Alone in the Dark

So, a couple of games that I already have for the PS3, one game I barely popped in my 360 before I returned it last year, and a few brand new ones I have high expectations for. 
 

Game 1: Borderlands

 
BEFORE: This is one of the games I'm expecting to enjoy, based on reviews, quick looks and Jeff Gerstmann's obsession over it. Going for a soldier right off the bat.
 
AFTER: I really like the art style, absolutely loved the intro. Great music. I like my pistol better than my machine gun so far. Loot is fun, I wanted to continue playing when the first achievement popped 26 minutes in. 
 

Game 2: Forza Motorsport 3 

 
BEFORE: Forza 2 turned me on to simulation racers, and based on the demo for Forza 3, this is going to be class. 
 
AFTER: Oooooooohhh this game is tough to put down. Got the first achievement for jumping 5 meters nine minutes in, and that's including the optional install. Just had to try a few more races with my first F-class car, and racing a Yaris has never been more fun. This is going to last me a while. 
 

Game 3: Alone in the Dark

BEFORE: This is gonna be brutal. Based on reviews, this is at best interesting but severely flawed. Practically got it for free, have to see for myself. 
 
AFTER: There is no "after." I quit before I got an achievement. This is a real stinker. Horrible controls, clipping all over the place, cheap deaths abound. I'm removing this from my played list and throwing it Gamestop's way ASAP. 
 

Game 4: Midnight Club Los Angeles.

 
BEFORE: I'm cheating a little here. I actually bought this last fall and played it for about an hour. It felt kind of weird after coming off 250+ hours of Burnout Paradise, so I gave up on it and traded it in. Found the Complete Edition on sale and decided to give it another go. 
 
AFTER: What was I thinking? This game is awesome. I could have used a higher framerate, but zooming around LA in first person with Snoop on the radio is pretty sweet. I got pulled over and burned rubber as soon as the officer got out of his car. There's an achievement for that. 24 minutes. 
 

Game 5: Mirror's Edge

BEFORE: I've already played and finished this on PS3, I'm expecting this to be pretty much the same. 
 
AFTER: Tutorial level complete, 7:35 in. I still love the atmosphere in this game. The controls feel pretty OK, though I might prefer the bigger shoulder buttons on the DualShock. I'll probably finish this a second time on the 360. 
 

Game 6: Unreal Tournament III

BEFORE: This is another one I have on the PS3, but I picked it up real cheap and wanted to see how it feels on Xbox Live. 
 
AFTER: 6:17, "Lock and Load." A little more pop-in than I remember from the PS3. I play better with the Xbox controller. 
 

Game 7: Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time

BEFORE: I've been playing through the Ratchet series with my son the past few weeks. This is supposed to be the best of the bunch, and I'm excited. 
 
AFTER: 15 minutes, first trophy, and I can already tell this is going to be a great one. Ratchet & Clank on the PS3 is what I expected games to be like in the far-flung future when all I played was platformers on my Amiga. The production values are sky high. My son's gonna be thrilled, too.
 

Game 8: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 

 
BEFORE: For Xbox Live Arcade games, I usually play the trial version up until I get the first achievement, then I buy the full version and cash in. This game I bought on a whim while looking through the XBLA titles. It feels a little wrong to be playing this after completing Shadow Complex, but I guess it's never too late to brush up on your gaming history. 
 
AFTER: I'm guessing the VO recording budget didn't break any industry records. I love the music, though. This game must have been pretty ground-breaking at the time. "Rampage" unlocked seven minutes in. Lost all my stuff. Need to pick this up again ASAP.

...so I decided to rent Alone in the Dark in at my local Blockbuster...
I know what you're asking, What the fuck is wrong with you?!
 
I made a list of excuses why I rented it:

1. I was bored
2. I am a Masochist.
3. I have never seen an Uwe Boll movie
4. I am a Masochist.
5. I hadn't seen a video game movie in a long time.
6. I am a Masochist.
   

I've heard about it being bad because of TANG and Nostalgia Critic's review of Alone in the Dark ( The Review). However there was the curiosity motive in me that really wanted to experience the movie itself. And so I traveled in to the edge of insanity that is of Uwe Boll.
 
After watching the 96 minutes of that movie...well...it was the worst movie I have ever seen in my life...PERIOD!!!!!!!!!!
I'm just shocked...shocked that I have decided to endure watching this piece of shit movie. I honestly thought that Transformers 2 was the worst movie I have seen in a long time but Alone in the Dark beats it by a landslide.
 
Its one thing to watch an episode of TANG about Alone in the Dark but watching the actual movie is a completely different animal.
 
