Posted September 03, 2013
Just finished a full playthrough last night, and thought I'd share my thoughts fwiw. Other than the previous three Alone in the Dark games, I have never played anything similar to it (e.g. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc) so I'm primarily judging the game against its own predecessors.
PROS
By the low standards of videogames, had a fairly rich and interesting story. The "lore" of the Morton family was very well-developed in particular.
Really decent graphics that have aged pretty well, if only as a result of the backgrounds being pre-rendered. But the character and enemy models aren't too shabby either, and are hardware-accelerated. Some of the static backdrops are really superb. I ran the game in 1920x1080, not sure if it was stretched or not but it looked fine to me.
Playing as Aline is a totally different experience than playing as Carnby and is actually worth doing, as she has better puzzles and sees different areas, although there is some re-use of room assets, which makes sense in the context of the game.
Combat, cheap enemy spawn-in aside, is not too bad - a vast improvement over the previous AitD games, anyway. There's some respawning of enemies that's cheap and annoying but it's tolerable.
There's a minimap that's actually pretty darn good for what it does. Would have loved this in the previous three games.
Puzzles mostly make sense, shouldn't need a walkthrough very often if at all.
CONS
Fixed camera angles that switch unpredictably, much like the prior three games in the series, makes navigation a chore and can screw you up in combat. The minimap alleviates this somewhat.
Way too much backtracking through empty rooms or tedious slogging up and down endless staircases playing find-the-key.
Bosses are lame - either they're bullet sponges or there's some obscure trick required to beat them but the game doesn't really let you know whether a particular boss falls into one category or the other until you've wasted all your ammo and have to try it all again.
Some items, doors, and special locations won't work unless you're standing on exactly the right pixel, which is maddening. Seems like the engine is worse in this respect than the original trilogy.
TLDR: Really not that bad, worth a playthrough.
PROS
By the low standards of videogames, had a fairly rich and interesting story. The "lore" of the Morton family was very well-developed in particular.
Really decent graphics that have aged pretty well, if only as a result of the backgrounds being pre-rendered. But the character and enemy models aren't too shabby either, and are hardware-accelerated. Some of the static backdrops are really superb. I ran the game in 1920x1080, not sure if it was stretched or not but it looked fine to me.
Playing as Aline is a totally different experience than playing as Carnby and is actually worth doing, as she has better puzzles and sees different areas, although there is some re-use of room assets, which makes sense in the context of the game.
Combat, cheap enemy spawn-in aside, is not too bad - a vast improvement over the previous AitD games, anyway. There's some respawning of enemies that's cheap and annoying but it's tolerable.
There's a minimap that's actually pretty darn good for what it does. Would have loved this in the previous three games.
Puzzles mostly make sense, shouldn't need a walkthrough very often if at all.
CONS
Fixed camera angles that switch unpredictably, much like the prior three games in the series, makes navigation a chore and can screw you up in combat. The minimap alleviates this somewhat.
Way too much backtracking through empty rooms or tedious slogging up and down endless staircases playing find-the-key.
Bosses are lame - either they're bullet sponges or there's some obscure trick required to beat them but the game doesn't really let you know whether a particular boss falls into one category or the other until you've wasted all your ammo and have to try it all again.
Some items, doors, and special locations won't work unless you're standing on exactly the right pixel, which is maddening. Seems like the engine is worse in this respect than the original trilogy.
TLDR: Really not that bad, worth a playthrough.