Alone in the Dark
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ESRB:
Blood and Gore,Strong Language,Violence
Publisher: Atari Genre(s): Action Home Page: http://www.centraldark.com/index.p...
Pure Horror Endless chasm - you'll see plenty of these, they are great for boxing in the player to a predetermined route. Alone in the Dark is a disaster in almost every way - only the eerie soundtrack truly rises above mediocrity. The story is weak, the visuals are a random jumble of shiny details mixed with mountains of mediocrity. Ultimately the whole package is completely destroyed by the poor playability. The control system is a big mess and the final nail comes in the form of sub-par character animation. In a way Alone in the Dark is a horrifying example of "game development by filling out tick boxes". Some designers had loads of great ideas, a pile of innovative new features and a storyline that seemed like a winner - at least on paper. Then it was all broken down to hundreds of little tasks for the developers to implement - and they did, tirelessly turning every design idea and feature to reality, filling tick boxes as they went by. Slowly all those bits were baked up into a game, and the end result is the horrible mess that we got. While being busy coding features and filling out tick boxes, nobody apparently ever paused for one second and considered if the sum of all those "great" ideas and features was any fun to play. I can easily imagine bits like the inventory system or the complex melee combat system as described on the design documents, making them appear like the best thing since sliced bread. Maybe one day all this will be heralded as a "cult classic" with many innovative ideas first presented themselves in a game. I can't deny the number of innovations, but the sum of it all just doesn't work as a game. What separates a poor developer from a great developer is the skill to recognize early on what works and what doesn't, and the capacity to junk the bits that do not work in practice. Instead of iterating with the basic pieces until the gameplay was any good, countless man-hours must have been spent implementing every piece of concept art and every gameplay idea just like it was designed, and the sum of that is what we have today as Alone in the Dark - and it's a truly bad game. So bad that I can't figure out why anyone would want to play it. Avoid at all costs. Summary of YouGamers Hardware TestingThe publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:
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AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