Let me put it this way; My expectations for that movie was literally nonexistent. That movie completely annihilated my nonexistent expectations! This movie is going to haunt me for a very VERY long time...

I'll get around to writing silly review number 3: Game Manuals sometime soon, promise. I tend to write spur of the moment, so planned things usually get held off until i'm done vomiting opinion. As always, this is just my opinion, and not all of it is meant 100% seriously, so sit back and relax as we reminisce about five franchises i'd love to see brought back, and five that I want to stay dead, in no particular order.

5. Bring Back: Road Rash

Forget Vigilante 8, forget Twisted Metal, Road Rash was the epitome of motorsports violence. I'm aware that some sequels were made for the N64 and PS1, but I won't count those as they were, well, shit. This game, and it's sequel Road Rash II, utterly blew me away, I had no idea that you could combine motorsports and violence and not only come out with a playable game, but one that was better and more interesting than just a plain racing game like Super Hang-On. The concept was simple, illegal street racing for a cash prize, and no rules. You could steal weapons from other riders, knock them off, or send them careening into a passing car, you could even beat up policemen. I had so much fun with this, and still do occasionally. What we need is either a remake, or a sequel, that follows the original format without changing it too much beyond what it is. As much as I liked bikes in PGR4, what we really need is Road Rash.

Don't Bring Back: The Adams Family:

God the games associated with this franchise were awful. From Festers Quest to Pugsley's Scavenger hunt, i've never played an Adams Family game that I liked, or even enjoyed for a short while. Often poorly programmed, with terrible design choices and overbearing levels of difficulty. Aside from that, you have to wonder, just how exactly do you introduce this family to the videogame world? They don't seem all that suited to being anywhere near videogames in the first place. I wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if we never saw this franchise again in any format, be it television, film or videogames.

4. Bring Back: Shenmue:

Ok, not so much 'bring back' as 'finish it, or so help me god i'll hunt you down' The series really needs to be completed. However, while we know almost for certain now that the series never will be completed, as it's creator no longer works for Sega, or something like that, and Sega have said many times they do not plan to ressurect the series, that doesn't mean I can't want for it. I need to know what happens, dammit.

Don't Bring Back: Yu-Gi-Oh

I'll admit, shamefully, that I once enjoyed the card game itself quite a bit, I was a succesful tournament player in my region and even placed well nationally. However, every single videogame adaptation of this with the exception maybe of one of the GBA games, has been utterly atrocious. I guess the major problem here is that the developers needs to change up the gameplay in order to differentiate itself from the physical card game rules so that people will buy it. This just leads to incomprehensible rules and unbalanced games, when you combine this with incredibly slow gameplay and terrible (or abusive) AI you definately have a loser on your hands. Why continue to attempt to compete with the physical card game? I mean, it's still making tons of money, and the company responsible for the games is the same company, so stop trying to compete with it and simply divert the cash into making more money from the card game itself. Simple.

3. Bring Back: Dark Forces:

I'm not a huge Star Wars fan at all, but like KOTOR, Dark Forces being a high quality game, I loved it. I didn't love it as much as Doom or Duke Nukem granted, but I still loved it and i'd play it over some of the more modern FPS games (if I had the choice, I don't own the game anymore) and for an FPS, the Star Wars universe is one that provides some quite unique situations, enemies and weapons to play with. I honestly feel the franchise should be brought back with a vengeance. I'm aware that what we got out of this franchise was in fact the adventures of Kyle Katarn in Jedi Knight and eventually Jedi Academy, but those didn't resonate as well with me as the original Dark Forces did.

Don't Bring Back: Alone in the Dark:

The original series was ground breaking for it's time, and highly enjoyable well-crafted games. But the previous two attempts to ressurect the series have not succeeded. Firstly, we had The New Nightmare, a literal mashing together of Resident Evil and Silent Hill with an incomprehensible storyline and overly difficult bordering on punishing gameplay. The characters were difficult to care about, the plor hard to follow, the game itself difficult to play and while it managed to be pretty damned creepy for the first two thirds, as always with these kinds of games the run up to the end was just plain weird, not creepy or clever.

