First Alone in the Dark reviews point to shoeing

Called it.

Always looked to have bitten off more than it could chew, gameplay-wise. Shame.

LULZ.

Did tell you lot didn’t I.

awwwe

i had such hopes for it, the dev’s really seemed to be trying to do something different

EG review’s going up in a few minutes if anyone’s interested!

No.

no need to tell us, pat would surely have linked it in BOLD TEXT seconds afterward

Pat’s got an RSS feed straight from my brain. It’s startling.

“Did tell you lot didn’t I.”

The sensible ones knew.

“Pat’s got an RSS feed straight from my brain. It’s startling.”

you are tyler durden … i mean … you are pat!!!

Both surprised and disappointed that this has turned out bobbins.

Various people on other forums are putting the boot in, citing awful controls and camera as the real deal breaker.

I was on the verge of ordering the Wii version of this too

I wonder if they’ll quietly can the PS3 version, or put the extra effort in and bring out a radically fixed version.

I’m sad for the dev team though, their enthusiasm for the game seemed really genuine.

There are also some German reviews:

* GamePRO (78/100)
http://gamepro.de/test/spiele/xbox360/horror/alone_in_the_dark/1306576/alone_in_the_dark.html

* PC Games (80/100)
http://www.pcgames.de/aid,648023/Alone_in_the_Dark_im_Test_-_Die_Rueckkehr_einer_Legende/

* 4Players.de (68/100)
http://www.4players.de/4players.php/dispbericht/360/Test/7582/59263/0/Alone_in_the_Dark.html

* GameStar (82/100)
http://gamestar.de/test/action/adventure/1946394/alone_in_the_dark.html

* Games Aktuell (Print – 85/100)

I assume there are already even more German reviews online (maybe they received the code early due to being the most important market for AitD PC, don’t know), haven’t looked for more.

M

Grrr. Not reading any more EG reviews now. Crash Time’s just had an Ellie Mocking

Updated and bolded. I had to pick my daughter up.

Oh dear. I’m hearing the words “damage”, “control” and “meltdown” here.

Odd for EG being at the high end of the reviews.

hehe. I’ll get mine tomorrow

The Edge score will be interesting.

Odd that so many people expected this to be good though. It’s a series that has been shit from the beginning, the developer doesn’t exactly have a good pedigree, and the preview videos looked a bit rubbish.

I dunno. The stuff they showed at that event in London did honestly look good, but you can obviously only tell so much from looking at it. I really wanted to play it after the cinema thing.

I assume I’m the only person here who’s finished it, and the 3/10 raised more eyebrows than I’ve got. It’s a frustrating game, but by the end I was happier with it than I was after 2 or 3 hours. It does start rather terribly: the controls and other things are overwhelming to the point of being catastrophic. If it’s getting 3, that’s probably a review written after a bad bit.

But there’s genuinely good stuff in there and I’d be sad if no one ever played it. It makes you feel a bit like MacGuyver *and* a fairly central theme towards the end is burning down hard-to-reach evil trees. Gotta love videogames.

Sounds like it might be worth picking up in a few months when the price has dropped. And there’s nothing else worth playing.

I’m out, I’m afraid. “Frustrating” is something I don’t have time for.

I’ve not finished it but seen a fair bit. Shame. I thought the same thing when I first saw it but hoped the extra couple of months might help Eden to iron it all out.

I think Edge will be the same as EG, lots to like and lots of good ideas but undoes all the hard work by inducing rage like frustration all too frequently.

I was ready to kill someone after having to restart the chase sequence EG mentioned for the upteenth time.

I did kill someone. I’m on the run right now.

You can hide in my cellar if you like.

Is that some kind of euphemism?

The Problem with scores is, that a 6 or 7 looks like an average game. Alone in the Dark instead is a rather outstanding game, but with a few terrible design choices and a lack of polish.

cheers,

Alex

Er.. How can you be outstanding yet a bit rubbish at the same time?

Well, can’t you have a game with vision, some really good setpieces, interesting approach to narrative, puzzles and physics, that has a control scheme that’s unwieldy (but far from crippling, you CAN play it – if you chose to do most stuff in first-person even quite competently) and lacks a few months polish?

It’s kind of different and not some run-of-the-mill crap – like for instance *insert movie-tie-in here*. Which is exactly what I mean by outstanding.

It’s a good game with some rubbish elements. If that makes sense.

cheers,

Alex

I’d have probably said ‘brave but ultimately flawed’ in that case. I really must try to get a go at this somewhere, but it’s not likely to be on any demo pods, unfortunately.

I wonder if they’ll use the extra time to fix up the PS3 version?

7.3 from C&VG/Xbox360 World, btw.