You Carnby Serious!

It's strange for the series that created the Survival Horror genre, but Alone in the Dark, much like its amnesiac main character, is searching for identity. Seven years after The New Nightmare, Eden Games have gone to great lengths to ensure this franchise rebirth stands out from anything else on the market.

Resident Evil 4 raised the bar for Survival Horror, but also threw out exploration and puzzles in favour of linear progress, over-the-shoulder shooting and adrenaline-pumping set pieces. Alone in the Dark copies the third-person camera at certain points, shifts to old-style fixed views at others, retains traditional Survival Horror hallmarks of puzzles and exploration, and does its shooting a little differently through a first-person viewpoint.

Conflicted

In the broader strokes of the Action Adventure genre meanwhile, you have Assassin's Creed, which received criticism for simplifying control, to the point where the game almost played itself. Alone in the Dark is the anti Assassin's Creed, bamboozling with a wealth of impressive gameplay interactions and real depth, but via an ungainly control scheme that takes some getting used to.

Resultantly, Alone in the Dark is constantly at conflict between ambition and execution. There are some thrillingly innovative ideas here, alluding to a developer with its own distinct direction for Survival Horror, but the reality will surprise and frustrate in equal measures.

At its height, Alone in the Dark is the most original, open-to-interpretation take on the genre. Physics, fire, intuitive inventory and common sense combine to make Alone in the Dark the thinking man's Survival Horror, a world away from the run-and gun of Resi 4; protagonist Edward Carnby the MacGyver to Leon S. Kennedy's more straightforward action hero.

You ooze, you lose

Early in Alone in the Dark you're faced with passing an oil-like ooze which sucks you into the floor. It's repelled by light, so you're advised to use your torch. Finding the battery depleted – potentially a gamebreaker in other titles – you'll soon adapt, setting aflame and carrying wooden palettes as a makeshift light source.

The same real-world smarts go for smashing doors with fire extinguishers, counter weighting a see-sawing bus with corpses at one end so you can reach the driver's door, and fashioning explosives with a handkerchief and gasoline bottle, or a flamethrower with a lighter and aerosol. The latter are improvised in Alone in the Dark's inventory, seeing Carnby look into his jacket for stored items; far more immersive than any pause menu.

But also more frustrating. Alone in the Dark's inventory and healing are accessed in real-time, which is more realistic, and presumably done to heighten tension, but it damages gameplay. Enemies can only be dispatched using fire, so you'll frantically fumble around in first-person creating a petrol bomb or fire bullets while taking damage – meaning more standing still while you spray or bandage yourself up. A shortcut system helps, but it still leads to lots of unwanted deaths. Not fun.

Alone in the Dark also insists on switching up viewpoints and interactions at every opportunity, to the detriment of control. Third-person movement lacks a fully controlled 3D cam and feels cumbersome; swinging weapons with the right analogue stick is rigid; cars handle like hovercraft; and why first-person shooting was favoured over Resi 4 style third-person aiming we'll never know.

Inspired but flawed

It's a shame, because Alone in the Dark is a game of such enormous aspirations. Visually it's up there with MGS4 as a next-gen spectacle; aurally it's evocative and impacting; the sheer scope of the Central Park gameworld is breathtaking; and the episodic structure, DVD-style Chapter Select and TV-style catchups will have you wanting to see the demonic story through to its gripping conclusion.

A game we dearly want to love, Alone in the Dark sadly falls short of greatness. Innovative yet irritating, inspired but flawed, its contradicted nature promises a brave new direction for Survival Horror that may never come to pass. Not everyone will take to it then, but Alone in the Dark is a release that cerebral gamers and Survival Horror developers alike should certainly take note of.

GAME's Verdict

• Enormously ambitious physics and fire propogation, intelligent puzzles and a whopping combination of gamestyles.
• Innovative DVD-style chapter structure, impressive TV-esque presentation and wonderful next-gen visuals and audio.
• The sheer scope and detail of the Central Park gameworld is breathtaking.

• The combination of gamestyles and constantly changing viewpoints damages the game's controls, which often feel cumbersome.
• Real time inventory management and healing leads to a LOT of frustrating deaths.
• Why oh why is there no third-person aiming?

Review by: Mark 'Survivor' Scott
Version Tested: Xbox 360
Review Published: 02.07.08

Survival is a preference for the habitual playeur of what is known as... Darklife!

'There's been little innovation in Survival Horror since Resident Evil 4 in 2004', starts Atari's Head of PR Lee Kirton. 'With Alone in the Dark, we're addressing that. We're blurring the boundaries between Survival Horror and traditional action-adventures.'

It's a bold ambition, but Alone in the Dark, as Kirton is keen to point out, is a sleeping giant. 'People know all about Resi, but perhaps they've forgotten a little about Alone in the Dark', he concedes. 'This is the forefather of Survival Horror. With the power of Xbox 360 and PS3, we really think we can re-establish the brand and the genre.'

