Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

The Good
My god I expected a lot out of this game. I'm a big fan of the Alone in the Dark series and when I heard the main guy behind the prequels also made this one I really thought this would be yet another super cool AitD game... but no, this world we live in is evil and all good games turn bad. It seems like the developers have played far too much Resident Evil when they made this game, it has far too many similarities.

But all in all, it's not that bad a game. The music's okay, the game is okay for playing through once with each character, but nothing more... and yeah, the graphics is more than okay too.

The Bad
Well, the game is basically Resident Evil only a lot better in comparison. It doesn't have any good storyline. The characters are dull and a big cliche. I was hoping to see once again the good old Edward Carnby in action, but it's just a different guy with the same name. Actually, they made a really silly addition to the storyline where they explained that every now and then a person called Edward Carnby is borned and is destined to rid the world of evil yaaaawn the last time I heard similar crap was when I playing Resident Evil. They should have called the main person something else so it wasn't an insult to the old cool Carnby.

There's also more things which seem to have taken from Resident Evil... the game is far more action oriented than the original AitD series, the puzzles are more rare and more simple in this game (though lightyears ahead of Resident Evil), the voice acting isn't exactly good, the storyline is crap (yeah, I mentioned this already, but it is really crap).

The game was released for quite a few machines, PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, GBC and PC. Not often you see that... just too bad that the PC port in particular has some really bad flaws. It seems to have inherited the classic console gripes, almost no options, an extremely silly save system and horrible controls. This is nothing but an insult to pc users. And yeah, one thing, the pc port has far too big machine requirements. The PS1 is a very weak machine, yet they actually bothered to port it to that machine, why not have graphical options in the pc version to make it so it plays like the PS1 version and have small requirements? It shouldn't be hard... but nooo, they didn't do it, and you need a ninja pc to play it. Actually, if you have a weak computer you're better of buying the PS1 version and play it in an emulator, which is a real shame.

The Bottom Line
All in all, it's a nice game. It just isn't as good as the other Alone in the Dark games. Fortunately it's a thousand times better than the Resident Evil series. As I said earlier, it's nice to play the game through once and nothing more, if you aren't rich you should buy something better though. And yeah, Resident Evil fans (yeah, that means you weirdos in the corner of the room!) should definately get this one and see how Resident Evil should have been made.

The Good
Just finished the game and had to write a review, it just didn't allow me to wait any longer and try playing with another character. It blew me off the chair having more to offer than I was willing to accept. The game is brilliant technically, subjectively or objectively looking. You pick a spot, and you'll find it laughing back atcha with its greatness. It wasn't long ago I got attracted to this horror-surviving genre, realizing they offer one of the best stories in general, and every fear you need to confront will be rewarding.

Now, after an intro opening, Edward Carnby, a PI, and Aline Cedrac, a scientist, are set to go in pair on Shadow Island, not knowing what awaits them there, and thinking of it as a part-time job... which will eventually arise to become a challenge in saving their own lives. But just as their hydroplane was approaching an island, a raging storm surrounding an island forced them to jump earlier. Thus separated by the fall, you're given a selection over Carnby as a man of action, or Aline, intelligent and beautiful companion to whom he had to protect during the trip. The best part of it is that each cahracter plays its own role, so wether you choose one or another, the game will look entirely and completely different. Some places will correspond since you're both stuck on the same island, and you'll run to each other occasionally when in need, or use walkie-talkie for communicating with each other, but inside stories and quests will be entirely different. We usually see games where just character is different, but most of it is the same. Well, this can count as two separate and different games. No wonder this game will strike you as short when you actually get to finish it.

Ingame models of Aline and Carnby are simply amazing, breathtaking. Moves, running, climbing, using a flashlight and achieving certain effects like rain, never-so-good-b4 terrain and atmosphere. On the other side, monster models look rather below the belt, I mean, either they had to look so low-poly for faster performance, or they did that on purpose. Either way, other ingame characters and monsters, beside the main cast, are everything but good looking. Though, that won't affect the atmosphere when it gets a grip upon you.

