A New Inventory System Players utilize the pockets of protagonist Edward Carnby to hold items which they can view, switch and combine without leaving the game.
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Narrative intensity Taking its cues from blockbuster TV dramas, the story is told in a TV season style narrative structure based around episodes that deliver maximum intensity throughout and keep the player hooked.
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A Captivating Story Centered in iconic Central Park long-time series protagonist and paranormal specialist Edward Carnby returns to delve into the frightening events occurring in the Big Apple.
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Real World Rules In-Game movement has been designed to allow players to do almost anything that is physically possible in the real world.
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Photographic Rendering Game developer Edens Propriety Twilight technology creates a lavishly detailed game world with highly realistic and advanced cinematographic effects.
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20 of 23 found the following review helpful:
Greatness yanked down by poor decisionsJul 31, 2008
By Terry Mesnard Most people attribute the start of the Survival Horror genre to Resident Evil. While you can trace the birth of Survival Horror back far, far before that game (to Sweet Home or, if you want to stretch it, to Haunted House in 1981), modern Survival Horror games were firmly established by the first Alone in the Dark. Since that first game, though, the series has been an up and down roller coaster that never seemed to be able to outmatch some of the better known and more famous franchises like Resident Evil or Silent Hill.
So, when Eden Games started to work on reinventing the franchise, I was cautiously optimistic. A lot of the ideas and concepts they spoke of seemed like great ideas, and they seemed to be trying to Do Something Different. Unfortunately, the sum is not greater than its parts and Alone in the Dark, while reaching for the stars, can't stay afloat.
Things begin appropriately apocalyptic. Edward Carnby awakens in some hotel with some bad men arguing about cryptic shenanigans. Carnby, no longer useful, is led up to the roof to be executed but before that can happen, bad juju hits the fan as a "scar" tears through the building. From here, this first episode really picks up as you're trying to escape the building alive.
Here is where the goodness lies. Alone in the Dark has a great opening that's appropriately cinematic but in such a way that only games can do. The building starts to fall apart, you have to run and jump your way to safety, climb along the outside of the building while debris tumbles and while watching cars below you explode. You learn how Eden Games created some appropriately realistic fire for the game as you watch it spread and have to put it out or use it as a weapon. You'll see things happen to the various rooms you're in that will make you want to believe you're watching a cinematic, not playing through a game. It's very cool.
And then you try to move.
Movement is the worst part of the game. It's all controlled with one stick which makes actually moving feel as if you're controlling a drunk, disobedient person. Once you get a melee weapon in your hand, you'll see another problem: using the right analog stick to attack. You'll have to swing it one direction, then another just to attack. Unfortunately it's sluggish, as is the animation, resulting in you taking more damage than you should need to. Fighting monsters becomes a chore, one you'll grow to hate because as the game progresses, you'll learn that basically all monsters can only die via fire. So, grab that chair, light it on fire and swing away...hoping you hurt it more than it hurts you. Similarily, gun fights are also not terrific as you have to pop into first person whenever you want to shoot someone. No lock and pop here.
Likewise, if walking around makes you feel like a drunk, driving is a good approximation of drunk driving, I believe. The controls are incredibly loose and in the first driving portion of the game, loose controls isn't a good idea. What should be an exciting escape sequence that involves the ground behind you exploding, tears appearing across the streets, buildings collapsing, fire, death explosions, cats and dogs sleeping together turns into frustration as you'll probably find yourself repeating the episode. Over. And Over. From the beginning. It loses its fun and becomes a chore.
Towards the end of the game, the game pulls a Zelda: Wind Waker moment and has you hunting down certain things and destroying them in an effort, one has to assume, to artificially lengthen the game. If there's one thing that Alone in the Dark does exceptionally well, it's the pacing. When you hit this moment it's like running smack dab into a brick wall. It's sad.
There's a lot going for Alone in the Dark, don't get me wrong. The inventory system is a cool innovation. The whole episodic "TV show/DVD" feel is perfect, with DVD-style menus complemented by the ability to switch to any episode you like. The graphics are pretty decent, as is the engine it's running on. Some cool, small features, like the ability to blink your eyes is very effective during some sequences. And the pacing--for the most part--is perfect; it can really get your adrenaline going...until you're forced to repeat the same thing over and over again.
I really wanted to like Alone in the Dark. I didn't honestly think that Eden Games would elevate the game to the front of the pack, but there was enough little things and innovations that I thought maybe it'd be a good game. When I played it, I was amazed. Eden Games wanted no less than to shoot for the moon and make the most ambitious Survival Horror game yet. Unfortunately, reality is sometimes like gravity and unfortunately Alone in the Dark isn't the masterpiece I, and Atari, I'm sure, was hoping for. Definitely give it a rent, but I'd hold off on purchasing it.
