Review: Alone In The Dark (360)

Playing AITD was one of our most unpleasant experiences of the year. It’s so laughably bad that this could be considered this generations Rise of the Robots or Superman 64. It’s baffling how a game that was so promising could turn out to be such a disaster. The warning bells started ringing straight from the start. Our ‘hero’ Edward Carnby wakes up with some Jason Bourne-like amnesia and before you know it you’re being chased by evil demons that hide in the walls, a bit like a mixture of movies The Frighteners and Tremors. Then Edward has a look in a mirror and notices that he isn’t exactly the best looking guy in the world, with a scar down the side of his face and a complexion making him look like a sculpture from Madame Tussauds.

Things go from bad to worse when you discover the abysmal inventory system. Edward's jacket has a number of compartments that you can fit various things. Fair enough, only the spaces are incredibly limited and it reminds us of the old Resident Evil games, forcing you to backtrack to collect things you’ve forgotten. What makes this worse is that the game doesn’t pause when you go into your inventory. Being attacked by a zombie and need to equip your gun and flashlight? Good luck doing that before he takes a bite out of your face. When you do take damage it is represented not by a health bar but by the scars that are on Edward's body. They look so bad it’s almost comical. It’s as if someone just inserted a circle of pink flesh using photoshop not caring that it’s actually placed over his clothes.

The controls are terrible, making it seem like the developers previous survival horror experience consists of only Resident Evil and when the game resorts to platforming sections it becomes a lesson in frustration. One section of the first act had us navigating a building just as it’s falling down, a section we replayed many times. The most horrible moment came when we were taken by a surprise explosion that happened on the street below. Apparently this was so intense that it managed to throw a car ten floors up knocking us off the edge. Brilliant.

After this came the infamous driving section. Suffering from what can only be called ‘Stuntman Syndrome’, one mistake causes death sending you right back to the beginning. It doesn’t help when the car handles like nothing we’ve ever played before and to top it all off the section is full of glitches. One in particular caused our car to just freeze so we were swallowed up by the ground.

There is the option to skip to the next chapter, but this left us confused. It’s as if Atari knew that nobody would want to play some of the sections and proudly touted the fact that you don’t actually have to play the game to complete it.

It even fails to provide a decent scare. A poor showing for a game with such a rich, horror heritage as Alone in the Dark. It seems more concerned with making Edward Carnby a hard as nails American in which every line of dialogue he uses the word “F***”. It’s embarrassing nonsense that makes it sound like it was written by a fifteen year old emo child.

Is there anything good about Alone in the Dark? The fire effects are stunning and the music theme is quite good. Other than that though, nothing. I hope Atari still have the address of that landfill.

Rating: 2 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver