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Thursday, November 13, 2008

Game Play: Alone In The Dark Demo (PS3)

This is almost an exact duplicate of the post I just made.

I really wanted to root for this game, and for the first brilliant five minutes of the demo I was totally rooting for this game. It felt like a tight gameworld that might be capable of telling a story that I was actually feeling like a character within. I kept blinking, and blinking alone made me feel part of the scene - a brilliant use of cinematics and controls. This continues with the walk to the stairwell, and even the "realization" of the third person perspective.

Then it was like I was playing a completely different game. Then I was playing some Resident Evil knockoff (and no, you do not need to email me to remind me that Resident Evil was originally something of a AITD clone). The controls were lousy and when I died it felt like the game was fighting me more than some horrible nightmare in the dark.

What I wonder is - what would this rendition of Alone In The Dark had been if it had stuck to more traditional adventure genre roots? What if the gameplay had followed the first five minutes? The puzzles could have been logic, not twitch, based. What if this game had taken cues from The Seventh Guest more than Resident Evil 4?

Coulda, woulda, whatever. Hopefully other game designers will at least play this title to riff off of, but I don't see myself doing the same.

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