User Review : Alone in the Dark

Alone In The Dark: Survival Horror...minus the horror part

This game has been getting a lot of flak in the media for being buggy and just plain bad. After playing the game, I have to disagree with some of the bad points that people were pointing out and add some new ones that I have found through playing the game.

STORY

You play as Edward Carnby (yes, the original Carnby from the original Alone In The Dark game) who wakes up with amnesia and a bad attitude. Shortly after the game has begun, the whole world is turned upside down with monsters attacking Edward left and right. Without spoiling anything, the story mostly takes place in Central Park and Edward basically has to not only recover his memories, but also solve the mystery of the chaos around him. Edward comes across a few characters throughout the course of the game, however, the game seems to make them largely irrelevant to the plot (save for one or two characters) and you don't really seem to care about them at all. The story is a bit confusing at first, then it starts to make sense as the game continues on. The game tries to make up most of the confusing storyline through text messages in your PDA that you get later in the game. But even after reading those, I'm still scratching my head as to what's going on.

The game is portrayed as a TV-show, which it does very well. The game is divided into Episodes, which is then divided into chapters. At the end of each Episode, your left with a cliffhanger ending, and then the credits roll (hey, just like a TV show!). The coolest feature is when you choose "Continue" from the main menu and your treated to a "previously, on Alone In The Dark..." which basically sums up the story for you, just in case you forgot. This is a really cool feature that should be added into more games. It's really appealing to the casual gamer, since I didn't play the game for two days due to school and I was able to watch a short "previously on..." to remember what was going on.

The dialog in the game is good, but not perfect. There are a good few lines here and there delivered by Carnby, and you can tell the voice actor, James McCaffrey, is putting as much as he can into his character. Sarah, your female supporting character, is the typical "boy meets girl, boy and girl don't like each other at first but then fall in love."

GAMEPLAY

Keep in mind that this is a survival-horror game, not an action survival-horror. The whole purpose of the game is to use your brain rather than your brawn to take out your foes and obstacles in your path. You only get one gun in the entire game, which is your trusty pistol. It will do a majority of the grunt work for you, which is kind of disappointing since the developers could have added a few more weapons to make the game a bit more interesting.

Along with your gun, you are also capable of making weapons crafted from items such Molotov cocktails, sticky bombs, and fire-sprays. You can throw a bottle of gasoline and shoot it with your gun to make a huge rain of fire on your foes. Sadly, the sum of your weaponry is listed above. The developers could have done much, much more to add more makeshift weapons in the game. Thankfully, supplies are very frequent so you will never be wandering around looking for that medical spray that you so desperately need.

All of your items and weapons are carried in your jacket, which you can look at by pressing down on the D-pad. While you are crafting items, checking out your inventory, or even healing yourself, its all done in real time. This game doesn't give you any chance to pause the action to heal yourself or make a bomb. This is great for the survival-horror gameplay its trying to aim for, but it can be annoying from time to time when you think you're safe and your trying to manage your inventory and something attacks you.

Fire is the main gameplay element, and it's a double edged sword: it can be your ally or your enemy. Since the monsters in the game are all weak to fire, you can, say, light a chair on fire and beat enemies with it. However, you can only use the chair for so long since the fire will burn it to a crisp in a short amount of time. Enemies will tend to run away from you if you have a weapon on fire in your hands, but some enemies will just knock it out of your hands.

Puzzles are a dime a dozen in this game, a majority of them are fairly easy to solve and there is no puzzle that will surely stump you.

I want to touch briefly on a few enemies in the game. There's only six enemy types in the entire game: Humanz, Batz, Ratz, Vampz, some "evil water", and this "snake" creature. How uh, conveniently named. One grudge I have with the game is that when you are trying to shoot out the Humanz and Batz weak points, it doesn't register half of the time. I would be shooting their weak spot consistently and the game wouldn't register a kill. However, if I shot them in the foot, totally away from their weak spot, it would immediately register a kill.

