Binding: Video Game
Manufacturer: Atari Inc.
Product Description:Uncover the earth-shattering secret hidden in New York's iconic Central Park in Alone In The Dark. History records that Central Park was built on a useless swamp, yet as the New York City skyline hurtled towards the sky over the last 150 years, making the city the most expensive real estate in the world, the park has remained untouched. Why? Civic pride? Perhaps, but the recent strange happenings in and around the park are casting doubt on that, doubts that require investigating. Edward Carnby, Paranormal Investigator is looking for answers to the strange events and horrific creatures reported in and around the park, but gets more than he bargained for when all the mysteries and terrors of the park spill out over the course of one apocalyptic night. It's your task to avoid the new frightening dangers of the park as you search for the answers to what these supernatural occurrences mean and why they are happening.
Amazon.com:There’s something strange and frightening happening in the middle of New York City’s Central Park; something whispered to have been intentionally kept secret; something that players are compelled to explore in
Alone in the Dark.
Known today as a safe haven for New Yorkers yearning for relief from the stresses of their chaotic metropolis, history records that Central Park was built on a useless swamp, yet as the New York City skyline hurtled towards the sky over the last 150 years, making the city the most expensive real estate in the world, the park has remained untouched. Why? Civic pride? Perhaps, but the recent strange happenings in and around the park are casting doubt on that, doubts that require investigating.
The return of an iconic series |
Paranormal PI Edward Carnby.
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Stunningly spooky views of NYC.
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The odd wildlife of Central Park.
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A whole new inventory system.
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Enter Edward Carnby, Paranormal InvestigatorDespite the title,
Alone in the Dark is actually the fifth game in a series that dates back to 1992 and centers around the experiences of Edward "the reptile" Carnby. A paranormal investigator by trade, Carnby is looking for answers to the strange events and horrific creatures reported in and around the park, but gets more than he bargained for when all the mysteries and terrors of the park spill out over the course of one apocalyptic night. It’s the player’s task to avoid the new frightening dangers of the park as you search for the answers to what these supernatural occurrences mean and why they are happening.
Gameplay Based on Full Player ImmersionPacked full of action and vivid in its realism
Alone in the Dark goes to the extreme to keep players engaged and immersed by plunging them into the heart of the action in real-time at every turn and challenging them to survive using full movement control. The goal here is to allow players to do or at least feel that they can do more or less whatever is possible in real life, within the game.
Need to avoid a blast of steam or an eruption of fire that has shot up in your path? You can simply side-step it or you can handle the obstacle with a little more panache by using the environment around you, for example by swinging around it using reachable pipes or wires. In another situation you may be challenged by attacking monsters. No problem. You can take the path of least resistance, again by side-stepping them or placing an obstacle between yourself and them, but if you are feeling like taking out a little aggression you can pick up a board, chair, box, etc. and have at it. Nearly anything that you come across that would be usable in real life is usable in game and can be wielded in several different ways.
In addition, game developer Eden Studios has done away with a few in-game conventions in favor of real life upgrades. Instead of old-fashioned health bars
Alone in the Dark uses realistic body damage and physiological effects to show players how much damage has been done to Carnby by the new dangerous nightlife of Central Park. Basically this means if Carnby has been taking a licking he’s going to be a little bloody. Monsters use sensory perception of all kinds to find their victims, so players need to keep aware of Carnby’s physical state, as well as the impact he has on his surroundings. Also gone are traditional inventory systems that take players out of the game while you switch or check items in your possession, replaced by an in-game inventory system where items are carried in the folds of Carnby’s trench coat. This allows you to stay in the action the whole time. Sticking with the realism theme, the number of items that Carnby can carry is limited, but since ingenuity is built into the system, items can be combined or their uses altered, mostly with tape, so players can adjust as challenges arise.
TV Style Intensity That Keeps You HookedBuilt around a unique television style episodic narrative game structure, the storyline of
Alone in the Dark is split into a number of distinct 30-40 minute episodes, doled out one at a time as you play. This new way to progress through the storyline ensures that players can enjoy the game regardless of the amount of time they have available without ever feeling lost. Each time a saved game is launched, the episode will begin with a video summary of the previous episode to quickly re-immerse the player in the story, removing the need to remember where you were or what you were doing at the end of your last play session. In addition, every episode will also close with a nail-biting, cliff-hanger ending to rattle players’ nerves. And when you choose to leave the game, a video teaser of the next episode will play to leave players always wanting more.
Vivid Photographic RenderingEven on a bad day, and this will be a bad one, Central Park and New York City are something to see. With Game developer Eden’s proprietary Twilight technology and rendering engine, players can expect to see everything from the City’s famous landmarks to the manifestations of the evil that have been festering in Central Park come to life as if you were there. This lavishly detailed game world takes advantage of highly realistic and advanced cinematographic effects including depth of field, camera focus, numerous light sources, moisture, reflections and High Dynamic Range effects.
