It’s been a while since it was first revealed that Alone in the Dark would be coming to next generation consoles, but at least after such a long wait we could be sure that we would be met with a product that more than meets our expectations, couldn’t we? Well…
It’s a well know fact that since the original Alone in the Dark was released, the series has been going downhill slightly, which is a shame really. Anyway those hoping for a return to form in the latest game will be met with mixed emotions when they pop this game in their Xbox 360. At the beginning of the game you awaken in a room to see your captures chatting away to each other then, before you know it, the walls are opening up and eating everyone in site, nice. As you wander through the building you are slowly introduced to the controls and their functions, you also learn how to heal yourself and how to fight.
Healing has a bizarre if not slightly realistic feel to it, basically you pick up any items you find and store them in a belt under your waistcoat, you can then access these items, including bandages and healing sprays at any point, to heal you simply apply these to any of your wounds (talk about a time consuming process). As you can imagine having to go through this process to accessing your healing equipment or for that matter any equipment is slightly annoying and awkward, especially during combat. There are of course shortcuts via the controls for any items you are already holding, LB for example will allow for you to bring out the item in your left hand, such as a torch etc, while RB will do the same for your right hand, which at least saves you from going into your waistcoat too often.
Unfortunately the combat isn’t much better than equipping your character, while chopping up zombies is quite satisfying, it isn’t easy. Combat is assigned to the right stick, when you pick up a weapon (which comes in the shape of anything lying on the ground), you then swing the right stick from left to right to recreate the same motion on screen, however since the controls are rather unresponsive you will find yourself starting over again quite a few times. Perhaps the most annoying thing is that some enemies need to be finished off by fire, and dragging them into the meting pot isn’t always easy, countless times when I tried to drag an unconscious enemy into a fire, the icon to drag the body wouldn’t come up and by the time it did they had become conscious again, meaning I had to go through the process of knocking them out all over again.
At least one positive thing about Alone in the Dark is that you are able to combine a lot of the equipment that you pick up, therefore bullets combine with guns to give you a loaded weapon, rags can be combined with bottles of petrol to create bombs etc, the only real drawback here is that you need to spend time in the menu doing this while you could be wandering around trying to kick zombie butt.
Later in the game you are introduced to the joys of driving cars, unfortunately the handling here is nowhere near the likes of GTA IV when it come to making your way around. In fact the handling of the cars is just downright awful, which is disappointing really because some of the scenes during these levels really do look great.
A new and strange addition to the game is that you now have the ability to skip any scene or chapter, so if you get stuck along the way you can simply move on. Now maybe it is just me but unless a game is really bad, usually I don’t have the urge to skip any scenes, rather I would just persevere and hope that eventually I would overcome the part I was stuck at, though the combat is so frustrating here that even I have found myself using this feature.
The presentation seems to be the only thing that saves Alone in the Dark from mediocrity, especially in the early parts of the game where the walls are cracking apart and there is a real eerie mood in all of the dimly lit rooms. The sound also plays its part, adding to the atmosphere and making you wonder what is around the next corner.
While this may not sound like the most positive of reviews, Alone in the Dark does have it’s good points, some of the action in the early parts of the game and later in the park are very impressive, however the game has many major flaws and therefore unless you are a big fan of the series, these may be too much to put up with.