Then we have the Atari remake Alone in the Dark for Xbox 360 and PC (and later, and hopefully much improved, Inferno for PS3) which was very poorly recieved. While the game had a lot of ambition, some really great mechanics all but wasted by the poor level design. Much of this games ambition and technical achievement was put to incredibly poor use which really is a great shame, I mean the game achieved a lot of things, environments that could burn realisticly, entire levels being animated in one of the greatest cinematic action sequences ever seen in a videogame, and more. The level design however, the plot, the characters, utterly abhorant. Impossible to care for any of the characters, and what I onestly feel is one of the worst, rip-off endings ever seen in any media format. And I havn't even touched upon the bugs or terrible driving sequences. Alone in the Dark for 360 was 100% wasted potential, and in my opinion the final nail in the coffin of a once great series. Leave it alone now.

2. Bring Back: Oddworld

Both of Abe's adventures in Oddworld were classics, the following games in the series not so much. But despite the failings of Munch's Oddysee and Strangers Wrath (even though I quite enjoyed Strangers Wrath) I still feel the franchise would be perfectly at home generating side scrollers like the originals, or adventure games for episodic content or DS/PSP releases. Theres so much lore there, and so many unique characters and environments to put te player in, I honestly don't think we've seen many franchises quite as unique as Oddworld and it needs to rise from the ashes like a pheonix. Apparently Oddworld Inhabitants are working on something new, but we've not seen or heard anything in quite a long time now.

Don't Bring Back: System Shock:

This one is going to be controversial, but I am very confident that the current right holders (EA) would make a stink of it. To start with, interest in the franchise from EA was only reinvigorated upon the release of Bioshock, and while I loved Bioshock, I do not want a knee jerk reaction from EA resulting in a Bioshock clone set in space. But illogical reasons like that aside, i'm seriously fed up with the business practice of shitting all over fans of a classic series in order to make money from a name people are curious about because they have heard great things, but don't want to, or cannot play the originals. We've seen it with Fallout 3, FarCry 2 and others, and we're going to see it with Deus Ex 3, the Monkey Island remake, and more. I'd rather they make a new game, under a new name, especially considering any new project under the name of System Shock would not include any of the original talent, and that doesn't sit well with me just as it didn't in the other examples.

1. Bring Back: Discworld:

This is the second franchise on the list that while I want brought back, in all likelyhood will never ever happen. I'm deeply saddened by Terry Pratchetts diagnosis of Alzheimers a couple years ago now, as my favorite author and a great man I was very upset to hear this. I own both the PS1 discworld adventure games, and Noir on PC. While Noir didn't fare so well, I still think that the previous too games are a fantastic example of the genre, and contain some great comedy moments and superb voice acting from comedy legends such as Rob Brydon, Eric Idle and Tony Robinson. I honestly think that if it were revitalised, and you could get hold of some equally good voice actors and get a clever script and puzzle set written, that the fanchise could put out an adventure game to rival that of Grim Fandango or Starship Titanic in greatness. (Incidentally, Starship Titanic features John Cleese as a voice actor)

Don't Bring Back: Duke Nukem:

I'm a massive fan of Duke Nukem, but lets face the truth here, his first and last truly great game was Duke Nukem 3D, a game that not only was brilliantly constructed and immense fun, but gave the FPS genre that final kick it needed in order to be fully realised after Doom had proven to everyone that it was a legitimate player. But since then, we've had multiple ports of Duke 3D, side scrolling platformers, terrible third person games, and several cancelled games. Not to mention the whole fiasco with Duke Nukem Forever. DNF? More like DNR. Duke's an old man now, and need to be layed to rest, even if he were brought back, in all the flashy glory he's known for, three quarters of todays gaming population wouldn't even have a clue who he is, just let the man rest, I think he deserves it after being strung out all these years.

Well that's it for now, this is just the compilation of this mornings thoughts really, what do you guys feel? Any franchises you'd like to see brought back? Or ones you feel strongly should remain dormant for ever?

Alone in the Dark is as broken as people say it is.

BUT

There are some awesome moments.  Like slow motion shooting of liquid explosive.  And sticky bombs.  Sweet.

Yet totally broken in many ways.

And easy trophies.

-----
Also, I've been playing some Mario Galaxy, up to like 42 stars.  Trying to beat some of my old games that I should have beat a long time ago.

Oh yeah, I beat World of Goo, too.  Awesome game.  Must buy if you like puzzles like Lemmings or something.

The upcoming release of the Max Payne movie has sparked a new round of debate on wether or not games can translate well to movies and if its even worth the effort to make one.

Well the simple answer is yes, it is worth it, as lot of those movies (including Max Payne) have done really well at the box office despite being critically maligned. I am no movie critic, but I have decided to post my views on the video game movies I have seen to date.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I have not played several of the game franchises, so my opinion will be based on the quality and production values of the film as a film and what I know of the games. Please note this is one (probably wrong) man's opinion, so feel free to agree or disagree with what I say.

