Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

"Looks are decieving."

Story:
You are Edward Carnby. At the beginning, you hear that your best friend was murdered while investigating a mansion. Carnby goes to the island where the mansion is to find out about the creepy goings-on.
7/10

Graphics:
The graphics are amazing. All the backgrounds are pre-rendered and the detail is very good. Carnby is very basic, made up of about 3 colours. He just stands against the background like an out of place monkey.
At the beginning there are pre-rendered scenes that look very nice. They tell you what happened just like the scenes in tomb raider GBC.
Through out the game the graphics are pure eye candy. These are graphics you only thought of seeing on 32 bit consoles.
The game is just worth buying for the graphics.
10/10

Sound:
The intro sounds good and spooky, a good promise at the start. But through out the game the music has disappeared, I guess it's to build tension. Music mainly comes on at the battle scenes, it's quite ennoying though.
4/10

Gameplay:
You basically move around Carnby around the pretty and dark island, using his inventory and defeating monsters.
I found the puzzles very easy, you just walk around and click on things in the background and use them in other places.
The battle scenes are less pretty and it turns to a perfect dark style game. Shooting is not very accurate so it's easy to use up all your rounds. Unfortunately, using up all your rounds will result in death and this could happen many times. The monster just happen to be spiders and dogs, not very impressive at all.
There are a lot of areas, but a lot of them you only see for a second as you run across them so fast.
5/10

Replay value:
This game took me less than an hour to complete, it's just to short and very easy. I found it fun at first, then tiresome and then it was complete. This is worth playing only once as there is nothing more to see once it is completed.
1/10

Conclusion:
This game was promising, but it didn't live up to my expectations. Great to look at, dull to play and short lived. This game is a survival horror, that means it is supposed to be scary and this did not scare a cell in my body. 'Can you see beyond your fear', ha, what fear?
I so didn't want this game that I gave it back to the shop on the same day.
This game is worth a rant purely to look at as you'll just complete it within an hour.
4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/02/01, Updated 06/02/01