• Xbox 360 ››
• Adventure ››
• Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark stumbles blindly towards the light (Page 2 of 2)

• By Cameron Lewis
• June 25, 2008 10:14 AM PST
• Print
• Email this!
• Share
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Buzz!
  • FaceBook
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us

• GamePro Score
• User Score
• Write your review!

Spray and Pray

Instead of developing a few key elements into an effective gameplay core, Alone in the Dark also spews ideas all over the place in the hopes that something will stick. This scattershot approach yields some diversity, but it also curses its petty successes with a lack of depth. Physics-based puzzles, for example, manage to be thoughtful and vaguely satisfying, but how enthusiastic can you really get about rearranging crates with a forklift? Only the final episode's trials deliver any truly puzzling moments.

You can also create homebrew weapons out of the bits and pieces you collect on your journey. Wrap a bottle of booze with double-sided tape, stuff a handkerchief in the neck, and you've got a Molotov cocktail that'll stick to anything it hits. Dip your bullets in gasoline, and they'll ignite on their way to your targets. Jacket space is limited, though, so you're often left to spend tiresome minutes juggling optional raw materials and indispensables like bandages and flashlight batteries. Constantly stopping to treat Edward's many injuries with first aid spray and gauze is far from riveting, but it beats sitting through the same unskippable cut-scene over and over again after you die.

If you play your cards right, you can sometimes take down a whole mess of bad guys at once with electricity or fire.

Fright or Flight

The final nail in the coffin, however, is that there isn't one genuinely scary moment to be found in the game, a rather dubious achievement for what is purported to be a horror title. The boss battles are moderately interesting and the game does have little moments like the time a cloud of bats worked together to crush me with airborne automobiles as I pelted them with air bombs. But the further I got into the game, the more it fell apart.

Alone in the Dark is a frustrating and inconsistent mess that truly disappoints. By the time I reached the seventh episode, which degenerates into a needlessly painful time-sink grind to upgrade Edward with "spectral vision" points, the few things the game had done right had been virtually drowned in a murky sludge of ill-conceived and half-baked failures. A handful of memorable visions might linger in the mind's eye after Alone in the Dark's credits roll for the last time, but you'll still need supernatural patience to make it all the way to the feeble cliffhanger ending.

Watch out: you'd be surprised how many stories an exploding car can leap.

Need to get through a door? Crash through with a fire extinguisher, or spread the flames to the wood with a burning chair or bottle of booze.

• Previous Page Prev
• Next Page Next
• 1
• 2

• Print
• Email this!
• Share
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Buzz!
  • FaceBook
  • StumbleUpon
  • del.icio.us