Gaming Verdict - Article: Alone in the Dark

Carnby’s knowledge of how to correctly use fire safety equipment was piss-poor, to say the least.

The game also forces you to switch between third- and first-person views quite often, which wouldn’t be so bad if the first-person controls weren’t also slow and annoying. Whilst aiming is passable, actually moving Carnby about whilst in first-person view is a struggle to say the least. Despite this you’ll find yourself often manually switching to first-person when indoors, just so that you can see where the hell you’re going.

Note to Atari – Generous auto-aim systems are no substitute for decent first person movement.

The much-touted ‘item combination’ system turns out to be extremely limited. At first it appears that the game encourages and rewards experimentation, but it won’t take long to discover that there are only a few useful composite items. Any attempt to be too innovative will also be unworkable – for example, at one point in the game I found myself with a shortage of explosive bottles, so I had the genius idea of piercing a car’s gas tank with a knife, dousing a bandage in petrol, taping the bandage to a baseball bat, then setting it alight with my lighter. BINGO! Flaming baseball bat, baby! Unfortunately the developers had not foreseen this kind of thought process, and using a bandage with petrol was apparently an invalid combination.

This kind of false freedom happens often, in what is actually a very linear game. It’s disheartening to think up a valid original solution to a problem, only for it not to work simply because you weren’t supposed to do that.

Note to Atari – Either give players more freedom, or don’t hype up your pathetic feature.

The other much talked about feature of this game is the ‘DVD-style’ chapter selection, allowing people to instantly jump to any part of the game. When first announced this seemed like a bold move, allowing all gamers to experience the whole game, regardless of skill level. Now that we have the game in our hands however, it becomes apparent that this was a cowardly decision born from the fact the developers knew their game had several frustrating sections. To add insult to injury, although you can skip gameplay, you can’t skip any cutscenes… The attempt of Alone to justify itself as being more a movie than a game isn’t a great idea, and doesn’t carry much weight.

Note to Atari – If you make a decent enough game, people won’t want to skip parts of it.