Voice-acting speech is incredibly good, hmmm, isn't this a french game? ;) Anyway, voices are simply perfect and dialogue between Aline and Carnby are really amusing for the ears, hehe, from the start when they talk as two strangers, 'til the moment when they start to have feelings for each other... appreciating being stranded in the land of horror, even if only 'cos it brought the two of them together. It's amazing how such a game of short radius can still only show you the surface of it so you can never guess what lies beneath, beautiful cinematics, nicely developed story with a strong grip of the background, eeriely real atmosphere, and places for which you'd never dream of to find in game that makes you think you'll be playing it in some spooky mansion for all the time.

The Bad
The game doesn't vary too into the music atmosphere and there are few songs (if you can even call them songs) that will mostly change depending on the place and suspense, but remind of sound effects more than of instruments. But yet if it's for achieving the atmosphere, well done, I'll sayeth :)

As for the monsters, just a bit more polygons wouldn't hurt, and there didn't seem to be more than 10 types of different monsters, so they could do a bit of detailizing on it. I admire the way they sparked a touch of details on all the other things. It's unbelievable real.

Also, a small portion goes to picking up the stuff. It's made so you can clearly see things like objects or weapons where they are when you flashlight them, but even then some of them cannot be picked, or if they can, you really ned to be at the exact position, sometimes hard to achieve, so you oftenly wonder wether it's a bug and you cannot pick it, or are you just so new with the controls.

The Bottom Line
This 3CD heavy/light adventure is well worth the seeing. I never could get attracted to the trilogy of "AITD", but strangely, I started with this one. It's not that I haven't played prequels before, it's just that they didn't show me anything but the technical achievment at the time. Now, I'm thinking I just might be wrong on that, but they had many illogical puzzles and such things, whereas this game won't give you much of a headaches covering that territory. I cannot compare it to "RE" series since I haven't tried them yet (though I intend to), but this game has really serious visuals to admire, as well as effects, so playing it will feel pretty alive. I'm just glad to see Europe is more than capable of making wonderful games that can compete with the marketplace. So far, I can tell that I haven't ran into any game with so good ingame graphic, cinematics of even greater quality I saw, but not the ingame, and that's the part we players control. Way to go Darkworks! :)

The Good
This game is frightening, and for that I love it. I do not scare easily and this game makes me jump out of my skin. The game has a very eerie atmosphere which gives you the sensation that something is lurking in the shadows and is going to grab you.

That's because it is... and it's when you least expect it.

The game is well designed from ground up, and it's quite obvious from the start that you are playing a quality game in which the developers didn't rush through the production. Every detail is very well thought out and executed. The use of atmospheric horror music (more of a horror sound-scape than music) and the storyline contributes to the effective creepiness of this game, as do the graphics and graphical effects which are extremely intricate.

The story, too, is very well written. It's a progressively challenging game, employing the usage of puzzles, but is not ridiculously bogged down with them; and they're not extremely complicated. The puzzles are less complicated than trying not to waste your ammunition or first-aid kits by the end of the first disk!

The controls and cameras are perfect, and if you're using a dual-shock joy-pad (recommended) you can swing around a flashlight in 360 degree angles. There's plenty of horrific landscapes, monsters and other audio visual treats. The game is complete horror mind candy.

It completely surpasses the older Alone in the Dark versions for Macintosh and PC. As a matter of fact, it doesn't even resemble them. The New Nightmare is completely authentic, and extremely realistic (as compared to the older versions which had cartoon type monsters).

This is an amazing work for the Playstation platform (and other platforms) which should not be overlooked.

The Bad
I don't like how little ammunition and first-aid kits there are, but at the same time I love that there's just enough. It adds to the realism of the game.

The only thing I don't like about the game is that there isn't more of it to play.

The Bottom Line
An intoxicating, twisted horror game which encapsulates you into it's atmosphere, forcing you to become part of the game. You'll feel as if you're living inside a horror movie, complete with the horrific sound-scape, landscapes and psychology to complete your nightmarish world.