Whether it’s the innovative game play, the unique episodic game structure, the advanced physics or the return of a ground-breaking protagonist recast in the modern era,
Alone in the Dark holds something for players willing to take on the mysteries and dangers at the heart of Central Park.
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Lowest New Price: USD 17.98
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Average Rating:
Features:
- A New Inventory System ¿ Players utilize the pockets of protagonist Edward Carnby to hold items which they can view, switch and combine without leaving the game.
- Narrative intensity ¿ Taking its cues from blockbuster TV dramas, the story is told in a TV season style narrative structure based around episodes that deliver maximum intensity throughout and keep the player hooked.
- A Captivating Story ¿ Centered in iconic Central Park long-time series protagonist and paranormal specialist Edward Carnby returns to delve into the frightening events occurring in the Big Apple.
- Real World Rules ¿ In-Game movement has been designed to allow players to do almost anything that is physically possible in the real world.
- Photographic Rendering ¿ Game developer Eden¿s Propriety ¿Twilight¿ technology creates a lavishly detailed game world with highly realistic and advanced cinematographic effects.
Brand: Atari
Release Date: 2008-06-24
Customer Reviews
innovation at its best!!!
oh my god is this seriously the most under rated game since ff 8. AITD is a great game all from its very cool inventory system to its mystery filled story line.this alone in the dark and i know people are going to disagree is the best in the series without a question.this game also has a AMAZING soundtrack better than ff and halo and so on.now the controls i havent seen not one bug not one as i played through this game three times.you also get to walk around central park and steal cars what more could you want.and this also got my adernaline pumping more then re 4 expecially from the 59th street mission wich i had no problem with. innovation at its best no doubt about this game is worth your money
Wow....
This could be the crappiest game I have ever played. The controls are broken, the camera doesn't work well, the graphics are just okay, the story is far from compelling, and it just isn't fun.
Good Ideas - Poor Execution
Despite being a successor to the early 90s horror series Alone in the Dark, the new Alone in the Dark game is only partially related to those old games. It has its own merits, and its own shortcomings, but does not seem particularly related to previous games and must be considered more as a stand-alone game.
The story of the game involves a doomsday cult trying to summon an ancient evil using Edward Carnby, the private detective and protagonist from Alone in the Dark (the original), who has been brought to the present by unknown means and has amnesia. At first, the evil presence (marked by glowing cracks in walls that move and seek out prey as if alive) is limited to a single building, but it quickly spreads throughout the entirety of New York City, leaving Edward trapped in Central Park.
As far as stories go, this is a decent one for a survival horror game, and there are a lot of good scares and surprises. In the beginning, you're trapped in a building where the very walls are trying to get you, and in addition you're also dealing with zombies - people swallowed up by the cracks brought back as malicious outlets for the main demon to speak and act through. The main demon's voice is kind of bad, though - it's the same deep monster voice that has basically become a cliche in movies about demons, and it makes the glowing cracks go from "unidentified, unintelligent, but malicious entity" to "scary-voiced demon guy". In fact, as far as scares go, the main problem with Alone in the Dark is that you're so rarely alone. Besides the short-lived survivors you encounter throughout the game, you also have a sidekick, Sarah, who comes and goes throughout parts of the game. Well, "sidekick" is a bit generous, since there's not a lot of cooperative gameplay involved. But the point is that there's no feeling of isolation; it's more like a disaster movie that happens to have monsters in it.
The standard gameplay is a fairly regular survival-horror control system. The game is normally played in third-person, with somewhat awkward tank-style controls (IE you have to walk, then turn, then walk, rather then just turning while you walk). The camera in particular is hard to manage, and trying to look around while moving or anything besides walking in a straight line was pretty difficult to manage. Aiming firearms is done exclusively in first-person, but melee combat has a bit of a unique twist to it - it's done in third person like normal gameplay segments, and swinging melee weapons is done by "swinging" the right thumbstick from one direction to another. This works pretty well in most cases, and it changes depending on the weapon being used. For example, with long weapons like 2x4s or swords, you only have the option to swing horizontally or vertically. However, with heavier items like fire extinguishers, you can also use the item as a battering ram to smash down doors.
Most of the enemies in the game can only be temporarily defeated by weapons, and must be consumed by fire to be fully destroyed. To this end, innovating ways to use fire as a weapon is one of the most important parts of the game. The most basic form of this is to light a melee weapon on fire by sticking it into the flames; the flames don't last forever, but they're an instant-kill to most of the monsters that you'll face, and the enemy cowers and flees accordingly. In fact, I would say that swinging a burning 2x4 while your formerly aggressive zombie enemies cower and flee before you is probably the most satisfying part of the game. There are other methods as well that must be thought up with more open thinking - things like molotov cocktails and improvised flamethrowers made out of a can of hair spray and a match. While the "make weapons out of things to defeat your foes" aspect is pretty much limited to fire, the fact that fire is what destroys your enemies makes it at least plausible.
