How does a flawed concept fit into the imagination of developers these days, there are times when even the most abysmal game gets a stellar sales treatment and there are other times when a game much ahead of its curve falls treacherously in a vortex of a sordid memory.
The fate of Alone in the Dark lies somewhere between these two extremes, on one hand, the game sucks horribly because of a shoddy implementation of what I feel were innovative concepts that were ahead of the established nomenclature in the industry, whilst on the other Alone in the Dark garnered such pathetic sales figures that it is already a strong contender for worst/mediocre game of the year award.
So which version should the consumer go for to experience some innovative ideas introduced this year? (Soulcalibur IV owners please refrain from reading any further):
GRAPHICS
Xbox 360: The visuals in Alone in the Dark are pretty solid, even though Edward is waltzing through a pseudo pre-rendered environment, the console version does not suffer from a steep system requirement nor does it have terrible framerate issues. The environment looks dark, grungy with the lights both on and off and since there is hardly any fear factor embedded in the game your little console will do just fine in case you are dying out of boredom and desperately need a game to tinker around with
PC: The computer still ahead of most consoles pulls off textures with a surreal factor and beats the console version to pulp when it comes to a steady framerate. The rate of visual intensity will however depend on the player’s system requirements. Notable differences between the high and low end versions of the game are not significantly enough as shown by PCGH. So a player with a moderate rig will be able to pull off the game just fine, but he’ll have to sacrifice some of the visual flair and occasional framerate issues in the process.
Minimum PC requirements for Alone in the Dark are as follows:
Operating System: Windows XP/Vista 32-bit & 64-bit
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or Athlon X2 +3800 (Intel Pentium 4 3.4 GHz
or AMD Athlon 64 +4000 recommended)
Memory: 1 GB RAM (2GB recommended)
Hard Disk Space: 9.5 GB free
DVD-ROM Drive: 4X speed or faster
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 7600 or ATI Radeon X1950 or better (NVIDIA GeForce 7800
GTX or ATI Radeon X1950 XTX or better recommended)
Sound: DirectX version 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX: DirectX version 9.0c (included) or higher
CONTROLS
Xbox 360: Generally nine out of ten times a third person action game is better handled on a PC with the mouse/keyboard combination but in this case the reverse is quite true. Alone in the Dark seems to have been designed with the console version exclusively in mind. Convenient button mapping enable switching from a first to a third person with relative ease, Weapon micromanagement is also handled without hassles with the Xbox 360 controller. There are shortcuts where you can assign your favorite weapon combinations which like the rest of the control scheme work pretty well.
PC: Developers have not yet understood the ground rules for PC development, one of them is never committing the folly of porting a game which has pre-rendered cameras. Sure Alone in the Dark suffered labor pains by giving birth to the survival horror genre, but the current scenario for development rests on the changes brought together by Gears of war and Resident Evil 4, all shooters from all across the planet have given the player the ability to control the camera, except Alone in Dark.
Playing games with a pre-rendered camera style has been a pain usually but playing Alone in the dark is nothing short of arduous, as if the game was not sour enough, the oft changes in camera in the midst of puzzle or combat send this little experiment by Eden games right to the grave. The driving sections which are a horrific addition in itself get worse on the PC with unresponsive controls making the player feel miserable at the end of entire ordeal.
The final verdict goes as follows:
Even though Alone in the Dark is an abysmal game at the end of the day, it is for the player to decide which version to buy even though both of them mean spending a lot of time away from your social life which deserves attention before the holiday season pours in. The Xbox 360 version gets the upper hand among the two since it’s restricted to popping in the disc and playing without any hassles including the SecuROM copy protection in the game.
- By Neelesh Mukherjee