Alone in the Dark: The Trilogy 1+2+3

Useless controls- fighting is only frustrating, aiming an enemy nearly impossible. And always being hit by bullets from invisible enemys (because of the camera angle) makes this games a drag.

There hasn't been a game quite like this in years, and it's a shame. Survival horror used to be about solving puzzles and actually surviving. The last two silent hill games have had you blocking attacks and combo smacking down demons. You won't find that in Alone in the Dark. The puzzles are challenging, the monsters are threatening, you struggle to survive with few weapons. It's fun, it's scary and it is a true SURVIVAL HORROR GAME! For the price you can't beat it. The original is the best but the others are well worth playing through too. The 3d graphics are a bit clunky and have shown their age but the artwork is nice and creates quite an eerie and inspired atmosphere. If you like survival horror then pick it up, you won't regret it.

This short review covers only the first chapter of the serie other ones will come as soon I will finish them. The game is exactly the one I played more than 20 years ago, it succeeds to keep its atmosphere of mistery and tension throughout the entire playthrough. It is basically an horror/mistery themed adventure with a very interesting and intriguing story: gameplay consists of exploration, puzzle solving and gathering objects that are scattered around the world and combining/using them in the right place, there is some platform action too. Graphically, honestly, is dated but I still like it: in the time of bitmap games we had real 3D characters and objects on the screen mixed with fixed bitmap backgrounds, this game had and still has personality. The movement of the character isn't bad but the combat could be better because sometimes it's hard to point exactly where the enemy is. Overall a classic, a cult, a must play. NOTE that the game still has a bug that prevents you to finish the game so when you enter the tree cave save and keep it.

Okay, first of all you have to know that this game created surivival horror genre, without it there would be no resident evil, no silent hill, no forbidden siren, it is truly the father of entire genre. It deserves our respect in the same way as Ford T or Spitfire...but nobody in their right mind would drive Ford T today right? People will play it out of nostalgia or some sense of obligation to know the roots of genre but... it is just not fun for new people. There are plenty of good old games that are just as fun as in the day of release, this is not one of them. terrible graphics, clunky controls, punishing level of difficulty, overall just a chore to play. Despite the fact that Alone in the Dark 3 and Resident Evil were very close in terms of release date they could not be further apart in terms of graphics (resident evil blows Alone in the Dark 3 out of the water) climate, and yes even fight and controls. And it shows since Alone in the Dark New Nightmare was carbon copy of resident evil in terms of controls and even atmosphere.

My experience with certain hyper-realistic modern games has jaded me on classics like these. If I can become more familiar with the controls, I'm sure it would be a little less frustrating (and hilarious!) to play. Right now, though, it's like watching five pixels angrily glitter across my screen, then I die.