Alone in the Dark

I am scared of the dark...

As reviewed by GP member 77:

This game frightens me for all the wrong reasons. It is a glitch filled mess of a game that gets so many things wrong, it's a wonder why it even made it to store shelves in the first place. To call this game survival horror is very accurate because if you play through this entire game from beginning to end you have truly survived horror.

The game starts off with Edward Carnby suffering from amnesia (how original!). He wakes up in a the basement of a hotel, being held hostage by two men in robes. After escaping the men, it is clear that there are other things happening here. Giant cracks form in the walls, sucking people in and spitting them back out as zombie like monsters. The story then takes you to central park where you'll begin investigating these paranormal activities and Carnby's strange connection to them. The story starts off well enough, but soon becomes convoluted and confusing with little to no explanation as to why certain things are happening. And after all the fighting and all the time invested in this game, you get two endings and both of which are disappointing and almost a slap in the face to the amount of time you've invested.

This game has a lot of ideas. Some of them are actually good. They're just not implemented well. And because these underdeveloped good ideas are mixed in with some truly god-awful gameplay and a boat load of terrible ideas, they're lost in the mix. The interesting inventory system is a step in the good direction. The ability to find and combine items to create new items is great. You can take an empty water bottle, syphon gas from a nearby car, then stick a piece of ripped cloth in the top and voila! You've got yourself a molotov cocktail. Plus, the inventory itself is represented in a cool way with Carnby opening his coat and looking down. The camera then switches to a first person view and you can view all the items in your coat pockets. Good and interesting idea. BUT, it's mixed with bad ideas like, gameplay doesn't freeze when you want to look through your inventory. So when you have to take the time to combine a flare and a can of insect spray to make a flame thrower, you have to either do it quickly while getting hit by enemies or have a sixth sense as to when you'll need it and assemble it beforehand.

The game does have the potential for some thrilling sequences. Like rapelling down the side of a burning building. Or tearing down Central Park West in a stolen taxi cab, fleeing from an underground monster that's tearing up the road. But sequences like this are marred by glitches and terrible controls. For instance, that taxi cab sequence I could never actually finish. Why? Well at a certain jump in the sequence you drive through a window, but the game would fail to load the rest of the level and I would proceed to fall into a black hole, forcing me to restart the level. I must have tried this sequence 50 times and not once did the rest of the level load. Luckily, the developers implemented a level skip feature (probably for game ending glitches like this) so I could go on and complete the rest of the game.

Carnby controls like a hybrid of characters in the old Resident Evil games (like a tank, basically) combined with an over the shoulder camera system. The developers also implemented a first person camera which can be turned on whenever you feel like it, which actually helps aiming, but switching back and forth is a pain and abetter system would have been appreciated.

All in all, this game is just a complete mess and I, honestly, don't feel like spending more time on it then is necessary. My recommendation? Stay far away. Unless you like a game filled with glitches, annoying gameplay mechanics, and cheap enemies that provide even cheaper deaths, you'd be better off playing any other game but this one.

What a load...

Let me explain how much disdain I have for this complete load of crap.

But let me start by telling you, this game could have been great. Hell, if they would have spent more time on the controls, and a little more attention to the story, this game could have been a reinvigoration for the entire series. It was in development long enough to be!

But this game is unmitigated crap. It doesn't even deserve to be looked at, and in fact, I hope it never will. I hope, thanks to the crappy camera, horrific controls, and sub par scripting, this game will never be remembered again, to show the developers, you can have cool ideas (like making the game similar to a television series), if you make sure the gameplay is flawless and fun. Hell... it didn't even need to be flawless, Advent Rising wasn't and it was still fun!

So please, don't even grace this game with a glance, let it fall into it's inevitable shovelware status.

The, fucking, end.

Alone on the shelves

this one is better left on he store shelves. while the story is decent the game play is horrific. the graphics range from poor to good but mostly poor. the controls are by far the worst part of the whole experience. the man character moves like a wounded snail and the animations are just terribly unrealistic. The fire effects are ok not nearly as good as everybody says the are, but good. the game is innovative in certain areas but that does not make up for the lack of polish or care that went into such a highly anticipated game. but hopefully atari will try agian and have better results,( do strictly from trial and error). i think this could have been the game everybody was hoping for, with quite a bit more work.