Alone in the Dark for the PC suffers from some ingame bugs and clunky controls, nevertheless it delivers great moments !
Story: 7/10
Lets start off with the story of AITD. Its about like the previous four titles full of mystery, darkness and suspense and revolves this time around the New York Central Park and some ancient religious group who built an underground temple of light in the middle of the park. Your main protagonist in this game is of course Edward Carnby, the same guy from the previous AITD titles who sets off equipped with some mysterious light amulet and a 9 mm handgun to unfold the mysteries the Central Park holds for him as well as to face the root of all evil, Lucifer himself and some other evil guy called Crowley who wants to use Edwards amulet to rule the world ... duh !! The amulet is called "the amulet of light" and the carrier is called "the light bringer". As it is said the amulet itself will grant his holder everything he desires as well as eternal life and was forged by no other than Lucifer himself in order to restore his lost soul. So Edward happens to have this so called amulet of light and soon enough he will face some apocalyptic countdown where all traces leads him to the very core of evil, the center of Central Park duhh again =)) !! Well the story may sound a little bit boring but trust me... actually its not true, the story and concept is very, very well involved in the game-play and cinematics and also there are some twists in between and in the end of the game for better or for worse. Intriguing story with some letdowns at the end.
Gameplay: 6/10
The Gameplay of AITD is very various, you can control your character through third and first person view, also there are scenes where you have to interact with the games environment and even have to control different sort of cars throughout the game. The most part of the game is solving puzzles, combining things in your inventory or driving cars and defeating demons. Sounds cool ? Wait until we are dealing with the controls =)) !! All in one the whole gameplay idea is very good but unfortunately its like a bunch of good ideas thrown together with no good execution. Very good concept of interacting unfortunately may seem to buggy sometimes.
Controls: 4/10
Holy freakin X$3#!! you guessed it, this is one of the parts where AITD was earning his negative reviews all around. The controls in one word are... "terrible". When you are playing on your keyboard you will be frustrated as hell and I am not even kidding, you can control Edward with the WASD keys on your keyboard in third and first-person view and with your mouse. When I first played on my keyboard I had very big problems with the game because I was running in the false direction or I couldn't remember the right keys for the right command. Oh god it was like I was not fighting the demons in this game, rather I was fighting the god damn controls, also the chapters where you have to control the car were so bad handled by the controls, I actually died many, many times after mastering the controls. All in one please people play with some Microsoft 360 Gamepad for Windows, mostly because this game was released for the Xbox360 or you will be in for some very frustrating gameplay. Don't even try to play on your keyboard.
Graphic: 8/10
What can I say about the graphics of this game ? I was actually stunned by the character details and environments this game offers, also the dark and creepy apocalyptic style makes this game look really good. The movies are well rendered and the characters in ingame, display emotions which I think was a terrific idea. I have not played the Xbox 360 Version nor the PS3 Version, though but I think the PC port should be on same pare as the console release regarding the graphic issues. Overall great graphics and awesome looking cutscenes and movies 8/10
Sound: AITD comes with its own soundtrack which is one hell of a great soundtrack :D I personally think that the soundtrack of AITD is very original and memorable and saves this game from being "doomed to be bad". The tracks are very well implied in the actions of the whole game and deliver some serious atmosphere, I recommend playing AITD only for the soundtracks sake because this is some section where this game can hold up to. Very good and dramatic soundtrack which will drive the game experience on.
My Review:
Lets clear some first things first before going into my review about AITD. Alone in the Dark was previously released for the Playstation 2, 3 and Xbox360 console earlier, so I am dealing with the PC release of AITD in this review. It seems that there is no big difference between the PS3,Xbox360 and PC version but there is a very big difference in comparison with the PS2 version all in one, this is most probably due to the fact that the PS2 version was made by some other developer named Hydravision instead of Eden. In short AITD for the Playstation 2 is different than the PS3,Xbox360 and PC release. So much for the versions, I can say that the PC port is pretty much the same as the Xbox360 release but lets have a review on this game to clear things out.
