Alone in the Dark

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 27th June 2008
Comments (28) Stumble

Gameplay

Alone in the Dark is a mish-mash of genres and that’s made incredibly obvious from the moment you sit down and start playing.

Thematically, Alone in the Dark is a survival horror game with fixed camera angles. Actually, in this case, it’s a PC game to be played with the mouse and keyboard. Functionally, it’s a third-person shooter, puzzler, platformer and driving game.

The game is having an identity crisis and that makes many aspects of the game infuriating to play because Alone in the Dark manages to prove the truth in that old saying that you it’s better to be a master of one trade than a jack of all.

This convergence of gaming styles and genres wouldn’t be such a problem if the clashes were so abrupt though. If the game always handled like Resident Evil, with the fixed-camera angles and awkward turning then that would be…well, not fine, but tolerable. Where Alone fails though is that it abruptly and with no warning switches between this viewpoint and over-the-shoulder cameras. And first-person. And driving missions.

Alone in the Dark Alone in the Dark - Gameplay

The controls though are what really break the back of Alone in the Dark because, though the game should handle fine despite the camera and gameplay changes, it doesn’t.

The cars handle like greased bricks on a linoleum floor, while Edward doesn’t fair a lot better. It feels like you are spending half the game just trying to manoeuvre him through doors successfully – so you can imagine how the platforming stages feel. It feels as if you’ve got the fat celebrity of your choice on the wrong end of a baseball bat and you’re trying to steer them through a maze made of ice. While your eyeballs are on fire. And you’ve got razorblades in your socks.

The generally poor handling is then further compacted by the fact that the player has entirely different actions depending on if he’s in first or third person mode. You can only use a fire extinguisher to put out a fire for instance if you’re in first person mode, otherwise you just wave it around like a looney.

Oh, and don’t even get us started on melee combat. Trying to do something simple like smashing down a door with a fire axe is made about as much fun as allowing leeches to climb inside your nose by the ham-fisted and incredibly pointless ‘handling system’.

Alone in the Dark Alone in the Dark - Gameplay

If you just want to swing a weapon you have to first move it behind your head, then click and depending on how you’ve elected to hold it your blow will differ. In theory, it’s great. In reality though it makes melee combat that much more unintuitive and simple obstacle-defeating tasks a case of ‘hunt the right mouse position’.

Plus, it seems a bit idiotic that so much effort would go into making a precise and realistic handling system when your main character still can’t strafe. Instead, he just turns round on the spot in a not-quite-zero turning circle that inevitably makes him fall of cliffs or walk into fires.

And if you do walk into a fire or something similar then you’ll have the pleasure of using the ‘healing mode’, which involves searching your own body for cuts and scrapes so you can patch them up. The good thing about this is that it’s mildly novel the first few times and the game uses different wound types and treatments to add cinema-realism.

The bad news is that, well, it doesn’t really add anything to the game. What benefit is it to hunt awkwardly over your own body in first person? For realism? Then why would you play the game predominantly in third person? We like the idea that different wounds affect you in different ways, but the jarring and time-consuming way of healing them contrasts with regular gameplay needlessly.

Shopping



Dragonage