Alone in the Dark Update
Atari gave us a new look at its recently delayed survival horror revival.
Director Uwe Boll was more than a little unkind to the Alone in the Dark franchise with his 2005 Christian Slater-powered cinematic schlockfest, but Atari is looking to restore this seminal survival horror series' good name in May with a new release, simply titled Alone in the Dark. The game will bring longtime hero Edward Carnby forcibly into the present day. In previous installments, Carnby was kicking it in the roaring 1920s, but now he'll find himself alive in modern New York City, clothed in contemporary garb and fully aware of his past life eight decades earlier. Naturally, one of your goals will be to figure out just how in the heck all this came about.
On your way to discovering the truth about Carnby's predicament, you'll slog through a number of unpleasant and creepy scenarios, fight off various unsightly denizens of the night, and solve a number of environmental puzzles--at least, if our recent demo of the game was any indication. The first leg of the demo began in a level set inside one of New York's sewers, which Carnby had to navigate from one end to the other. You'll be able to play Alone in the Dark from either the first- or third-person perspective for most of the game, though we were only able to see from the third-person perspective in our demo--the presentation of which reminded us a lot of such games as Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War.
The sewer level showed off some ghastly enemies and shooting action, like you'd expect to see in a survival horror game, but we were more interested in some of the unique mechanics at work in Alone in the Dark. For one, the game simulates fire more realistically than any game we can remember. Flammable materials, such as wood, can catch fire and burn realistically, with other materials also catching fire due to its proximity. Once an object, such as a chair, is alight, the fire will slowly climb up to consume it, first charring it then reducing it to burning embers and ash after a few moments. We only saw a brief demonstration of this system, but we're guessing it will figure into a number of puzzles in the final game.
The game also uses analog control more extensively than most action adventure games of this type. You'll actually have direct one-to-one control of many of the objects that Carnby can pick up. For instance, we saw an example where the player grabbed a board and was able to move it around in very small, precise increments with the analog stick. The player was then able to pick up the end of an electrified cable and pull it out of a pool of water naturally with the board. Again, though we didn't see a lot of examples of this kind of control, its puzzle-solving applications are obvious.
You wouldn't expect something as mundane as an inventory system to be noteworthy in a game like this, but Alone in the Dark's interface is unique from what we've seen. Essentially, your inventory exists literally within the lining of Carnby's jacket. When you want to access the stuff you're holding, the game will go to a first-person perspective where you'll look down at your torso and pull out the flaps of your coat to look at the items hanging on loops or in pouches within. This means you'll have quite a limited inventory because you can only care as many items as you can fit in your jacket. Surprisingly, the game doesn't pause the action while you're rummaging around in there; events proceed in real time around you while you're accessing your inventory. This means you'll want to wait until things are calm before you take a break and try to reload or stock up.
You'll also be able to combine some inventory objects to make more useful devices. The example we saw involved taking a roll of scotch tape and wrapping it around a can of toxic spray. This would essentially create a sticky bomb that you could then throw and stick against a wall. After throwing the bomb, you could take aim with your pistol to shoot the can, causing it to explode and release all its poisonous contents in a cloud to trap a pursuing or unsuspecting enemy. Makeshift items like this may come in handy when combating some of the game's less orthodox enemies. In one sequence, some form of monstrous dark water started to fill a sewer corridor. The player then had to create and move light sources near this apparently sentient liquid to make it shrink back.
After the brief sewer demonstration was over, we saw a very short segment of a driving level from later in the game in which Carnby commandeered a taxi cab and barreled down 59th Street as something wreaks absolute havoc on New York. This chaos went way beyond a simple earthquake--massive chunks of the street were exploding upward, fissures were opening in the ground, and even the top halves of skyscrapers were crashing down to street level. Of course, your job here was to drive down the street as fast as possible to avoid the destruction and drive around any developing pitfalls or obstacles in your path. Atari reps at our demo wouldn't comment on the nature or cause of this disaster, but it made for an impressive (if ostensibly highly scripted) action sequence.
Atari recently delayed Alone in the Dark's release date to May of this year, which will hopefully give developer Eden Studios the time it needs to squash the handful of bugs that were evident during our demo. Stay tuned for impressions of a more complete build in the coming months.
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- ESRB: Mature
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