Alone in the Dark

"The horse that stumbles right at the finish line"

"Alone in the Dark" is one of those games. You know, the one where it can be a real gem, and it could have been one of the best games ever made, but there are just some glaring errors that make some parts of the game fun, and some frustrating beyond belief.

"Alone in the Dark" takes place in and around Central Park in the Big Apple itself. The park itself is amazing, a perfect recreation of the real-life landmark. You play as Edward Carnby, a fearless amnisiac out to save the world from demons through ingenuity, guts, and one-liners.

Graphics: 10/10
I have seen very few games that can graphically match "Alone in the Dark". Despite the, obviously, dark locales, the game maintains a very realistic air with excellent shadow effects, real-time lighting, and, of course, fire. Fire looks amazing, its propogation causing real-time light and shadow changes as it slowly spreads and burning objects are moved around the room. The lighting effects are shown to their fullest in Room 943, when a burning chair and lamp are hurled around the small room and lights shine through the window blinds.

Sound: 10/10
Once again, absolutely amazing. The game's main goal is to immerse you in the world of "Alone in the Dark", and the sound mixes with the graphics for what is, at times, a truely scary environment. The Ratz scuttle, their sharp feet clacking across tile and cement. Gunshots boom and echo in corridors and open spaces. When being stalked by the Humanz, you hear them growl behind you as you run down the hall. You turn and dive into a restroom and slam the door behind you. You flick on your flashlight to get your bearings in the pitch-black room, when suddenly you hear a loud CRASH as part of the door flies past your head. You turn and the last thing you see is the Humanz as he dives, screaming for blood, illuminated by your flashlight beam.

All of it is set to a rousing orchestral score that matches every moment like a feature film, that rivals the score of games like the "Medal of Honor" series or "Final Fantasy".

Immersiveness: 10/10
"Alone in the Dark" is a game like no other. While you can play in third-person all you like, the camera either set a few feet behind you like a standard action game or a cinematic view that harkens back to "Metal Gear Solid", the real treat comes from the first-person view. Not only is it the only way to use firearms, it also brings it all to life. When you climb into a car, you jar and shake with every bump on the road, and you stare right into the Humanz's wild eyes when they latch onto your car and rip the doors off their hinges. Nothing is quite as scary as being told to close your eyes and looking around the darkness only to come face-to-face with the dead eyes of a ghost. Fire is more amazing than it ever has been in a game before. It realistically propogates over flammable objects, can be smothered and deprived of oxygen until it burns itself out, or ignite fuel and create chain reactions. Burnt objects char and fall apart slowly. A single flame in the corner of a door quickly spreads to create a wall of fire, and the blackened door slowly crumbles and bends until it's gone. Wood breaks and smashes almost as realistically as Digital Molecular Matter technology, and metal bends in real-time with blows of weapons and bullet hits.

Controls: 7/10

Here's where it starts to get iffy. "Alone in the Dark" suffers from one thing when it comes to controls: Complexity. It's a more suitable PC game for the simple fact that there's a lot of actions that just can't be done rapidly on a controller. You can throw objects, shoot them out of midair, leave and light trails of fuel, scroll through your real-time inventory (Which doesn't pause the game. Good luck.), puncture fuel tanks, combine items, turn your flashlight on and off, pick up objects, swing them as weapons or move them slowly to light them on fire or move objects, and any other multitude of options. It just can't be done with the limited amount of buttons you have on a 360 or PS3, and God help you if you're playing on a Wii. PC games allow for such complexities because you can easily flip a finger to any direction and assign any number of actions to keys. With a controller, you've got three ways to scroll through an inventory and sometimes the button combinations are physically IMPOSSIBLE. One that comes to mind is climbing a cable with goo-spitting Ratz at the top. You have to simultaneously climb the cable, shoot the Ratz off, and dodge their spits, all in first-person. Unfortunately, taking a hit from their spit (I love rhymes) in first-person means you have to blink rapidly to get the goo out of your eyes so you can see properly. This means you're using your right stick to aim your gun and clicking it to blink, pressing A rapidly to avoid sliding down the cable any more than you already got knocked down, using R to fire blindly at the Ratz, and occasionally pressing X to jump over the streams. Humans only have one finger to use the face buttons and the right thumbstick. You can't try to make them use that one finger for three buttons, especially when getting hit means pressing two at once.

Testing: 5/10
Another blow to this game is the simple lack of testing. Oftentimes buttons will refuse to do what they're supposed to do, especially at a critical game moment. It's endlessly frustrating to be hanging on a cable, trying to draw your gun to shoot out its supports to lower yourself to the ground, and Edward refuses to pull the damn thing out of his jacket. The auto-aim is just as iffy, the aforementioned moment being a good indicator of the work needed. You will very likely be low on ammo after shooting the flying Vampirez after your arrival in Central Park, with just enough to shoot out the two supports. It's not fun when you've just enough ammo to hit the essential targets and the auto-aim keeps trying to target the Vampirez above your head instead of the cable supports. Considering that you need to shoot these supports in order to continue through the level, it's very easy to fail a simple section because the game doesn't want to do what you want it to do.

Another issue is the running. Edward can't seem to decide what he wants to do at times. While moving normally, he'll walk, and you have to hold A for about half a second while moving or already be holding it before moving until he starts to run. When in first-person, he usually moves at a sort of half-jog without holding A to run. Because he fails to respond quickly enough, you'll often fail to dodge attacks or escape from enemies because he just starts to run right as the big guy with claws is lunging at him.

A final bugger is car physics. The object physics are amazing, especially with fire propogation and the breaking and bending of wood and metal, respectively. Cars, however, are crap. When trying to drive one of the multitude of vehicles littering Central Park, a simple tap of the curb can be disasterous. For some odd reason, the physics are exaggerated so that anything but high speed will cause you to bounce off the curb like a guardrail. It's almost amusing to be escaping a band of Humanz in the forest, lurch onto the road, and promptly deflect off the side of the road like you smashed into a building.

Final: 6/10

"Alone in the Dark" could have been a masterpiece of storytelling. It has an excellent storyline, immersive environment, an amazing world, and truely momentous times in gaming. Unfortunately, it's marred by a number of glaring errors that could have been tolerable had they not merely been so common.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/08

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