The game starts off in a dark room where the main protagonist Edward Carnby seems to wake up from his deep slumber only to notice that he is surrounded by three armed guys in black outfits who talk about some prophecy and about an artifact called the key of light and they also seem to hold some old guy as hostage, as well. So this is actually your starting point in the game as you wake up in first person view and try to make sense of your situation when one of the armed guys comes to you and forces you with a gun to follow him to the roof of the building while the other two armed men escort the old guy to the elevator and this is where the events take off in AITD. As you reach the door which leads to the roof suddenly the wall gets cracked and the guy threatening you with the gun gets sucked in into the wall, if you think thats crazy... oh well thats only the beginning of bizarre events you will encounter soon enough. Apparently Edward seems to suffer from profund amnesia so he cannot remember who he is, what his name is and of course... what on earth is going on. As you try to navigate Edward through the building you are forced to take on different obstacles such as climbing down an elevator shaft or extinguish the fire which slowly burns down the building. I think the whole idea with the collapsing and burning building is one of the best and spectacular events in this game, it will give you a stunning feeling and is very intense, so I wont spoil more story events for you because this game is actually pretty story-intensive.
What I really liked about this game is the fact that AITD seems to offer new gameplay features such as navigating through events like an DVD movie, when you pause the game you can skip forward to the next chapter or back to the previous chapter. AITD is divided as mentioned in 8 chapters, each chapter has about 3-5 sections depending on your skills you can beat the game by playing the chapters or just skip right through the end of the game :D Thats right you can actually skip right through the entire game just like through some DVD movie, of course you probably don't wanna do that on your first playthrough though.
Another interesting idea in this game is the fact that you don't have any life-bar or unlimited amount of ammunition and items. When enemies inflict damage to Edward you will see his wounds from first person view where you can use some heal-spray to heal Edwards wounds, also you are given the opportunity to collect all kind of useful stuff and items such like some flashlight, sprays, GPS system, of course you have to combine some items in order to enhance them or to create new ways of solving puzzles.
Let's talk about the fighting system and oh gezzz.... the driving system this game offers. You can equip only 2 handguns in the entire game and various other melee weapons e.g. burning chairs, some katana sword, fire estinguishers, molotov bottles (you have to mix them in your inventory) and so on, you can pick them all up. After equipping your weapon of choice you can fight 2 ways, either in first or third person view. I must confess I dealt with this game about 80% in first person view because shooting your gun is only possible in this mode and I sucked in melee combat with demons due to the horrible controls lol. Oh I have to mention one thing about fighting which was pretty annoying. You have to set almost every enemy on fire in order to kill it, this is due to the fact that almost all enemies are only vulnerable at some points on their bodies which are represented through fissures. So in order to kill some demon for example you can just knock him out with a chair but you must set him on fire afterwards or he will be back on his feet and trust me it is incredibly difficult to aim for his fissures with your handgun while he is running around, especially if you encounter 3 demons at once. The fighting-system in AITD is even more awkward and crippled than the one in the Silent Hill series.
Later on you will be forced into some car driving level where you must control your car in "GTA" or "Driver" style, you may think "oh sounds pretty cool", trust me it isn't at all :( Its a pain in the ass because the controls while driving are so bad you will destroy your car many times before mastering it... at least I destroyed it a lot xD anyway first thing about driving the car is actually.. you have to haywire the car or search for the car key above the sun-shader or in the hand-glove department. Now many of you may think this is actually a pretty innovative and realistic idea but it was some annoying problem as well, I mean I got the point "to haywire a car seems realistic" but oh damn I don't have the patience to do that all the time in the game, especially when demons are roaming around. So this is another prove that AITD comes with great ideas but bad execution. As for the most part of the game I was actually pretty pleased with the great voice-acting and character details as well as with the overall graphics and ingame physics and of course the soundtrack is memorable and sounds just awesome.
Final Words:
In the end AITD is actually a very unique and dark game with some very bad controls, ingame bugs and ending, nevertheless I really recommend playing this game not only for true fans of the AITD series but also for fans of survival horror and creepy atmosphere. I bet you will say after playing this one "hey this game wasn't so bad everyone said it would be" and trust me it isn't at all, you will be pleased as for me I really was. If it weren't for the control issues and the ending I would score this game much higher, therefore it only gets a 7 out of 10.
Endrating: 7/10