Alone in the Dark

With four games prior to this one and one incredibly bad flick based on it, the Alone in the Dark franchise has been around long enough to see a good number of ups and downs. The latest addition to the series – simply named Alone in the Dark – hangs really close to being a good game, but a few fundamental flaws in design ruin the experience in more ways than one.

Before we get into that, let me tell you a little about the plot. You play the role of Edward Carnby (those of you who’ve played the previous games are probably familiar with the name). Carnby is a paranormal investigator by profession, but what he’s really good at is deposing things that go ‘bump’ in the dark. This time around, he’s lost his memory after a strange ritual of exorcism that was performed on him. The game starts with him waking up amongst some strange people, in a building that’s about to be torn asunder by forces unknown.

As you move through the game’s well-conjured nightmarish urban realm, you uncover the demonic threat that looms over New York’s Central Park (which is where the entire game’s based), and take it upon yourself to save the city – and subsequently the world – from damnation. Developer Eden Games has done a brilliant job in crafting a believable, surreal, apocalyptic setting that’s atmospheric enough to potentially draw you in; and that’s no small feat. However, the ability to draw you in ends up being just a potential, since its biggest hindrance and most fundamental flaw– the way it controls – gets in the way every time the game begins to capture your imagination.

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The game was designed ground-up to have both of Carnby’s hands controlled via the mouse, while his movement is controlled using the keyboard. What this means is that when you pick up an object, you have to move the mouse around in the direction you wish to flail it. While this may sound good on paper (it certainly seemed interesting in the trailers), all it manages to do is make the controls highly disjointed. It’s an excruciatingly laborious challenge to do even the most basic things like swinging an axe or moving a corpse – stuff other games allow you to do just by pressing a button or moving your mouse.

In fact, the control scheme got so unbearable for me that after a few minutes, I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to quit the game. After a spot of yoga (to calm down and get rid of the frustration), I got back to the game, which I wouldn’t have bothered doing if I weren’t reviewing it (that’s right, I’d never have continued playing it out of choice). The controls didn’t get any less anal, but after an hour or so of misery, I finally started getting the hang of things.

This doesn’t mean the controls were good in any way; on the contrary, instead of being easy to pick up, the game requires you to sit and learn the way to control Carnby, and even after that it doesn’t feel natural. The way the controls are designed is completely counter-intuitive to the point that they actually have a key assigned to things you would never think of. For instance, one is assigned to ‘Leave Rope’ (which is ‘Print Screen’ by the way) while another is assigned to ‘Blink Eye’!

All’s not lost though, and midway through the game it did manage to redeem itself (a bit at least). As I mentioned earlier, the action takes place in Central Park; a small chunk of the game allows you to free-roam through the devastated region. As pointless as it is where the plot’s concerned, it’s a lot of fun to scour through the totaled cars and annihilated dustbins, salvaging materials you can use to kill the undead. This is the game’s best feature by far.

For instance, if you have an empty bottle and a screwdriver, find a totaled car, pierce the gas tank using the screwdriver, and then fill fuel into the empty bottle. Once that’s done, you can do a lot with that bottle of yours – you can stuff it with a piece of cloth and ignite it using your lighter to make your very own Molotov Cocktail (drinks anyone?), or you can pour some of that fuel on your gun’s ammunition to make your own incendiary rounds!

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At the end of the day, the free-roaming bits are too few to completely atone for the rubbish controls, and the game falls glaringly short of what it could and should have been. There’s no doubt that it has a lot of awesome tricks up its sleeve, with some really memorable moments (including one where you run through a collapsing building), but all this offers little consolation since most people won’t endure even a few minutes of the game without smashing their heads on the keyboard out of frustration.

It seems Eden Games tried too hard to be different from the heaps of survival horror games out there by using a completely unique control scheme, and in the bargain they’ve lost track of what’s really important. After all, ingenuity doesn’t come from completely scrapping and remaking that which has taken years of trial and error to build and perfect, but from tweaking and personalizing it so finely that it identifies with your very own creation.