Alone in the Dark

"Leave this game "Alone in the Dark""

I am an avid gamer, and a survival horror fanatic, so I was anxiously awaiting Alone in the Dark. And though I do enjoy violent videogames such as are in the survival horror genre, I am not a violent person. But playing this game may just turn me into one. The longer I played, the more I noticed (1) That I wanted to shoot the female characters; (2) That I wanted to walk and/or drive into the fire; and (3) Hurling myself from a building didn't seem all that bad.

This game, to put it bluntly, is not fun. Period. The controls are not difficult - they're ridiculous!. Not in the sense that a more seasoned player could easily master them, but in the sense that NO ONE with a brain and an IQ over 100 would find them intuitive or practical.

The graphics are horrible. They are grainy, amateurish, and no amount of "blinking" clears them up. Having played many, MANY PS2 games (as well as PS3 and Xbox 360 and even GameCube games), I know what graphics CAN look like, even on the lower end systems. It's almost like the programmers drew a mockup, said, "Eh, they'll know what we mean by this" and called it a day.

The sound is redundant and certainly NOT scary or mood-enhancing. It's just annoying and grating. And the voice acting literally made me want to RUN OVER characters whom I was supposed to be rescuing! I cannot remember another game I have ever played in which I actually wanted to kill the people I was rescuing just to MAKE THEM SHUT UP! I'm not sure I will ever get those whiny voices out of my head...

The AI is...nonexistent. The "zombies" are slow, stupid, ambling creatures who attack basically only if you happen to bump into them (which, sadly, you do occasionally because of the tremendously BAD controls and graphics). Once they attack you, you simply shoot or hit them until, well, they die. Not very much fun. But then, nothing about this game is.

The "puzzles" if you can call them that are time-wasting and anticlimactic, and they don't follow the story line, whatever that is, at all. The gameplay is just flat-out not fun and you die frequently, not because this is a challenging, exciting game that you can become better at with practice and hard work, but because the controls are so horrid and the puzzles so distractingly stupid that you find yourself being flung into fissures and fires before you know what you are doing - which, frankly, you NEVER really do.

But back to those puzzles. They are just plain sad and annoying. You aren't excited to see what's around the next corner...or scared...or nervous...or anxious...you just want it to be OVER!

So as a person with all the game systems, and hundreds of games, I can say without hesitation that this is one of the worst games I have played in a very long time, and I've played some stinkers. This game is a sterling example of what NOT to spend $40 on.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/08

Game Release: Alone in the Dark (US, 06/23/08)