Alone in the Dark Impressions

Don't you hate it when this happens? You're shown something so promising and spectacular, only to have it ruined. This is Alone in the Dark in summary, brilliance ruined by mediocrity. The game begins with your character waking up, fuzzy visioned and weak. You have to click the thumb stick to make him blink to clear your vision. Slowly you realize there's other people in the room, and another person in another bed. Then as you start paying attention you notice they're planning to kill you. You are then led, half life 2 or modern warfare style, to your own execution. Luckily all hell breaks loose literally and your would be executioner is eaten alive by some demonic tremors knock off.

After that you are introduced to some of the more innovative and frankly awesome physics mechanics. You're shown you can put out fires with fire extinguishers, or waggle the thumb stick to use them to bash open doors. The damage detection is spot on, as well is the fire fighting. But then after all this promising stuff they perform the cardinal sign of early 90's PC FPS games. They go and try to make you jump around. AND drive a car! Now I used to think that the best addition to a resident evil or silent hill game would be an awesome car scene where I can hit zombies. But that means that you have to perfect your driving physics. Ambition can kill a project as fast as a lack of it.

Then there's your inventory. You look at your inventory by opening your jacket. All the items you get are everyday things like bottles of oil, bottles of booze, health sprays, bandages, tissues, and double sided tape. But you can use those things to do ridiculous stuff. Pour a little bit of alcohol on your bullets to make them fire bullets. Wrap a plastic bottle of oil in double sided tape then stick a wick in it, light that an toss it on an enemy for a sticky bomb. Or why not just toss the bottle at an enemy and shoot it when it gets close?

There are limits to the interactions between items but the uses for them is only limited by your imagination. You could tape two bottles of alcohol together to make a doubly powerful bomb. But even this is broken. Like you get batteries to put in your flashlight but there is a situation where your flashlight can be in a state which is still equipped but not in your hand so you can't turn it off. There's a lot of good ideas but they're held down by broken and bad ideas.

It was released for Wii, PS2 (what?!), and xbox360,(the one I played) in June 2008. So there's no "We rushed this out the door for the holiday season" excuse. Also there's a DVD menu style "Skip stage" button. At any time you can skip ahead to the next section. But you don't get the cutscenes, and you can do this all you want. It would have been cool if the cutscenes were in, and you had to earn your fast forwards. In fact that shows the developers knew they messed up because in November 2008 they released it for PS3 as a new "Enhanced Edition" called "Alone in the Dark Inferno".

The most annoying part I played was a driving sequence where you had to outrun a fissure breaking the streets apart in a taxi cab. The part was terrible because you had no idea where you're supposed to go, and the fissure would catch you whenever the driving physics went retarded. And if you messed up, well all the way back to the beginning. Now read this quote from the Gamestop Page for "Alone in the Dark: Inferno".

"59th Street level tuning: one of the game’s most exciting sequences just got better. 59th Street has been tweaked for a more satisfying race against the fissure with difficulty tuning, an added checkpoint at Columbus Circle and clear voice directions given by Sarah"

Now first, yes that is hilarious. But it's also either really good or really bad. It could mean that the developer knew that scene was terminally broken and put it in anyway. Or they listened to their fans and found out it was way too hard to complete. The latter being the good one, of course.

In conclusion I'd like to tell a certain story about the game. All the humanoid walking zombie like enemies in the game are basically unkillable except with fire. Luckily you have a never runs out of fluid lighter and lots of bottles of oil and alcohol laying around to make bombs with. But once, I didn't have a bottle of anything, except a health spray, and I had to kill two enemies to clear a ramp to do a jump. I used the health spray like a blow torch with the lighter to catch one zombie on fire, who immediately died. But the other was still up, so I found a sledgehammer and knocked him over. I then spent about five minutes beating the zombie. He did not, amazingly, get back up. I like to think I broke enough things that it couldn't stand up. In the end, the game has moments of ingenious fun, but they're floating in a sewer of terrible awful broken crap.

Don't buy it, rent the PS3 version.

Two Games Enter, One Game Leaves

So at Family Video they have a rent one get one deal for older titles. I chose to take advantage of this and play two titles I've been meaning to play for awhile. These are: Alone in the Dark, and Guilty Gear 2: Overture. I'm going to write some stuff on them by Saturday and we'll see which one I have more fun with. I've heard both good and bad things about both these games, so we'll see which one wins the coveted cage match title "Game I didn't expect to be good" belt!

Well Crap

Ok, blog. I've been absent for awhile. I suppose this is my fault, but really I believe it to be yours. More specifically it's googles fault. They have recently changed their start page to make it difficult for me to find the link to take me here. It's their fault, blog. I am sorry your creators are so underhanded and rude to you. Perhaps it again is my fault. It would be easy for me to place a link to you onto my firefox bar, as I just did. But before now I have not.

I have made promises to you, blog. I have said I would do a retrospective analysis of the Clocktower series of games; I have not done so. I also claimed I would write an essay detailing the differences and similarities between Fable Lost Chapters and Fable 2. I have not played the DLC for Fable 2 nor have I finished it, that was my excuse. Again, I am sure I have failed you somehow, blog.