26 of 34 found the following review helpful:
Disaster from start to finish- Avoid It. You've been Warned!Jul 02, 2008
By Paul Arellano
"Last Days on Earth"
I've been reviewing games for Amazon since 1999. I've seen the worst of games...Daikatana, most especially. Now, after many moons have passed, I have come across one of the worst, if not, the buggiest, most annoying piece of program I have ever encountered in my life. Alone in the Dark is a major disaster, from it's storyline, dialogue, annoying voice acting, frustrating controls, unforgiving checkpoints, and the most buggiest collision detection EVER! The only PLUS in this game are the graphics but that's about it. So I'll keep my review straight and to the point:
GRAPHICS: Excellent. No complaints
CONTROLS: Main character moves like a tank with a bad engine. Controls are completely unresponsive. Some buttons do not function as stated. For example, you press A to turn off a flashlight. If you're holding a gun in one hand and holding a flashlight on the other, you can't press A to turn it off. You have to press the gamepad down, open your virtual jacket and then unequip from there. HOW TEDIOUS CAN THIS GET??? Another example: you're standing next to an object your wish to pick-up, an "pick-up object icon" appears telling you to press A. To pick up an object, press A. The problem with this is that turning off the flashlight you need to press A as well. So if you're holding a flashlight and you need to turn off it off (it has limited battery life by the way), you'll have to move away from the pickable object so you can turn off the flashlight.
Here's another example again: You have a zombie attacking you, controls say you have to double click the left analog stick to do a quick turn. If you're holding a gun or a melee weapon, quick turn won't work, but then sometimes it does!!!
And here's another example: Driving a car is like driving a bar of soap on a smooth glass. A slight turn on the stick will spin your car uncontrollably. There's an action sequence in this game that requires some driving. I will warn you now, prepare to do this about 200 to 500 times because you will fail.
BUGGY ACTION SEQUENCE: There's an action sequence on Episode 2 where you have to escape an earthquake. The entire driving sequence requires you to get away from the earthquake before ti swallows your car. Unfortunately, the car is just completely unresponsive. Second, there's a jump that you have to make before the entire road cracks open. Sometimes you'll make the jump sometimes you won't. What's weird is that once your car flies over the cracked road, the game will turn into a full motion video showing your car making the jump. But once your car lands, somehow the game randomly decides whether the earthquake catches the tail end of your car thus killing you instantly or by some algorithmic calculation, you do make it. But that's just half of the problem because this action sequence will continue for the next 10 minutes and if you fail halfway or even on the last part of this sequence, the game will throw you back to beginning of the sequence. TOTALLY UNFORGIVING CHECKPOINTS. By the way, you can't skip the full motion videos which means you'll be forced to watch cheesy FMVs over and over again everytime you fail an action sequence.
How about weapons you ask? Forget about using guns. Guns are completely ineffective against zombies (which you will be battling the entire game). So if ever you decide to collect ammo, well...it's pretty much useless and waste of space. Zombies can only be killed by fire. If you do have to use your gun to kill zombies, you'll have to find gasoline or any flammable liquid, combine it with your bullets, load your gun with said "gasoline dipped" bullets and then shoot the zombies. But wait, you can't just shoot them anywhere. Zombies have this glowing yellow areas of their body that's vulnerable to fire. So on top of mixing and matching items to make fire, you'll have to be a sharpshooter to hit the zombies where it hurts. Otherwise, you'll just be wasting time and ammo.
I think I've said enough. This game is the worst ever for 2008. Do not waste your money on this. Believe me, when I read the poor reviews, I told myself "Nah, I don't believe these reviews, I will buy it and try it myself." So now, I am $60.00 poorer, and my blood pressure just skyrocketed after playing this game. Avoid this game. Stick to the DOS version of Alone in the Dark.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Thinks too highly of itself, ultimately extremely frustrating.Aug 31, 2008
By A. Nonimowse.
"bomber214"
Many of the other reviewers have very similar feelings.
At first the game seems interesting, unique, fancy, innovative, and pretty. Not long into it you'll begin to encounter the very real problems the game has. Controlling your character with any precision is impossible. You can select first person, which is painfully sluggish, but the game forces you back into 3rd person most of the time. 3rd person _looks_ really nice, and I can respect the artist's vision of the world. Trying to actually function in 3rd person is a whole different thing: completely frustrating. The camera is rarely where you want it to be looking. At many points in the game you may have to resort to hand to hand combat, which will be forced in the 3rd person, and will make you want to throw your fancy wireless remote right out of the window, followed by the XBOX and TV, still plugged into the wall. At least hand to hand, while completely worthless in this game, isn't like Silent Hill: no stance fighting. But: basically as useless.
The inventory system, while it seems innovative, is actually quite stale once you get a bit into the game. It's also extremely clunky and hard to use under duress. The healing system, too, at first seems innovative, but is actually quite obnoxious. Let's face it, they were neat ideas on a white board in a room full of excited marketing guys -- but in reality they don't work well. The game boasts this open style combination system. Flammable liquid in container, tape, box of bullets, throw at bad guy, shoot, repeat. Put alcohol on bullets, aim for little cracks in baddies, shoot repeatedly because the targeting system is crappy, repeat. There really isn't much too it after you've done it a few times. One little gripe here: the eye blinking spectral vision thing. Yes, push down and hold the right thumbstick which is also what you'd need to use to aim, precisely, on a moving target, to kill it. Who play tested this, and where can I find them? I'd like to have a little dialog with them about this subject.
