Playing this weekend – Alone in the Dark
March 13th, 2009 • Blog, Games
So what game are you playing this weekend?
This week I chose to talk about Alone in the Dark for Xbox 360, it was released a few months ago and you can problably find it in the bargain bin of your local games store but is it any good?
Cutting the story short, the game is yet another third-person horror game where you take the role of the amnesiac Edward Carnby and try to defend yourself from a very nasty demon in the middle of Central Park in New York.
The game offers some very unique gameplay elements and at the same time, very frustrating experiences. For starters, the fighting system is very creative, you can basicaly pick up pretty much everything at your disposal and use it as a weapon or just improvise by combining items.
For example, if you mix alcohol with bullets you get fire bullets (yeah), mixing an ancherchief with an alcohol bottle gets you a cocktail molotof and so on. There’s alot of combinations and fire plays an essencial role since enemies can only be ultimately killed with it. Speaking of fire, the fire physics are some of the best I’ve seen in a video-game.
Also, the story, scenarios and game style are very well thought and played, there’s a very strong cinematic experience. Plus, every chapter is played like a TV Show. You get smaller episodes and if you’re stuck you can fast forward….
Now for the bad. Moving Edward Carnby is a chore, the controls could be more simplified and the camera doesn’t help, it’s just awfull. Also, the character and car physics are horrible, many times you pass through objects or fail to jump to a ledge or discover a nasty bug. Besides, there’s situations where winning or losing depends on how much you master the camera and walking at the same time.
The inventory although very original is not very good to navigate because the game isn’t paused when you access it (yeah!) and mixing stuff in a middle of a fight will lead to frustration.
Expect your character to die a lot. :)
There’s plenty of good ideas in this game and you sense a lot of effort was put into making this a fantastic game but the buggy controls, nasty character physics and some unwise design decisions torwards the end, make this game non recomendable. Hope there’s a second try.
