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... handles with all the lurching, hitching ineptness of a horse-driven plow. |
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Alone in the Dark Combines inventory items like combustible liquid with bullets to convert them into fiery missiles adds an experimental aspect to enemy encounters, though it's also possible to grab loose objects like chairs and other wooden objects, set them alight with fire, then whip them around like a pyromaniac lion tamer. Carnby has a finite carrying capacity, forcing decisions like "Take the can of ignitable mosquito repellant or the extra bottle of medical spray?" Sustaining injuries that appear as actual lacerations on Carnby's body requires the application of medical spray or bandages to stop the bleeding.
A PDA that shows up early on provides much of the apocalyptic narrative's source material, as well as a GPS overlay that lets you see where you're at in the park alongside what you're supposed to do next. While the park is substantial, it's carefully segmented into one-way paths that prevent you from leaving a fairly static design path that butts in frequently to propel the story forward. In a twist, it's actually possible to finish Alone in the Dark before starting it, even engage it at any point along the way by simply pausing and accessing a VCR-like interface that lets you skip obstacles or entire episodes of Alone in the Dark at leisure.
Lame in the dark
Alone in the Dark isn't a bad game, it's just a surprisingly poorly executed one, the sort of half-action, half-puzzler that looks sleek as a stock car but handles with all the lurching, hitching ineptness of a horse-driven plow. By lurching, I mean literally, as in the mechanics of controlling Carnby himself, which seem to be marooned somewhere between pardonably quoting the 1992 original and fatally mimicking it. That's too bad, because it spoils an otherwise intriguing potboiler about a guy at Gehenna, ground zero.
For starters, all of Carnby's motions as he shuffles ineptly through Alone in the Dark's calamity-struck environs process like he's tromping through molasses, exacerbated by a slight delay after you thumb the joystick so that he always appears to be lagging behind your instructions. Just getting action-oriented stuff right, like jumping and shifting back and forth while climbing, feels like luck as often as not. Couple that with a bizarre misappropriation of gamepad buttons that render simple actions needlessly complex. For instance, instead of smoothly shifting from walking to running by conventionally applying more or less torque to the thumbstick, Eden Studios thinks it's smarter to have to hold down a button as well. It's not. Instead, it's superfluous to the point of clumsiness in a game that requires fast, uncluttered finger work to survive skin-of-your-teeth encounters.
The problem extends to the inventory system. Want to equip your pistol? You can quick-draw by tapping one of the shoulder buttons, but then you have to hit another button to slip into first person (the only way to shoot accurately), all the while fighting the idiosyncratic thumbstick-plus-button walk/run mechanic to keep enemies at bay. Inadvertently whip out the wrong item by tapping the wrong button and you have to either cycle haphazardly through left-hand, right-hand items or drop into a special inventory interface to get yourself back to weapons-ready. In rooms full of hustling, flanking enemies, you'll often die just battling the overwrought interface (I guess it's one way to lengthen an otherwise short game by goading you into playing the same sequences repeatedly). Sure, you can skip trouble spots, but most gamers balk at cheats, and cool as the "rewind-or-fast-forward" option is, bypassing something because of the Alone in the Dark's goofy controls delegitimizes the point of playing at all.
Then there's the "use a random object as a weapon" option, which works like this: Once you've grabbed something like a loose two-by-four, you have to whip the right thumbstick side to side or forward to mimic swings and thrusts. It's sound enough when it works, but it usually doesn't, rendering it a laughably inaccurate tactic where you'll visibly connect with your target a dozen times but have the game's blind-as-a-bat collision detection routine register contact once or twice. Alone in the Dark's occasional driving sequences handle much better, perhaps because developer Eden Games is better known for its V-Rally and Test Drive Unlimited racing games. Too bad they're only a fraction of the total experience.
"The devil's foremost deception is convincing you he does not exist," advises a Baudelaire quote as the opener rolls. Alone in the Dark's foremost deception might be convincing you that all those control-based foibles are subjective. Don't bet on it.
Disturbingly, Atari withheld review copies of the game until weeks after it shipped to stores. If you're wondering why so few have reviewed the game still today, now you know.
-Matt
