Edge writes: "The back of the box may talk about apocalyptic fire and brimstone, but the real drama of Alone in the Dark lurks in a structure heavily influenced by American TV, and most notably 24, director David Nadal tells Edge.
The game begins with Carnby waking up. As he regains consciousness, characters begin to talk, and you have to click the right thumbstick to blink and clear his groggy vision, slowly and gingerly looking around the environment. You have to click a lot, around 30 times in all, because blinking will later become a key mechanic, and because Eden Games want this opening scene to be interactive. It becomes mildly irritating (though not on a par with the endless pacing during Assassin's Creed's exposition), and you become aware of a tension within the game. It's a tension between scripting and freedom, between activity and interactivity. Perhaps, even, a tension between player and game."
Alone in the Dark developer Pieces Interactive has been hit with layoffs a month after its release, as per the latest information.
That genuinely, genuinely sucks. The reboot has clear flaws, but it really felt like a solid first step for this team to receive *greater* investment.
That's standard. Teams are together for a Project, after its done some..and sometimes most devs are fired until the next Project is in the works and people are needed again. Only the core members stay in the time between the hot phase of the game development.
What’s annoying is people don’t understand how contractors work, either. All of this is uninformed knee-jerk reactions without any understanding of how employment works in this industry. There are key developers and staff that stay with a studio/publisher, but often times it’s a hire per project and then seeking new employment for a project. That’s how it’s always been…
That's a fair point too. I would say that in light of its tepid critical/commercial response and ongoing mass layoffs across the industry I think it's understandable for fans to worry about the longer-term implications. We'll see how it plays out in the future.
VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "In one sense, it feels strange to even think Pieces Interactive had big shoes to fill with this series' legacy. Given what's come before, did it really? And yet, even when considering the last two flops over a two-decade span, there's still something about Alone in the Dark emblazoned on a title screen that carries a sense of revered history. In that respect, perhaps this reboot's best accomplishment is in honoring that spirit through its inventive world. It's also fair to emphasize knocks against its survival-horror design, some puzzle-solving, and so on; it certainly won't be considered a trendsetter like the 1992 classic. Still, the amount of goodwill wedded to its brighter qualities makes for something that dawdles the line between unfortunately-flawed and impressively-enticing."
The new Alone in the Dark remake doesn't do anything especially noteworthy, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's just... cromulent.