1. Super Mario Bros

The first game-movie cross over. It was bad, really bad. The is one franchise that should have been a big budget animated movie, as no one apparently has the nuts to make a live action movie that would be as crazy as it should be do justice to SMB. It gets somethings right, like Yoshi is in it and Mario is shorter and fatter than Luigi, but thats about it, and as such it sets the scene for many game movies to follow: it changed too much and tried to be realistic.

2. DOA: Dead or Alive

This movie I really enjoyed, is was a couple of hours of no brain involved fun. There is a quote on the box 'Half naked babes, kung fu fighting... sit back, relax and enjoy' and that is the only way to go. The story in the DOA games has always been pretty rubbish, but this is a movie which keeps the tournament setting, most of the character origins the same and generally gets the tone right. Eric Roberts as the bad game is rubbish though.

3. Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children

Like DOA this is one of the most recent video game movies, and I thought it was pretty dam sweet. The only way to effectively do a FF movie is make it animated in some way until some director with the nuts to go all out comes along, and this means the characters, settings and overall tone fit in well, and it is a decent sequel to the game. I can understand some of the things people say about it being a pop music video without the music, but it has some heart pounding action scenes and lots of nostaligia, one of the best.

4. Resident Evil

The director of this is Paul W.S Anderson, and though he isnt the greatest director on earth, his movies really work and give just a slightly different take on the game franchise. This did pretty much everything it wanted to do, but rather than make a uber-scary zombie horror film, it became a zombie action flick and did so well, including the mansion, underground lab and umbrella corporation. Good, but could have been better.

5. Resident Evil: Apocalypse

A great sequel to a good movie, this is my favourite of the RE films so far as it went all action, and had the nemesis in. It is set in Raccon City and sort of covers RE2 and 3 the games. I found it really cool and it had some game characters such as Jill Valentine in it. Again one of the best.

6. Resident Evil: Extinction

Another good sequel, but I didnt like it as much as apocalypse. The post zombie apocalypse setting has been done better in other movies, and though it was cool to see vegas reclaimed by the desert, the action wasnt as good and the tyrant not as cool as a bad guy. Plus it was a massive set up for another film, much like Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Mans chest.

7. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

In order to get a Tomb Raider film right you must have several things: Smoking hot women as Lara, twin pistols, slightly stupid story, half decent english accent, large mansion. This has all those things, and the production values are high enough that it don't come off as a cheap ass action flick. It stands up to repeat watchings and has an early appearence by the new James Bond, Daniel Craig. Very cool.

8. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The cradle of Life

While a candidate for longest movie title of all time, The sequel isnt as good, as the story is a little too daft and the action simply not as good. It also dosent have the cool training robot from the first, a bit of a missed opportunity. Worth a watch, but the first one is better.

9. Alone in the Dark

Uwe Boll is a bad director who dosent understand the games he bases his movies on. An obvious statement to be sure, but this movie is really bad for a few reasons 1) low production values, the special effects are terrible 2) the creature is boring 3) Tara Reid is NOT a good choice for a musem curator 4) its not scary. I will watch other Uwe Boll movies, just out of curiosity. This is really bad, but there are worse out there, just look at Starship Troopers 2.

10. Doom

Doom is an interesting one as if you take it as an action movie, its not that bad, but if you take it as a movie based on Doom, it is terrible. This is because the plot of the game is that scientists are tinkering and accidentally open a portal to Hell (not the london underground, the real hell) and unleash demons galore on the Mars base they are working at. For some reason, the writer of the movie decided this wasnt stupid enough and came up with something worse, some drivel about genetic evils and superhumans. Movie making withou any balls at its finest, take this as an action movie and nothing else, and the FPS sequence isnt as bad as everyone makes out.

11. Double Dragon

While it features one of my favourite martial arts stars, Mark Dacascous, Double Dragon is pretty much a made for TV movie and it shows. It dosent take itself seriously which is a good thing, but the fighting is pretty poor and it dosent follow the admittedly loose plot of the games. Robert Patrick as the bad guy is pretty camp and bad, worth watch, but mostly to laugh at when drunk.

12. Hitman

A good movie, it nails Agent 47 from what I know of him. Socially awkward and knowing little except how to kill, it does show how lonely he is. It isnt the greatest action film ever made, but at least someone heavily involved in it played the games and included his trademark suit, bald head, tattoo and guns. Very good game movie, very enjoyable.

13. Mortal Kombat

Probably the first good game movie, Mortal Kombat kept just about everything it could from the game: outworld, raiden, scorpion, sub zero, shang tzun etc. It even had a good fight against Reptile, along with a pretty kick ass soundtrack. Good fights, some hot women and they didnt change the storyline from the game, highly enjoyable.

