Alone in the Dark

[illdog]

Alone in the Dark is one of the worst games ive ever played.

Its an experience made all the more frustrating by the fact that it could be amazing, it has star potential but the controls are SOOOOO bad its almost unplayable.

You move like the original Resident Evil games but add arthritis and you have Alone in the Dark.

3 sections of this game have been so awfull ive been only a sane girlfriend away from snapping the disc in half and stamping on the box untill the whole thing was dead.

Having basically started a new scene in pitch black and not knowing what the hell was going on, i had to pick up a lighter so as to light a trail of petroleum to clear my path obstucted by wreckage. Picking up the lighter meant using the terrible inventory system which feels clumsy and slow and is basically you just opening your jacket and looking down at your pockets. I had to drop some hankies to pick up the lighter and we all know how much room hankies take up and how big lighters are, no way they could ever fit in the same space so i guess my bad.

Anyway, thats just the start. When i got to the end of the car park i was trapped in, the resident evil appeared in the form of a fissure ripping through the ground. This fissure killed me about 11 times before i figured out what to do, which turned out to be what i did in the first place but i didnt take into account how random survival/death is. What made it all worse is that you have to restart at the beggining of the scene, re-drop the hankerchiefs etc... Once i died just walking along the level for absolutely no reason at all. To be fair thats never happened since but it should never EVER happen EVER.

The second and third worst ever game moments both involved a black goo that is scared of light and slinks away when you shine your torch at it. The only problem is that the game doesnt always seem to recognise that the radiance eminating from your torch is light and therefore the goo's nemesis, so even tho you are doing the only thing possible to repel said goo its not enough. The first time you encounter it is just before a 15 second cut scene, the second time involves you first having to kill a nest of Ratz (rubbish looking grey Krangs for Turtles), dragging a cable out of the water and finally turning off a valve that is belting fire ino your path, only for the game to decide no light is being shone on the goo of randomness and you dieing. I had to do both bits about 20 times each.

I hate it.

Oh, and there's alot of driving sections and they are also shit.

I hate it so much i want others to play it just so you can experience 'arse' as a feeling and then hate yourself for wanting to play it again for some reason, even tho you loathe all involved in theproject. Seriously, the gameplay testers are complete and utter cunts who deserve to be raped by bears.

[HandsomeDead]

So the patch that was supposed to improve it hasn't worked?

[illdog]

Thats the thing, i read about this so called patch but there was no update when i put the disc in for the first time.

[illdog]

[Jimboxy]

[Sly Reflex]

[HandsomeDead]

[stoobie]

Not your Game of the Year so far then...

[illdog]

Its just one less copy in the world. It was like killing a terrorist.

[Jimboxy]

you should have kept the green case, that didn't do anything to you, it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[illdog]

I thought i should just delve into why it was so bad. Rantpants ON.

The combat is pretty awfull as Edwards movement is very sluggish. You can change your view from first person to third but both have their down points. Its feel easier to move around in first person but you find that you get stuck on the edges of objects easier. Third person view obviously gives you a decent view of your surroundings but sometimes the camera is set in a stupid place and the controls feel worse so i mostly stuck to first and accepted i would bump into things.

There's quite a bit of driving to do but the car always feels like its driving on ice, it turns ridiculously quick and slides unless your driving straight. The main hub of the game is set in Central Park so there's alot of grass as you can imagine. The grass isnt always flat, it has dips and bumps in it just like real life. The dips and bumps are gentle and a normal car would pass them without incident.... here though you can hit a bump and loose all your speed and in rare cases it can kill you which is especially frustrating if the game decides to start you a mile away from your point of death. Sometimes this means a thirty second run from your restart point to the nearest abandoned car which more often than not you have to hotwire which gets very annoying. You try to take a different route becasue the flat grass is so perilous but this involves driving the ice car through the tangles of trees and lamposts which make you bounce around and get stuck on seemingly nothing. The slightest of inclines can cause you to get stuck, sometimes resolved by switching to first person (or cockpit view as they call it whilst in car), then you car will sometimes magically go forward. Not all the time tho! Any attempt at climbing a proper steep incline will just get you completely and utterly stuck - then its run to the nearest car, hotwire..... Oh, and once i fell of a ledge, the car dropped about 5 foot but bounced about 20 foot back up in the air upon impact with the ground below.

In amongst this crapstorm is Episode 6. There are only a few little spider enemies (called Ratz) to contend so there's no combat to get frustrated with and there's no car or grass, its all pretty much puzzles solved with... a forktruck. And its the most fun ive had in a forktruck since Shenmue and thats quite a compliment. But 1 good episode out of 8 isnt good stats, its like eating a shit to get a fiver out the middle - just not worth the bother.

The game frustrates me all the more because it does have these promising moments, almost endearing qualities that at times make you temporarly forget how utter tripe the game actually is. The combat could be good if the overall controls werent broken. For example, you can manipulate objects with the right stick, like when your holding a baseball bat you can hover it over a flame to set it on fire then swing away Merrill. This can be fairly effective, especially as you can lock on to a target with the L trigger, the downside (and there's always a downside) is that even though you can strafe and swing your weapons around the enemies always seem to know how far away to stay and leap in with irritating accuracy to knock you down or send their massive tounges at you from distance and beat your weapon away. Also you can pick up an empty bottle, walk over to an abandoned car, equip a knife, stab the gas tank, fill the bottle. You can then stuff a hankerchief in this bottle, light it with your lighter and boom, a Molotov Cocktail. You find glass and plastic bottles filled with flamable liquid all over the place and of you equip a bottle in your left hab and your gun in the right you then have the option to throw the bottle at a group of enemies casuing everything to slow down so you can shoot the bottle at the right time and make a huge explosion. I mean in the right hands this sort of creativity could make an excellent game. But it was in the wrong hands and the game is bollocks.

I still cant believe it got past the playtesting. Its a fucking joke.

[Sly Reflex]

The fire looks nice.