Alone In The Dark 'Taking the phrase "flawed masterpiece" to new heights'
Now with Silent Hill V in the safe hands to the people who thoughtfully gave us The Davinci Code (sarcasm for anyone who didn't pick that up yet) and RE5 looks like a HD Africa RE4 which isn't much to complain about because RE4 is F****** amazing but is still a distant dot on our calender.
Alone in the Dark was one of the first games announced back in 2005, and it finally here to show us all its worth. The game uses this "Real-world rules" psychics to make it one of the most engaging, inventive and ambitious game to be created.
When you boot up the game you are greeted with a DVD esque menu. This allows you to play through old chapters, start again or continue etc etc. The whole TV show idea is interesting and makes the game feel like a "LOST meets 24" One of my favorite ideas the game had is showing you what happened (story wise) from when you last played. This makes it easy to catch up on what happened the last time you played. Its an interesting package, however on a whole its nothing special.
Graphically its a mixed bag, Alone in the Dark at times is one of the best looking games I have seen. The fire and smoke is incredible, however character models aren't great, glitches & clipping everywhere and plenty of bland textures.
The soundtrack is incredible and is rarely played but when it does make an appearance at the right moments it can make the game incredibly thrilling.
Now one phrase that sums up Alone in the Dark is "In theory" and that is what really gets me about it. Every part of the game is just dripping with great ideas and bad execution. And it all boils down to the controls. Alone in the Dark tries to do to much with to little. It is probably the worst control scheme out there. Every button does different things, after spending about 2 hours with the game I am still just about getting the hang of it. Everything feels far to awkward and its transfered onto the screen. The camera doesn't help either. Every time you start to fall in love with the game, it kicks you in the nuts with bad design choices. Although the uniqueness and inventive ideas make it more than compelling for me to play through at least once, or more. It's a real shame because the "real world rules" do actually work and can make it very creative to play. On a further plus side the set pieces in this game are amazing. Truly incredible to look at it.
It a reasonably short game about 8-10 hours are so, stick with it if you can.
In the end you want to love Alone in the Dark for all its amazing ideas, beautiful graphics and incredible sound track. It just keeps letting you down. The awful control scheme, schizophrenic camera and mediocre story let it down. If you are willing to ignore the glowing faults in Alone in the Dark you will find such a creative game however I myself can't help being let down since it had the potential to be one of the greatest games this gen.
Its the best failure I have ever played.