As I stated earlier, all enemies have weak spots. Ratz are drawn to blood, so if you drop a blood pack or drag a bloody corpse to spread the blood, the Ratz will not attack you. The Humanz and Vampz tend to run away from you if you are wielding a weapon that has fire on it. The Batz don't really have a weakness, they just explode when shot at.

The last enemy, the "evil water" is by far the most annoying enemy in any game that I have ever faced. It's weakness? The light. However, even that doesn't work a majority of the time. For instance, there is one part in the game where you have to walk through a hallway filled with the evil water to advance to the next part of the game. I died about five or six times in that part. Why? Because when your walk with the flashlight aiming down at your feet, the water seemingly sneaks up behind you and kills you. And if even a slight particle of the evil water touches you, you die instantly. It's highly annoying since there are a few puzzles involved where you have to get passed the evil water to get an item or activate a switch. Every time I got passed a part where I had to deal with the evil water, I just said to myself "I hope to God I don't have to do anything like that again."

PRESENTATION

The game looks very good, I was thoroughly impressed. The fire effects are the best I've ever seen in any game. Character animations were good, and monsters look good too.

The games dark atmosphere fits the game well, but I want to emphasize that the game is a survival-horror game, but the game isn't scary at all. It doesn't even try to scare you. It's a big letdown to a game that tries to distinguish itself as survival-horror.

The music and sound effects are great. Explosions sounded awesome on my Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound.

A big disappointment in the game is the games technical flaws. I never did get these "invisible walls" that people were talking about, nor did I ever glitch and fall through the floor. But hitting a small branch with a car and dying at full health is a bit over the top. Getting stuck while trying to drive over a 2-inch hill is completely absurd.

There is a few parts in the game that require you to shimmy across a ledge or jump onto a nearby rope. It works out most of the time, but there have been a few times where I clearly hit the rope and Carnby did his "climb on the rope" animation while falling to his death. A few times I would be in a room where there was a controlled fire set ablaze and I was getting supplies from a nearby storage locker only to instantly be burned to death, being nowhere near the fire.

Enemies seem intelligent enough, but they can be complete morons. One time I was trying to run away from a few Humanz, but as they caught up to me, they just started running next to me without trying to attack me. If you are driving a car at high speeds, the Humanz seem to "warp" onto the top of your car and attack you, which is highly annoying.

CONTROLS

The game's controls are a bit cumbersome, but not game-breaking. It's a bit hard to get Carnby to go left or right, but thankfully the game lets you switch into a first-person view if the 3rd person view isn't your thing.

I want to touch on the driving controls which everyone seems to hate. Remember, this isn't GTA4 so driving isn't obviously going to be a strong point in the game. The much hated drive sequence was a breeze and I will admittedly say that I only died 3 times in that part, purely on faults of my own. I will, however, admit that the driving is a bit awkward when you cannot drive up a 2-inch tall stump, or your car gets completely stuck while driving over a branch. These glitches and bugs are fairly common throughout the game, but its not game-breaking.

SUMMARY: BUY OR RENT?

Alone In The Dark is a game that could have done much greater. It seems to have all the pieces to an amazing game, but it does this at a flawed level. Near the end of the short 7-8 hour game, it forces you to find these Dark Roots and destroy them, which is both tedious and obvious that the developers wanted more "bang" out of the game. I recommend renting this game, purely if you are a survival-horror fan as I am. It's yet another disappointing game to the Alone In The Dark series.

+ Story will keep you interested
+ Making makeshift weapons is cool
+ DVD elements are neat, specifically the "Previously on..." part
- Interesting story plagued by characters you care very little about
- Gameplay is hindered by glitches and bugs
- AI can be disappointing at times
- Survival-horror, minus the horror part

Score

6.0

Graphics

9.0

Sound

9.0

Gameplay

7.0

Fun Factor

Overall

7.0

[SolidSnake93]

A good fair review.