Could have been better, a lot better!
User Rating: 5 | Alone in the Dark X360
I love horror/suspense games and I've had a little experience with the alone in the dark series and its protagonist Edward Carnby. I found this latest incarnation for a cheap price and despite hearing some subpar reviews decided it was probably worth the risk. This game turns out to be tough to rate. Graphically it looks pretty good, if maybe a little bland in certain areas of the game. The developers also had some wonderful ideas for this game. Some of the in game aspects are quite clever. I was impressed with the inventory system(actively searching inside the character's jacket) and the ability to mix a match items in creative ways. The flames in this game are very realistic too. Some of the best I've seen on a game actually. The voice acting was solid and though the story was a bit convoluted it was still interesting enough to keep me focused. The music was appropriate though not exceptional. It usually set a decent mood for the scenery. As a horror game goes though it doesn't do much of a job scaring you I'm afraid. This game had too many problems to ignore though. Remember the awesome flames I mentioned before, well you better like them cause you're going to see a lot of them. Fire is the only way to kill enemies in this game. They do a decent job of giving you options such as being able to create flaming bullets or molitov cocktails, but all too often you don't have the materials to do that. So you find yourself dragging knocked down baddies to the nearest open flame to dispatch of them, cause if you don't they'll get back up and continue to wail on ya. Tedious, heck yes! I found myself spending the majority of the game hoarding my supplies and just running from enemies. The next problem lies in the controls........they suck. It never feels quite like you are in control actually. Aiming is difficult, the inventory system though innovative is tough to master because you drop things repeatedly to get them in the slot you actually want, the driving portions of the game suck because the vehicles feel disconnected somehow, and the camera isn't always reliable. Having said all that the big reason I gave it the score that I did was because of the following: The game froze up completely on two seperate occassions resulting in save data lost. And towards the end of the game I was driving through central park and I accidently drove off a cliff, but instead of plummetting to my doom the car entered some sort of indescribable gray area that can only be referred to as polygonal hell. Needless to say there was no coming back to the game world from this place without shutting off the game. That kind of stuff is inexcusable in a modern game, I'm sorry. Bottom Line: This game fails to meet any of the potential it might have had(though its not as bad as the movie), but a tolerable game is ruined by glitches.
