A good few years before the release of the playstation 3 i remember seeing the trailer for the new alone in the dark game. I was excited it looked really good, simply because we haven't seen an alone in the dark game for a long time so it would be a welcome come back.
I got the game on offer for £25.
This game is so awful i didn't even bother to finish the damn thing. I'll tell you why this game is so bad. Firstly, the whole game is a gimmick. When we were shown tech demos the only thing they seemed to demonstrate was the games fire effects. Yes OK the fire effects are very nice and fire spreads realistically and fire weapons all work very well. But the fire is a gimmick because the only way you can kill enemies in the game is with fire. It's practically forcing you to always use fire and there is never much variety. The second gimmick is the DVD skip feature. This feature like the name suggests means you can skip difficult levels and play the next "episode" and then keeps you up to date with the story with a "Previously on Alone In The Dark" opening scene. The back of the box suggests you don't even need to play the game and you can see the ending, this is a lie because it doesn't even let you see the end because of lack of skill or power etc. Another thing wrong with it, well the most spoken of problems with Alone is the CONTROLS. I got this game for xbox and it may have a chunky controller but c'mon. You can switch between third and first person. First person is easier to work but you have to blink constantly ( yes i said blinking i thought it was stupid too) by pressing the thumb-stick down. In third person you can only control Carnabey with the one left stick which is sometimes difficult to manuvere considering you can't work with the right stick too. Clunky controls cause problems with combat, particularly because this joins in with the fire gimmick. attacking with a melee weapon is controlled by swinging the right stick but this is so tedious and the melee weapon must be on fire for the enemy to die. Then there's inventory and healing. The whole quick view change to the inside of Carnabeys jacket to see the inventory is all well and cool but its kept in real time and you can be injured while going through your inventory which take you right out of it. The inventory is all very messy and sometimes un-useful objects take up too much space. then there's healing. To heal yourself you go inside your jacket and pull out medical spray (resident evil 4 anyone?) or bandages then press down and use the analogue stick to select the part of the body you wish to heal. Why couldn't you just select the medical appliance and then just let that add on health rather than friterring away by doing a stupid medical mini-game. Writing and story. Oh dear the story. Well Edward Carnaby has amnesia and Satan is trying to take over earth.....something like that. The writing is the worst part because the story is so simple and clichéd that it just had to have bad writing to make it whole. Most of the dialogue is like a teen horror movie with just a horrendous amount of swearing. The other Alone In The Dark games were intelligent with good writing so why does this one resort to cheesy, corny vulgar dialogue? Then there's driving. Driving is just sooooooo tedious. Hit a pebble and your car will swerve off course and some times a tiny nudge on your movement stick and your pulling off drifts and the big pushes on the movement stick seem to cause you to turn corners slowly. I gave Alone In The Dark 2 stars and thats because of the driving mission near the start of the game. Although i hate the driving the whole scenario was very well presented, the graphics were very sleek and the musical score in the sequence was exceptional. If you've played it you'll know which scene i mean. Worst Game Of All Time Or Worst Game I've Ever Played
I got the game on offer for £25.
This game is so awful i didn't even bother to finish the damn thing. I'll tell you why this game is so bad. Firstly, the whole game is a gimmick. When we were shown tech demos the only thing they seemed to demonstrate was the games fire effects. Yes OK the fire effects are very nice and fire spreads realistically and fire weapons all work very well. But the fire is a gimmick because the only way you can kill enemies in the game is with fire. It's practically forcing you to always use fire and there is never much variety. The second gimmick is the DVD skip feature. This feature like the name suggests means you can skip difficult levels and play the next "episode" and then keeps you up to date with the story with a "Previously on Alone In The Dark" opening scene. The back of the box suggests you don't even need to play the game and you can see the ending, this is a lie because it doesn't even let you see the end because of lack of skill or power etc. Another thing wrong with it, well the most spoken of problems with Alone is the CONTROLS. I got this game for xbox and it may have a chunky controller but c'mon. You can switch between third and first person. First person is easier to work but you have to blink constantly ( yes i said blinking i thought it was stupid too) by pressing the thumb-stick down. In third person you can only control Carnabey with the one left stick which is sometimes difficult to manuvere considering you can't work with the right stick too. Clunky controls cause problems with combat, particularly because this joins in with the fire gimmick. attacking with a melee weapon is controlled by swinging the right stick but this is so tedious and the melee weapon must be on fire for the enemy to die. Then there's inventory and healing. The whole quick view change to the inside of Carnabeys jacket to see the inventory is all well and cool but its kept in real time and you can be injured while going through your inventory which take you right out of it. The inventory is all very messy and sometimes un-useful objects take up too much space. then there's healing. To heal yourself you go inside your jacket and pull out medical spray (resident evil 4 anyone?) or bandages then press down and use the analogue stick to select the part of the body you wish to heal. Why couldn't you just select the medical appliance and then just let that add on health rather than friterring away by doing a stupid medical mini-game. Writing and story. Oh dear the story. Well Edward Carnaby has amnesia and Satan is trying to take over earth.....something like that. The writing is the worst part because the story is so simple and clichéd that it just had to have bad writing to make it whole. Most of the dialogue is like a teen horror movie with just a horrendous amount of swearing. The other Alone In The Dark games were intelligent with good writing so why does this one resort to cheesy, corny vulgar dialogue? Then there's driving. Driving is just sooooooo tedious. Hit a pebble and your car will swerve off course and some times a tiny nudge on your movement stick and your pulling off drifts and the big pushes on the movement stick seem to cause you to turn corners slowly. I gave Alone In The Dark 2 stars and thats because of the driving mission near the start of the game. Although i hate the driving the whole scenario was very well presented, the graphics were very sleek and the musical score in the sequence was exceptional. If you've played it you'll know which scene i mean. Worst Game Of All Time Or Worst Game I've Ever Played