Know this though, blog! I have been thinking about the proposed Fable article and I have been conducting research on Clocktower! One day I shall write out my ideas and submit them to you for you to hold forever in your electronic archive. Oh yes, blog, we shall be spending much time together soon.

~H

Harlewards, Games of the Year 2009 Edition

Everyone's doing it, why not me too? This will be broken into three categories which are "Art is Games, Games is Art Award for Design Brilliance", "I Didn't Want to Do That Award for Games that Changed my Mind", and finally the "I am a HUGE NERD Award for Making me Nerd Up."
And now....

ART IS GAMES, GAMES IS ART
Award for Design Brilliance
I like games. Specifically I like narrative in games, the plot is often more important to me than what I'm doing. It doesn't matter what the game wants me to do as long as it's in service to the games plot. Which is why I'm giving this award to a new franchise that I hope goes on and expands and becomes bigger and better while not letting go of those core tenets that made it so good and comic book chocolate delicious in the first place. Of course I'm talking about INFAMOUS.

INFAMOUS wins for a number of reasons, mostly it's narrative. While yes, the story is comic book retarded, the characters are contrived cliches, and the hero is doing his best gravel throat Christian Bale Batman impression it still succeeds. And why it succeeds is all design from the combat system to controls down to mission structure and how the levels are built is informed by the narrative. Video game character having been dying from touching water since the golden old days, but it now finally makes sense. Your character is electric, he has electricity coursing through him. So naturally if he falls into water which is highly conductive he'll electrocute himself to death. He can't ride in a car for the same reason.

But that's not my point, my point is the developers were thinking of reasons why things happen and excuses for video game-isms beyond "A Wizard Did It". The narrative informs the game play, and as well the game play informs the narrative. At one point you get a special ultra specific lightning strike that works like a sniper rifle. You use this to shoot down UAVs that are flying far away. I really liked INFAMOUS and it made me want to actually go back and finish the side missions not just because I got more experience that way but because they had neat bite sized little stories. INFAMOUS is how story should work in video games, or at least is one giant step in the right direction.

Runner up: Borderlands, who did not win because of their silly art style change and the fact that they had a story, a neat one, and then they cut it all out to put in more randomizing guns.


I DIDN'T WANT TO DO THAT
Award for Games that Changed my Mind
The thing about me is, I hate multiplayer games. I don't like hearing other people being retarded and running off at the mouth about nonsense, and telling me how high they are or how awesome the game is or how their parents don't let them stay up as late as they'd like. Mute that crap, or tell me where the people we have to kill are or where the flag carrier is. HOWEVER, rarely a game will come along that makes me want to play multiplayer, and invariably I end up not being able to play with anyone. MODERN WARFARE 2 is the game this year that makes me want to suffer the hell of other people. The idea of customizing my loadout to better shoot people in the face sounds delicious. In the end it's the customization that makes me want to play any multiplayer game.

MODERN WARFARE 2 reminds me of GUNZ, the way you are playing and suffering other people only to earn more space bucks to buy better and faster and awesomer guns. And you level up also! I love leveling up! I have a friend who tirelessly played the same four levels in order to get himself to the highest level possible in PHANTASY STAR ONLINE. This award is not being awarded because I like the multiplayer, no don't mistake me. This award is being given because I WANT to play the multiplayer, understand?

Runner Up: Killzone 2 Who did not win because you have to finish a round before the XP is given out. With other people Rage quitting leveling just becomes a chore.

I AM A HUGE NERD
Award for Making Me Nerd Up
Now I admit I am a nerd, but I'm not as much of one as other people. There are nerdy things I don't do, and want to do, and don't want to do. But anyone whose played a Final Fantasy game for any length of time and enjoyed it has thought in the secret back of their brain hidden away "I wonder what Dungeons and Dragons is like." Well, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 4th EDITION makes it easier than ever to find out. All year I've found myself checking their website everyday reading adventures and articles trying to learn as much as I can about the process simply so when the time comes to DM I'll have a brain full of tricks.

I'm not even playing in a group anymore but I still want to play. I've been writing adventures in notebooks and filling Doc files with little notes. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 4th EDITION is easier that ever, and still as dense as ever. Now I've read past editions, and the fact that the spell list is the entire back end of the book has always held me back. There's so much to know it becomes unknowable. And if you just play a melee class you end up just swinging a sword every turn. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 4th EDITION gets past that by integrating power into each class and having them be by level. Granted with all the expanded content if you compiled all the classes into one book that book would be roughly phone book sized, just with classes and no rules. But that's the fun! DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 4th EDITION makes the needless complexity fun and easy to manage. That's a real accomplishment, and worth a Harleward any day.

Runner Up: Risen and the Gothic Series of games Dammit you Europeans and your hard line stance to PC gaming, stop being so interesting over there. Not even that the story to Gothic is even any good, it's the open ended gameplay that's so fun.

That's all I want to type, and it's more than anyone will read I'm sure. So that concludes this years HARLEWARDS. Tune in 2011 for the HARLEWARDS 2010 edition.