Vehicle driving... man, what can I say? Nothing like tapping a 3" curb and watching the vehicle fly up into the air and shed all of it's fenders in one motion. You can do some neat things with vehicles... cut open the gas tanks, fill bottles, use them as rolling bombs, all kinds of things. Too bad the interface sucks so bad that it's hard to pull any of that stuff off. Once again: it sounds neat, but doesn't work out that way.
To be fair, I haven't completed the game as of yet. Honestly, while I like to see things through, I may not. Some of the puzzles are, frankly, very annoying. Some of the stuff is very... cryptic and without any real clue of what is happening. Sometimes you'll find yourself somewhere, nothing is happening, and you don't really know what to do next. Other times the solution is so obvious and streamlined that it is a wonder they put it in at all. The story is not engaging. The story doesn't even make sense in a few places.
I could go on and on, but basically I am very disappointed in this game. The fire effects are out of this world, the environments are decent, water is awesome, and there is some definite lighting/atmosphere neatness... but that's about it. Otherwise, the game is very awkward, repetitive, confusing, and above all else: frustrating. It's just not the game it could be, and it's not the game that was advertised. This is no surprise, none the less, it is what it is.
I really wanted this game to be spooky, creepy, innovative, cool, engaging, and immersive. It's not. It's just a waste of time and money.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Leaves players in the darkNov 26, 2010
By Michael J. Tresca
"Talien"
I purchased Alone in the Dark at the same time I bought Silent Hill: Homecoming. I'm a sucker for survival horror, and both games came highly recommended. The difference between the two is quite illuminating.
There has been a trend recently to reverse the gamist influence of tabletop role-playing games on their video game counterparts. Consoles don't lend themselves well to complex rules systems and designers find their beautifully rendered enemies disrupted by floating hit point numbers over their heads. In response, Alone in the Dark goes full simulationist - forget the rules, this is all about horror!
And so Alone in the Dark, like Silent Hill, starts out in media res. You learn to play as you go by ferociously clicking buttons to blink your eyes so you can see straight. You play an amnesiac anti-hero with a secret connection to a certain stone held by a certain priest. A bald villain, named Crowley (yet another mystical foe named after Aleister Crowley, the occultist), marches you to your doom until he is disrupted by something even scarier: extradimensional tears in the fabric of reality.
Thing is, extradimensional tears aren't all that scary. The entity that is in charge enjoys possessing hot chicks and growling in a deep voice, instantly rendering the villain rather mundane. Those looking for the Cthulhu Mythos-inspired connection that suffused the original Alone in the Dark will find the chatty archnemesis lacking.
What Alone in the Dark does very well is completely conceal the rules from the player. Our hero can only carry so many items in his jacket - no unlimited, unrealistic inventory here! He can swing weapons or even light them on fire, and the fire mechanics allow him to do everything from blast explosive bottles out of the air to pouring flammable liquid on his bullets so they shoot fire. Realistic, huh?
There are no hit points, no health meters, and not much in the way of rules. What Alone in the Dark lacks in gamist structure it makes up for in narrativist railroading, with a capital R.
Alone in the Dark is hellbent on telling a story, and the developers just happen to drag the player along for the ride. It even has a function to allow you to skip any scene, with a brief montage at the beginning of each replay to describe what happened "previously, in Alone in the Dark..." I played a car chase sequence fifty times before I gave up. I ran around with a flashlight trying to make some black goo not eat me (repeatedly watching the starting sequence of a sewer worker swearing effusively before being eaten) thirty times before I gave up. I teetered inside a precariously balanced bus on the edge of the cliff dozens of times before the game crashed.
And so we have Alone in the Dark's problem - if you want to make a game all about story, it better be a good story. Alone in the Dark provides absolutely no guidance as to what to do next. You are guaranteed to die over and over until you figure it out, which renders any interesting cut scene or curious camera angle meaningless after the fifth time. The game is a buggy mess too. It crashes constantly; at one point, a villain just stood there and let me whack at him to no effect. Maybe he felt bad for me.
Alone in the Dark tries hard, but like an action blockbuster, it has no interesting story to tell. With stereotypical villains, enemies that aren't scary, frustrating camera angles, and a railroading plot that will have you tearing your hair out, Alone in the Dark will leave players alone in the dark.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Don't do it!!!!Sep 25, 2010
By David A. Sumner
"Drater1987"
Worst controls I've ever had for a console gaming system. It has 1st person and 3rd person. Your character walks slower than an 80 year old lady even though there's a fire and buildings are crashing around him and there's some crazy malevolent force trying to eat you. If you go into first person view to see what you're doing or get a better angle on something, it kicks back to 3rd person as soon as you turn a certain way. It literally would not stay in first person for the life of me. And to walk, you use one stick to move forward and one stick to move directionally....it was horribly done. It wasn't scary at all, either. I gave up on this one, I wouldn't recommend even borrowing it from someone, it's that bad. Don't waste the time turning on your console to play this...that bad.
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