Alone in the Dark certainly has the right credentials. The team behind huge hit Test Drive Unlimited have put Resi 4's over-the-shoulder gameplay into a title that's distinctly less linear. Indeed, while Resi 4 all but abandoned the idea of a central 'hub' area on which the genre had been based (The Spencer Mansion in Resi 1, for example), this new-gen Alone in the Dark keeps that very much at its core, making it a more complete hybrid of action and exploration.

The setting is New York's Central Park... and it's hiding a secret. A rather dark, gruesome secret that's devastating Manhattan. Amidst this, main character Edward Carnby jumps into a cab and heads for the wide-open spaces of the Park as the city crumbles around him, in a gameplay section not unlike the Warthog ending of Halo 3.

That said, our presentation started with Carnby navigating the park's sewers and showing off Alone in the Dark's intriguing control system. Object interaction sees Carnby able to pick up objects and move them with the right analogue stick. This combines with the latest version of the Havok physics system for some sophisticated environmental puzzles.

"Toastie!"

Pick up a metal pipe in Alone in the Dark and you can swing it fast as a weapon, or slowly to lever objects out of the way – in this case, this meant hooking the electrical wires dangling from water. Shoot a keypad and you can hotwire it, with an analogue stick for each hand. Jump into a car and you can move between seats and inspect the glovebox. Kirton was also keen to stress that 'every door in Alone in the Dark is destructible' – and went on to show this by opening a steel one with a fire extinguisher. Later on, in a museum setting, we also saw how carrying a burning chair to a wooden door could weaken the wood, allowing him to shoot away the panels, and we even saw him drive a car through a gate in the evocative Central Park hub area.

Electricity and fire seem key to defeating enemies in Alone in the Dark. In the sewers, Carnby dragged a cable to a fence covered in mutant bats, flipping a switch to electrify it. In the museum, grabbing an aerosol from his coat (inventively, Carnby's inventory screen sees him look down in first-person at his torso), walk towards a naked flame, and create a makeshift flamethrower to toast an I Am Legend-like zombie.

Zombies and bats aren't the only enemies, but Atari are being tight-lipped on the most gruesome. We did see headcrabs, which Kirton took out with first-person aiming and a shadowy monster which appears to suck you into nothingness, Grudge-style, unless you direct a torch at it. We're also promised a main foe called 'The Fisher', which will be an ever-present throughout Alone in the Dark, a little like Resi 3's Nemesis.

None of which would be half as impressive without Alone in the Dark's production. The next-gen version is undeniably jaw-dropping, with a literally intimidating sense of scale, lighting effects to die for, jumpy set pieces and eerie Hungarian Choir music fronting the musical score. Kirton also insisted that 'even without all the bells and whistles, Wii and PS2 versions are the same game, and play really well.' The Wii version will even see the Wiimote take on the properties of the right analogue stick on other systems, offering motion-sensing melee combat, IR pointer aiming and wand-waving puzzle solving.

Now slated for May, the delay for Atari's most high profile 2008 title is encouraging. 'Alone in the Dark is close to a lot of people's hearts here', says Kirton. 'We're not content to release it if it's not 100% right.' It's a commitment to quality that Atari are adamant about, and really shows. Alone in the Dark is already impressing the gaming press, and from what we've seen, deserves to be right up there with the big releases in the first half of the year.

Don't take our word for it, though – with multiformat demos due in March, you won't have to wait long to enjoy scaring yourself witless.

Preview by: 'Alone in the Mark' Scott
Version Seen: Xbox 360
Preview Published: 18.01.08

We talk to Alone in the Dark publisher Atari about brand reinvention, breaking clichés, and a new direction for Survival Horror...

Could you tell us your name, job title, and what you worked on specifically in Alone in the Dark?

My name is Benoit Auguin, Brand Manager at Atari, working on Alone in the Dark, specifically in charge of the marketing campaign for the title.

Alone in the Dark is of course one of the great gaming series. This has been a bit of a brand reinvention. What audience have you aimed for this time, and how have you done that?

We wanted to re-establish Alone in the Dark as a major mainstream brand broadening the appeal beyond its historical survival horror genre.

To achieve this, the game has been designed to contain key elements that appeal to both core and casual gamers. The marketing campaign for core gamers highlights the game's technical innovations and how Eden are breaking videogame clichés with Alone in the Dark. The mainstream marketing campaign talks about the game in terms of its Hollywood blockbuster presentation, the great storyline based on the conspiracy behind Central Park, and Alone in the Dark's DVD chapter select feature which lets everyone reach the end of the game without becoming stuck.

Has the fact that the last Alone in the Dark game, The New Nightmare, released nearly seven years ago now, been a problem from a brand perception point of view?

