The other day, I was on an Internet forum discussing a game, and someone actually lamented the training mission. Not the fact there was one, but the fact it wasn't good enough - sorry?
There is, if I'm honest, a sixth-sense to playing games, you play games enough, you know, instinctively, what the designer meant. Of cause you do, you're a gamer. If you weren't a gamer and you were casual gamer, the type of person out for the one-off gaming experience, then the game maker thoughtfully provided you with a manual. Tutorial? That is there if you were retarded or from Mars or someones mother... and even then.
Which brings me to my next topic. It is, as far as I can tell, some sort of text-speak gaming-chav chic to have played a game made between 1990 and 1995, pretending to all the world that you were actually there, and then lament some aspect of it because it doesn't measure up to modern gaming. Gex for example, on the 3DO, does not have a cover system. Super Mario World has no downloadable content. And, you will be amazed to hear, Alone in the Dark doesn't feature custom soundtracks.
Now, while that news will horrify the average Halo worshiper, the rest of us will sit back and recognize that Alone in the Dark was one of the most beautiful, influential, intriguing and amazing games of it's time. That's not over selling - that's a fact.
A choice of characters. 3D characters I hasten to add. And you get to roam a Haunted House in 3D. Step back for one minute. When I was kid, in say 1985, the Haunted House WAS the best ride at the fun fair. Okay, the rollercoaster was something, but the Haunted House? A league of it's own. Therefore, the opportunity to roam, at your leisure, around a proper haunted house with Zombies, pirates, and with H.P.Lovecraft monsters? Wait! Dawn of the dead was something, H.P.Lovecraft, in 3D, was something else. Alone in the Dark was an amazing proposition. You can't sit there and say, "Oh Resident Evil" or "Uh Silent Hill" because when Alone in the Dark was made there was nothing else. The anticipation surrounding Alone in the Dark was quite literally, unbearable. There had been nothing quite like it before. The belly-aches forget that. In the early nineties computers hadn't delivered believable horror environments before, and we had grown up in the horror imagination of movies like House, Fright Night, the Fog, Poltergeist and up until Alone in the Dark, no interactive experience had delivered on that imagination. Then came Alone in the Dark - initially just press releases and screenshots in magazines but that was enough.
Today, Alone in the dark is mostly forgotten, in thanks part to it's lamentable sequels. And for that, Survival Horror is, according to our friend wanting the tutorial, the realm of Resident Evil 4, Doom 3 and perhaps, if were lucky, Wolfenstien. Although he may have read that on the web somewhere. Survival Horror is worse.
Alone in the dark is not perfect but it's not perfect in the same way the Model T Ford wasn't perfect. Sure, the controls take a bit of getting used too, assuming of cause you are older model homo-sapien and you are fitted with a premotor cortex. A feature of the brain apparently being phased out in the next release.
It's a bit slow going, there is no tutorial, the zombies are not immediately recognizable as zombies, but you get the idea as you are kicking them in head. The weapon use is quite literally hit and miss, there is no real targeting and the camera angle is not always brilliant. But it was the first time anyone had ever tried this, and with that in mind it's pretty good, in fact it's down right outstanding.
As a haunted house? The house, the Louisiana mansion Derceto, created under the leadership Frederick Raynal is French. Sure, okay, I've been to France, and the French don't have black swirly patterns all over their walls, not the sane ones anyway, but there is no ignoring the fact that the house was developed by a French man. And the Mansion Derceto is all the better for it. It has a certain style and charm. If you look at AitDs contemporaries, Warps D and Dr Hauzer also on the 3DO and the mansion in the slightly later Resident Evil, the houses are somewhat bland. Even the house in AitD 2 doesn't really compare to the original. The house in Alone in the Dark compares itself well to houses found in movies. Amityville springs to immediately to mind. It's distinctive, real but still manages to be surreal. It's very impressive. Later levels of the game wander into the realm of platformer but only breifly. The house reveals itself before you and it's handled by the game in very clever and plausible way.
As cinematic experience AitD is good. The camera angles and the occasional custom scene do a fantastic job of pitching this as an almost Boris Karloff horror movie, with Carnaby even sporting Boris' moustache. The creatures, although initially some are obscure, are actually reasonable interpretations of Cuthulian mythos. Yes, even that hopping green eyed flapping mole. Some scenes are also truly inspired. The ballroom for instance, it's amazingly creepy, but what really gives Alone in the Dark that edge is the sound effects. They are timed almost to perfection, to scare the living-daylights out of you.
The lead character, Carnaby, would never make it into a modern game. He strikes you as slightly eccentric bumbling 1930s investigator. He's not Christian Slator, he's not some handsome Emo in need of a hair cut, and a flying jacket, and he's not some muscle bound swearing meat head, he's some red haired, supernatural investigator, with a big red mustache and an urge to investigate pianos. Another case of style equating to substance?
The game is focused on exploration of the Mansion, adding, admittidly sometimes obscure items together to solve puzzles and fighting the monsters that turn up. The house is laden with traps. Open the wrong door, touch the wrong thing, go into the wrong room with the wrong items and it will be curtains for you. You can save at any point, so, you can scream and shout but it won't stand up in court.
To say Alone in the Dark is not flawed would be ridiculous. To say it's one of the most pivotal games ever made, and to say it's one of the most visually striking games ever made and to say it's one of the best games ever made - is under selling.
Turn the lights out, put the headphones on, and play Alone in the Dark again.
Anyone can buy this on eBay, it's not even remotely rare.
3DOKid.
