Alone in the Dark is a new survival horror game from Eden Games that puts you in the middle of Central Park during a huge catastrophe in which, as usual, you have to save the world from impending doom using nothing but a roll of sticky tape and a used condom. OK, slight exaggeration there but you get the drift. As with most, if not all survival horror games you tend to always be on the edge of running out of supplies, which brings a need for clever thinking and improvisation. What differentiates Alone in the Dark (AITD henceforth) from any other game in this genre is its setting. While the game starts indoors and you are faced with the usual dark corridors with flickering lights, you eventually enter , a huge park created for the stressed out public who reside in …. Or was it?
You play as Edward Carnby, a “paranormal investigator” as you wake up on a bed not knowing who or where you are. Great start, unfortunately for Carnby, his life gets a whole lot worse in a very short space of time and it seems the only way to survive is to use your instincts and by doing what others tell you. Of course, there are few other characters in the game that don’t get killed in some gruesome way, so it’s mostly instinct.
I wont go into too much detail about the story, firstly, I don’t want to spoil it for you, and secondly, its nothing special, something to do with a stone, Satan and well, it carries itself from there. Basically though, you end up entering Central Park as it turns out it wasn’t built for the busy city goers of New York, it was built to hold something much more sinister and you go through the game finding out what exactly this is, so you can open a can of whoop ass on it when you do figure it out. Along the way you will take part in crazy car chases, intense battles and many more cinematic events. If there is one thing this game does brilliantly, it is epic cinematic moments; it almost feels as though you are watching a film.
Right from the beginning you are being thrown onto the side of buildings, clinging for your life as rubble tumbles past you, crawling through rooms which collapse around you and of course, meeting characters who quickly get dispatched by some horrific monster that crawls through the ground like something from the film Tremors. The most impressive moment for me was probably a car chase around the outside of as you desperately try to find a way in to what you hope would be a safe haven. The road is crumpled up behind you as you fly through the streets of at high speeds in a taxi, trying to avoid exploding cars and falling buildings, along with the monster, whose only aim is to rip your car in to tiny chunks. The whole experience is truly thrilling, at least, it is the first time you try it, and this is where the game falls short.
For a start, the driving is too touchy and unpredictable, which is surprising as this is the developer that brought us Test Drive Unlimited, and this makes the sequence oh so harder since it is just too long and it is practically impossible to get it right the first time. Sequences like this should be shorter so that you get through the first, or maybe the second time, this makes it more memorable as being fun instead of that dam section you got stuck on for eleven tries as it requires that you memorise the entire sequence.
The real action begins once you have entered the park though. Once you have made your way in you are presented with a fog covered, dark and eerie wasteland where cars have been abandoned and dark creatures stalk through the night. It’s not until here that you really tune in to the more survival side of the game, as you can go around picking supplies from bins such as bottles which can be filled with car fuel, and packs of batteries to keep that ever important flash light from going out, amongst many other things. The most important thing in this game when it comes to combat though is fire. Fire can be both friend and foe, depending on how you treat it, but in most cases using fire is the only way to take down the enemies that come your way. This means that gun you start with suddenly becomes somewhat useless when used alone; however, when paired with items such as explosive bottles, you have a pretty hefty combination going.
It is also in the combat where many of this games more interesting features seep through. Having incorporated fire into the game as a natural, free flowing element, it will spread naturally on to anything flammable; this allows you to burn down wooden doors, or light chairs on fire to use as a deadly weapon. Another great thing is how you can puncture bottles of gasoline and create trails of it which can later be set alight and used as effective traps, luring enemies into a ring of fire is one of my favourites, although it’s easier said than done. Along with the creative use of fire, you are also given quite an innovative inventory, which consists of you simply looking down and opening your jacket to see what you have in your pockets. It’s the little things like this, instead of using a dull inventory screen, that help immerse you in the experience as you can combine objects to make them more effective.
Other great little features include the ability to blink. “So what, I can blink, who cares?” you might say, however when playing the game in first person view it can be used to get poison out your eyes, or to clear your vision. Blinking, or rather just closing your eyes also comes in to the story as a more important feature later in the game.
Another note-worthy moment which impressed me was one of the puzzles in the game. Being presented with a keypad on a locked door is nothing new; however I’m pretty sure that having to guess the code by using the bloody fingerprints on the keys is. Also memorable, was a set piece that leaves you being dropped into a bus leaning over the edge of a giant canyon. Having to pile up corpses down one end in order to keep my end up was something that (quite frighteningly) came very natural to me.
The games visuals were also up to scratch. I rarely had frame rate drops and it does really look spectacular in places, although I found that some of the ground textures around the park were a bit dull, but the fog and effective use of shadows made up for it. I am currently running the game at maximum settings on my 8800GTS 320MB and it held up really well, much to my surprise. The graphics are also backed up by a brilliant and fitting musical score, which fires out the epic orchestral parts during cinematic moments, and leaves you with a more ambient track while sneaking through the darker places of the game. All these factors come together to create quite a scary atmosphere in places, and I am pleased to say that I am yet to come across any technical bugs or glitches, again, much to my surprise. You can really tell that tried hard on the production value and stability of this game.
AITD sports many interesting features which aren’t found in a lot of new games these days. The use of fire allows for more creative and unpredictable gameplay, and the atmosphere fits the bill perfectly. However, I was not impressed with the control scheme and the camera, which occasionally switches between views in the most annoying moments and often had me clambering over my keyboard trying to keep on top of the right keys to press. Not only this but it often tells you the controls using the Xbox 360 symbols, which is a bit of a kick to the balls considering it was a simultaneous release on all platforms. Add the sickening driving and you have a game which holds many great ideas, presented in the most insane and awesome ways, but is often held back by annoying little things like its controls which is a crying shame because this game was so close to reaching greatness in my opinion, of course, it is still worth a try if you are a fan of the genre. Just be prepared to curse and shout as you fumble through your pockets for something that resembles a weapon as you get hounded by creatures that would just love to rip your face off there and then.