Richard's Online Journal
[30/07/08] Whydescreen
After a couple of evenings playing Alone in the Dark, I can safely say that nobody, anywhere, needs to spend a couple of evenings playing Alone in the Dark. It’s a terrible, terrible game, and the only reason I blink in surprise to hear people call it ‘controversial’ is that I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think it completely sucks. Deservedly. Capsule review: The stuff it does well is the worst, since in a good game, it could have been cool. In this, it’s insult meeting injury, with a side order of crap controls, terrible plotting, and insane design decisions.
Given how much stuff there is to complain about, it may seem odd that the one that really annoyed the hell out of me was the widescreen viewport. I don’t own a widescreen monitor, which meant staring at the whole crappy game through a letterbox, rather than enjoying it in letterbox format. I don’t get why this had to be the case. Were they worried a boom mike would dip into shot or something? Would filling the whole screen have sapped the cinematic ambience of people swearing and waiting for the inevitable tentacle monsters to show up?
Grr. Still, at least no bright spark has come up with the idea of using those of us shamefully not equipped with the same gear as their QA department for an exercise in stealth marketing. What kind of world would it be when almost half the screen is taken up with nothing more than high-resolution bugger all?
Not the world of advertising, that’s for sure. Wait. Aaah. I’m… I’m having a vision…
Brrr. I just hope I haven’t put ideas into anyone’s head…
My favourite bit was realising I could stop playing whenever I liked, and stopping.
Posted by Richard on Wednesday 30th July
> I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think it completely sucks
Well… no. It’s shite.
Posted by Gary on Thursday 31st July
Even Mr Pointy Ghost says “NO!”
Posted by The_B on Thursday 31st July
To clarify, are you all talking about the PC version, or are you including the 360 version as well? Having played the 360 version, I have to disagree with some of these posts - namely that firstly, the 360 version works on a technical level, whereas the PC version is fundamentally broken software. Secondly, the game is neither as sweary or as fire-focused as some reviews have made out. However, the physics engine is not reliable (in that the results you get from your interations are not always repeatable, predictable or expected) and the game INSISTS on having controls for virtually any interaction (therefore resulting in huge numbers of not-necessarily-intuitive control combinations to memorise). In addition, there are some weird ideas about the inventory system and the way that combat operates - it’s hard to describe quite how combat is flawed, but it just FEELS wrong. There aren’t many games that truly give you a feel of meaty, powerful weapons and solid, kinetic melee combat - this is not one of games on that elite list.
It’s not a dreadful game, but if the developers had listened to the suggestions of journalists and beta testers, rather than forging ahead with their own plans, then the game would be much better.
Posted by theaikidoka on Saturday 2nd August
Extremely punishing and difficult game and not worth it. It’s not so much broken, but rather the developers obviously never considered such things as quicksave points and things that make a game work.
Posted by William Main on Saturday 2nd August
I was very appreciative of the ability to see less of what was happening on my screen.
But the same thing pissed me off enormously in Assassin’s Creed, which for a while I thought I actually wanted to see properly.
Posted by Pentadact on Wednesday 30th July