Alone In The Dark Review (360)

Is it a game? Is it a film? No! It’s…average

It rarely ever happens that I come across a game that harbours an identity crisis. Alone In The Dark is one of those games. After the diabolical film adaptation based loosely around the Alone In The Dark series (directed by the infamous Uwe Boll, so it’s hardly surprising), it seems Atari have tried to give the film a run for its money with the new instalment by trying to make the game more into a movie.

If however, you are incredibly easy to anger, don’t ever place this disc into your Xbox or it’ll soon end up out the window

Players of previous games will remember Edward Carnby, paranormal investigator and protagonist of Alone In The Dark games, but at the start he doesn’t even know himself. Yet waking up to the sight of huge scars ripping through New York and humans turning into vicious creatures that seem to resemble fleshy jigsaw puzzles, the quest to regain his memory might have to wait a while.

Graphically, Atari have really outdone themselves here. Each cut scene brags realism and gothic beauty. So much so that, along with the directing in each scene, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a DreamWorks presentation. Although these cut scenes are clearly not the graphical marvels that Atari have put their money on. That honour goes to the highly publicised fire effects in the game.

As soon as the game starts (and we’re talking even when the developers’ names comes up), Atari show off their ‘dazzling’ fire effects. Fire plays a much bigger role in the game than first thought, being the only possible (and aggravating) way to destroy enemies. Hang a chair over flames and it will impressively spread like real fire. Despite these nice looking effects, though, it’s hardly a unique selling point and I’m finding it bloody hard to make it sound exciting.

To add to the cinematic experience, the soundtrack of Alone In The Dark can only be described as epic. A roaring choir and a vast array of musical instruments create an overwhelmingly powerful musical score, one that can be likened to any horror film you’ve ever seen. Drums patter quietly like a heartbeat in quiet sections and violins screech whenever something jumps out at you. It’s a shame that the poor voice acting had to ruin it. Characters sound incredibly melodramatic and monsters sound like they’re trying to gargle a Milkybar.

Alone In The DarkAlone In The Dark seems to bring back those puzzles that were always so popular back in the 90s’, involving mixing items and using the environment around you to get yourself out of a situation that can hardly be described as life threatening, such as being stuck in a hole with nothing to do. Fortunately, the whole mixing items gimmick can also be used for combat. Pour flammable liquid on bullets and you get yourself some fire bullets. Put double sided sticky tape on an alcohol bottle with a napkin in it, and you get a sticky Molotov cocktail to glue to the forehead of morons. Considering the fact that arming yourself with a pipe or conventional weapon is suicide, you’ll need this combining system a lot. Arming yourself for melee combat will result in Edward flailing around like there is a miniature hurricane in his brain. Flicking the right analogue stick in a particular direction will give your opponent a thwack in that corresponding direction, but is an idea so poorly executed you be in lying in shreds in no time.

These are simply the blueprints of the game, however. What really matters how excited you feel when playing the game. How tense you feel when a chunk of building is falling down onto you. The panic rushing through you when one of these giant scars tearing through the city is coming straight for you alone. You experience all these feelings for about a second before a major glitch kicks in.

Screw your mutated humans. Screw your giant scars causing havoc. Glitches are the diabolical atrocities in Alone In The Dark. Jump, and watch how you mysteriously fall from the side of a building into the city below. Try to equip your gun for combat and watch how Edward arms himself with Duct Tape. Witness a helicopter crash near you and try to avoid one of the blades sticking out of the ground, flailing about like a straw in the wind. How on Earth a game managed to get onto the shelves when it has this many obvious distractions and mistakes is utterly beyond me.

It’s a shame to have all these negatives carelessly thrown in, as Alone In The Dark could have been so much better without some truly unusual technical abnormalities. It seems that Atari put a lot of their heart into this game with the blockbuster storyline and great graphics, yet they didn’t put a lot of their brains into it. If you can look past these horrible insults to development, there is an enjoyable rental experience in here somewhere. If however, you are incredibly easy to anger, don’t ever place this disc into your Xbox or it’ll soon end up out the window.

The Good: Fantastic graphics, Great cinematic experience, Thought provoking puzzles
The Bad: Awful combat system, Complex controls, Glitch after glitch after glitch after glitch after…


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2.5 2.5 / 5

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