Alone in the dark.

One of the great questions of our gaming life will be, “If it wasn’t for Alone in the dark, would we have Resident Evil?”

I have to admit that I squeak, jump-about, yell and panic like a school-girl when it comes to audio-visual horror. On one side I have my all-male testosterone manliness edging me on to play gore filled sneak-abouts like Resident Evil 4 and Doom 3 and on the other a timid Nancy-girl who can barely look at the screen. Yes, it’s true, I over react – a lot. And yes, I took Doom 3 back and traded it in because I simply could not bear to play it. Too scary...

So - Alone in the dark is a seminal Survival horror game similiar in many ways to Resident Evil.

It is a criticism that the Japanese for the most part silently endure, is that of plagiarism. Any Japanese person to find themselves outside of their beloved country will no-doubt have been confronted with a foreigner welding the ugly finger of accusation. “Japan takes Western ideas and makes them smaller and cheaper.” In fairness of course the Japanese approach to business is simply a way of forcing the natural evolution of a product or idea. The difference being that Western companies very rarely look at something that they have created and say to themselves, “How can we make this better?”

...of cause that isn’t necessarily the case with Alone in the dark – as it was bloody good to start with but it does look suspiciously like the Japanese company Capcom took Interplays game and refined it for the better. Plagerising the whole concept of survival horror!

Alone in the Dark is all about atmosphere, the mood is set very early on and me being a snivelling coward the thunder-clap, right when the Interplay Armadillo first appears, set my nerves a-jangling.

You play as either the male Carnby, who was asked to visit a house called Derceto by a lady called Gloria Allen to investigate a piano in the loft. Is it me? Or would you too turn down a job to venture to a lonely old house in the woods, famous for witch craft and devil worship for a $150? Just to see a piano? Because I know I would.

Alternatively you can play the mildly easier version of the game with Emily who is visiting the Derceto house on the back of a suggestion by her uncle.

The location setting is exactly the same as Resident Evil – A grand old house in the woods occupied, naturally, by Zombies. What else?The characters and rooms graphically are less sophisticated than the Resident evil ones but more stylised. The building looks distinctly French with its carved patterns and colour combinations, compared to the Resident Evil mansion that looks more generic.

It is however too close to call, the haunted houses of the two seminal survival horror games are eerily similar. The biggest difference being the year in which the games are set. Resident Evil is set in the 1990s where as Alone in the dark is 1920s.

The action kicks off in the loft of this spooky old dwelling and immediately tries to build suspense using the music and a shock tactic. However, anyone familiar with Resident Evils joypad dropping shocks will see immediately where Alone in the dark is going wrong. The first enemy, that jumps through the window, which incidentally attacks for no apparent reason, looks like an over toothed mole with pupil-less green eyes and wings. Scary? Well yes perhaps in 1994 but it moves too slow. It only manages to be scary as you struggle to try and figure out how to kill it. Ultimately this thing lumbers through the room too slow to catch cold, let alone kill you. …but then it does as it turns out it is a super powerful over toothed mole with pupil-less green eyes and wings. Which is a trifle annoying.

Later the game does manage a few chair-jumpers where you’ll curse your girlish yelps and try hard to target the shotgun. Which, I promise you now, you will fail to do. The lunacy that is the ranged weapons and their for the most part unfathomable targeting system, will have you resorting back to the one area where AITD beats RE, namely hand-to-hand combat. It is much easier to execute and target a swift kick in the zombfied-bits of one of the walking dead than Resident Evil ever managed and makes it a more reliable form of self-defence than the Capcom games.

Other touches that RE never saw was you can interact with inconsequencial objects such as rocking horses, pianos, stools, etc.,

The game play is all but identical. Kick zombie in nuts, find objects stupidly located inside other objects and solve puzzles – although the puzzles tend to be a little more complex and the object finding borders on the down-right annoying. Missing the Resident Evil 'relevent object here twinkle'.

Clues are provided in the form of books, notepads and parchments. Most of these clues however only become obvious after you solved the problem and marred slightly by the corny voice acting reading them out.

Objects are stored in a menu system, these are best described as functional - however it is possible to leave objects lying around the house, allowing you to pick them up as an when you need them. Something Capcoms effort has only recently managed.

AITD is short. Someone new to the game could complete it in only a few hours and probably overall it is about a third of the size of the Capcom offering. During the final few objectives, the game begins to feel more like platformer as you hop around the marina area with an ability to jump, akin to early Tomb Raider. This jump ability however, only maifests itself once you are actually no longer in the main house.

This game presents some of the largest, biggest, blackest graphical borders of any game I have ever seen. It doesn't even try and hide the fact - borders so big you will need a passport.

While the graphics are dated, the cameras are usually well positioned and a genuine effort has been put on to their position to give a horror feel.

Horror feel has also been applied to the music, which does add to the game-play.

In essense the imagination and execution of the game is kept high throughout and Alone in the Dark could hardly be accused of being disappointing in any respect.

All in all AITD is a very competent game. The gameplay is balanced and while the graphics aren't the best the 3DO could do and the controls need tweaking, overall there is very little to fault AITD.

The major gripe is with the sloppy port. It's a 1991 PC game shoved on to a 1994 3DO multiplayer and the extra palette, extra grunt and extra power of the 3DO was no where near exploited. Which is a shame because bolstered here and there, Alone in the Dark 3DO edition could have had Resident Evil shivering in the toilets.

Of cause Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark were not the only survival horror games in Multiplayer Town. D by Warp is also a Survival horror of sorts and the 3DO also played host to a survival horror game known as Doctor Hauzer. In additional Killing Time had survival horror elements and all these predated Resident Evil.

So, yes, Resident Evil first appeared on the Playstation in 1996 and it seems to borrow extensively from the PC game made in 1991 and ported to 3DO in 1994: Alone in the Dark.

But no, you will be stunned to hear Survival Horror was not invented initially by Interplay and the Alone in the Dark series! – Apparently some Japanese developer called Capcom had made a game back in 1988 called "Sweet Home" touted as a Survival Horror RPG game for the Snes. A game which also bears, so I am told, a striking resemblance to Resident Evil. Tch! Damn Europeans… no imagination! It was a Japanese only release RPG but if you know where to look a fan translated version is kicking about.

Spooky rare too for the 3DO!

3DO Kid.