems the other versions had, although many still remain. Even though this game has some major flaws, it also has a lot of interesting ideas, and I must admit I enjoyed many parts of the game. The bad still outweighs the good though, and you'd do best to leave this one in the bargain bins where it belongs.
- Christian Ljungqvist
Developer: Eden Games
Publisher: Atari
Platform(s): PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
You play as series veteran Edward Carnby, who as the game starts, wakes up in a New York apartment with amnesia and chased by a group of people apparently plotting to kill him. Thanks to some supernatural interventions, he manages to escape and fight his way out of the building with a couple of other survivors, but the rest of the city turns out to be just as hostile as the building he just escaped from. It's a kind of a clichéd storyline - even worse, the character dialog is very poorly written and the voice actors are unconvincing to say the least.
I have more mixed feelings about the gameplay, and mixed really is the keyword here. Like I mentioned earlier, this game has a seemingly endless stockpile of gameplay mechanics to force feed you with and some of them are actually pretty cool, but sadly most of them are not. One of the worst parts of the game is the combat system, which is a big problem since it's a very huge part of the game. The enemies are zombie like creatures that can only be killed by fire; even if you work an enemy over with a fire axe, it will still get up and attack you again unless you burn it afterwards. The fire idea is not exactly terrible but the problem is that there’s not always any fire around, and this is where another terribly executed idea comes into play, the inventory system. You can collect lots of small items through the game, which can be combined to makeshift weapons which are pretty cool, but the big problem is that you only have an extremely limited number of inventory spaces; the inventory management itself is very sluggish. The worst part is that the game doesn't even pause when you open the inventory, so if you run out of fire weapons while fighting enemies, you will be forced to go into the inventory and start combining items while the enemies are free to sneak up and rip you to shreds.
Strangely enough the game also has a huge sandbox style map in the form of Central Park, which is both totally unnecessary and very poorly implemented. At the beginning you only need to use this map to move between missions, but later on you will be forced to spend a considerable amount of time there, which is by far the most boring part of the game and when you run out of items to create fire, you will be forced to run all over the huge map to find replacements.
However, like I mentioned earlier, there are some good parts in the game as well. It has a very cool fire physics system, which makes fire spread realistically over burnable surfaces; it's not used nearly as much as it deserves to be though. There are a few really smart puzzles too, some of which use the aforementioned fire system, and where you get to just walk around and explore for a while without being attacked by hordes of enemies. The game can actually get pretty atmospheric, but sadly these parts never last very long. The graphics look very good for the most part, and there are lots of nice little details such as visible wounds on your character after having been attacked.
The PlayStation 3 version of the game was released later than all of the other versions and fixed a few of the problems the other versions had, although many still remain. Even though this game has some major flaws, it also has a lot of interesting ideas, and I must admit I enjoyed many parts of the game. The bad still outweighs the good though, and you'd do best to leave this one in the bargain bins where it belongs.
- Christian Ljungqvist
Developer: Eden Games
Publisher: Atari
Platform(s): PC, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii
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