As with the team at Eden Games, we think Alone in the Dark's core fans are more faithful to the first PC iteration of the game which introduced real innovations and created the genre than the later console versions. However because of the time that's passed we also think we're bringing the brand to a completely new audience who don't know the earlier games for the most part, which gives us something of a clean slate.

This game is not a sequel in the normal sense and we've taken the clean slate as more of an opportunity to give a new birth to the brand, releasing this opus as Alone in the Dark.

And how about your competition in the realm of Survival Horror? How does Alone in the Dark differ? What does it offer that's new?

With Alone in the Dark we want to change what players expect from action adventure games, breaking the established clichés of the genre.

It's traditional in the genre to have creepy corridors and claustrophobia, which is why we blew that all apart literally in our game, and at the end of episode two the wide open space of Central Park becomes the play area.

We've also done away with the cliché of locked doors that are just textures, or doors that need a specific key. Every door can be opened in Alone in the Dark – you just need an object heavy enough to smash it down!

We've gone for a really high level of environmental interaction which breaks game rules by rather relying on the rules everyone knows from the real world. If you can't interact with it realistically, it's not in the game.

Storytelling is obviously a big factor in Action-Adventures like Alone in the Dark. What was your process for creating the plot and integrating it into gameplay?

The story itself was written at Eden and was a very organic process which evolved along with the game. The initial inspiration came from Hervé Sliwa, the lead designer, who visited New York ten years ago and was amazed at the sight of Central Park at night – a huge black mass in the sea of bright lights. He thought then it would be a great place for a new Alone in the Dark.

The park itself was a great inspiration – there's lots of weird things that happen there in real life, some of which you can read about on www.centraldark.com. It's also a city within a city with a museum, police precinct, lakes, ice rinks etc, all of which game the designers lots of gameplay ideas.

We're really emphasising the intense story-telling in Alone in the Dark which is inspired by the structure of US TV series like Lost and 24, with a paced dynamic of action, plot twists and cliff-hangers in each episode. Eden wanted the game to have the same impact on the player as those TV shows.

We asked Lorenzo Carcaterra, the guy who wrote the film Sleepers, to work on the script for the game and he brought his big-screen style and New York authenticity to the dialogue.

The story is told by seamlessly integrated cut scenes created in the game engine as well as normal in-game dialogue and the player learns more about what's going on from the things he finds and characters he meets, some of whom play a big role and others who don't last very long at all!

The DVD Chapter-style feature is obviously new for a game. How will it work, and what are its pros and cons?

The DVD Chapter select feature is a real innovation that we supported since the beginning. And one figure is enough to justify it: according to research only 22% of console gamers finish all the games they play. We want everyone to finish Alone in the Dark!

If you end up skipping too much of the game there is a price to pay – you wont get the complete finale of the game and Xbox 360 players will miss out on achievements.

Of course we also want people to play through the whole game, but in the same way you don't skip straight to the end of a film on DVD, we think players will want to do that too. The only person they'll be cheating if they skip to the end is themselves.

Alone in the Dark is due for release on five systems. How have you gone about getting the most from them individually? What do the different versions offer?

On PS3, X360 and PC, the possibilities offered are huge to create a completely destructible environment with dynamic lights and fire propagating in real time to any flammable part. Moreover anything that could realistically be picked up and used as a weapon can be, including pieces of the items you will have already smashed. Last, the interactions with the environment are also huge and everything is ruled by real world physic.

Wii of course offers completely different and immersive gameplay possibilities. It's almost as if Wii had been designed for Alone in the Dark. You can use the Remote and Nunchuk to realistically manipulate objects, drive cars, draw your gun, aim at enemies, shoot, access your inventory... Everything is done thanks to specific movements of the controllers, creating a maximum immersion in the game.

PS2 is the platform which still remains the best mastered by developers and therefore the goal was to exploit everything PS2 could offer. As a result we focused our attention on implementing as many next gen features on PS2 as possible. And most of them have never been seen before. With the real time inventory, all the interactions with the environment, the DVD structure, the fire, the combining of different items, got the best of what the PS2 could offer.

The original release date was due to be March. Why the delay, and what has it allowed you to achieve?

Alone in the Dark could have realistically been released in March. However, we wanted to make sure we were delivering the best experience possible. After having given so much to this project, we preferred delaying it a bit and giving it the finishing touches to make it perfect.

And how's the final project shaping up? Sell it to us!

You take the best ideas from the original Alone in the Dark to which you add brand new highly innovative concepts and exceptional technological quality. Then add huge amazing interaction possibilities plus a living environment with never seen before fire behaviour. You mix all that with an amazing scenario based on all the mysteries of Central Park and an unstoppable action pace. Last you polish it with a special focus on details and fine tuning. The result is Alone in the Dark, a game that will not only reinvigorate the brand but change what gamers expect from games.

Thanks Benoit.

Interview by: Mark 'Dark' Scott
Interview Published: 20.03.08