Your inventory in the game is represented by the holsters and pouches in your jacket. The left side of your jacket is used for small items like boxes of ammo or batteries, there's a holster for a gun and a flashlight on your chest, and the right side is used for bottles and cans of various types. The fact that there's a legitimate, actual inventory (you actually look down in first-person to access it, and it's in real-time too so you have to hurry and put stuff together instead of just calmly making a molotov cocktail during a pause) helps with the atmosphere that's being created. In a similar manner, wounds show up on your body and must be healed with either bandages or a first-aid spray. There's no health bar (as with the inventory, all HUD elements are minimal in this game), but you can get a general idea of how injured you are by the status of your wounds (which are still present after being healed, but aren't red and open). You also get a phone/PDA at a point in the game that allows you to make calls and gives you access to a GPS map of the area you are in.
In many situations it's necessary to hotwire a car or activate a fusebox (which is done in real time, often with monsters closing in on you) by picking the right wires to spark together. You're often frantically pressing wires together hoping that they're the right ones but doing it quickly enough to get away from the monsters closing in on your car. This is a pretty good part of the game in an atmospheric sense. Driving the car is another thing, though; the controls are wonky and in most cases the demands of the game as far as getting away from giant apocalyptic cracks in the road are a little bit over-the-top. I spent a good hour on what is really a five-minute segment where you're trying to get away from a giant series of cracking roads and earthquakes because the car didn't turn enough, or it turned too much, or I hit another motorist and the car got stuck, or I hit something at a bad angle. The last one in particular is annoying; at the end of the sequence in question, you're supposed to go flying out through a window in a building, but the first time I got there, I assumed that was what was supposed to happen, but I hit it at an odd angle and I didn't go through (I left a mark on the glass though). The next two times I made it there, I tried looking around for other exits but got blocked off. Only on the last time did I realize what had happened and just drive straight into the glass.
The graphics in the game are pretty good; the best graphics are the fire graphics, which flicker and dance pretty realistically, while the worst are probably the wounds that Edward receives on his body. The idea's neat, but in actuality they're just the same image copy-pasted onto different parts of his body. The "slash that ripped through cloth and pierced the skin" image looks okay when it's on his pants or shirt, but when it's on his jacket it just looks like someone slapped it on like a sticker. Also, you get the same kind of wound no matter how you got the injury. Overall, though, the graphics are decent and atmospheric.
The sound isn't bad, but the music just feels wrong. It's a nice attempt at atmospheric music, but most of the time it's not so much "scary" as it is "epic", with giant sweeping musical interludes and ominous chanting that fits more with "Carmina Burana" than a horror movie. It just feels overstated, and not particularly scary. Furthermore, it gets old pretty quickly, too.
As a whole, the worst part of Alone in the Dark is its execution. It has a lot of good ideas, and most of the elements taken by themselves are pretty sound. However, the actual execution of the ideas - the controls, the situation, the atmosphere - are all really terrible and frustrating, and the game seems more like a battle against the game itself than against any monsters or puzzles. The interactive environments seem more linear than natural; despite the fact that it's supposed to be stuff that's done in a manner that makes it seem "realistic", there's so many scripted sequences that it's hard to get into it.
As a whole, Alone in the Dark deserves a 6/10 - good ideas, but poor execution.
An adventure worth pursuing
While it has its problems (Slippery driving controls and some glitches here and there), Alone in the Dark is a fun and enjoyable game with some innovative puzzles and controls. An interesting plot that'll keep you coming back for more and drive you to complete Edward Carnby's destiny as the Light Bringer.
If you can endure some control problems and difficult sections of the game, you'll have as much fun as I had and discover a satisfying and clever game to play and own.
Great Concept and Production... Awful Game
Alone in the Dark was the first game I ever pre-ordered. I was extremely excited to play another "Resident Evil" style game with next gen physics, graphics and gameplay... I should have waited.
Alone in the Dark starts with a bang, introducing some very impressive cutscene work and EXCELLENT graphics and music. The voice acting is only decent, but the script makes up for it... Anyhow, once the game starts, things take an abrupt turn for the worse. My first thoughts were, "What the heck? This thing wasn't even made for Xbox!" The controls are simply awful, the fighting is very awkward, and the objectives get repetitive. The last time I experienced a game this annoying was "Advanced Warfighter" on the PS2.
Don't buy this game!
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BEST GAME OF ALL TIME
Resident Evil 4
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Product Information and Prices stored: December 4, 2008, 13:05
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