14: Mortal Kombat: Annhilation

A fairly average sequel, the fights arent as good and the more epic save the world scope just dosent work. It introduces some more characters such as Jax, but changes the actors playing others, such as Sonya Blade and Raiden, and the choices arent as good. Watchable but only just.

15. Silent Hill

I really enjoyed this, it was a pretty cool movie, though not particularly messed up as what I know of the games is. It does have Pyramid head and the mutated nurses, and the foggy and covered in ash town, so from what I know it is pretty close to the games. I found it to be a well done horror-thriller, though light on the horror aspect. definatly worth a watch.

16. Wing Commander

As a space pilot combat film, its ok, but the games, especially 3 onwards where far better films, those of you who played them will know what I am talking about. They should have had Mark Hamil in the lead role, and allowed the Kilrathi to speak so they could have the banter with the humans they are trying to kill. The one great choice was Matthew Lilliard as maniac, as he just fits. again worth a watch if there is nothing else on.

17. Street Fighter

Probably the biggest disaster (apart from Super Mario Bros) in this type of film. It only thing that it keeps from the games are the character names and the fact that M Bison is the bad guy and Guile is in the military. Thats it. No tournament, no cool special moves, and Guile (an amercian) is played by Jean Claude Van Damme. It is the biggest mistake these movies make, by completely changing the setting and story you automatically alienate your main audience. An atrocious movie, not even worth the £5 it currently retails for.

So there it is my opinions on the game movies I have seen. They are getting steadily better (even Uwe Boll's stuff) and can be really enjoyable so long as you dont take them too seriously and think too much about them. Hardcore fans of the game franchises they are based on might have a different view, but you do have to remember it is a different medium, so there will some stuff they have to change. This still doesnt excuse Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros, though.

What are your favourite game movies? are you looking forward to the new ones? do you agree or disagree with my statements above?

These blogs are all too quickly becoming a monthly event, giving me too much to write about at once. My fragile mind can't handle it. I'll do my best to make this somewhat sensible and then hopefully start writing them more regularly. Where to start......ah, The Force Unleashed.

I bought and played through twice, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Once on normal and once again on Sith Master, although I mainly sprinted through the latter. I found the game to be very good. The story, although a little contrived, was entertaining and better than any of the new movies. The graphics and sound were the other high point, with solid voice acting, again better that the new movies (damn you Hayden Christensen) and the music you expect from a Star Wars product at this point. The gameplay on the other hand was a bit all over the place. Using the force to throw guys around was fun, but when the game started introducing Force resistant enemies and cheap boss battles things got a little tiring. Lightsabers without dismemberment doesn't play anymore. Still, overall it was worth playing.

Following that I played some Alone in the Dark. Don't play that game. I'm not going to anymore. I got to the second last mission and the game is asking me to burn all these roots (of evil) that have appeared. To do that I have drive around an apocalyptic Central Park in a car that controls as if it has the ability to fly but is scared of heights and when it touches a kerb it gets enough courage to fly several feet in the air but then gets scared again and comes back to the ground (my obtuse way of saying the physics are terrible). I refuse to play it anymore, especially when I have games like Fallout 3 to play.

What a segue. Fallout 3 is awesome. It would be fair to say that it's basically a post-apocalyptic Oblivion. Because of this, the game has some of the same problems that Oblivion had, such as repetitive environments (metro stations) and stilted NPC behaviour. In other ways it has improved on Oblivion with sharper dialogue and more voice actors and unique character models. The combat is fairly satisfying as soon as you get the bloody mess perk and remains fun throughout. The best thing about the game though, as it was in Oblivion, is interacting with the different, interesting characters in the game, completing side-quests and exploring the world. I've played the game for 40 hours and have done most of the quests I can do, all I've got left to do now, is explore the world collecting, killing looting and so forth. If you liked Oblivion, or just like the idea of the game, definitely check it out, its few flaws are easy to overlook.

Apart from that I've continued to dabble in Pokemon Diamond, The World Ends with You and New Super Mario Bros. I'm on the last world Mario and it is damn difficult. I'm also close to the end of Final Fantasy X and after finding the game to be mostly easy, the second last boss is proving very difficult. What makes it more frustrating is that there is about 10 minutes of build up that there is no way to circumvent. I'll do it eventually though. True to form, I've once again been toying with the idea of getting back into WoW. Just to tide me over until Christmas when I'll have all the new games that I wanted. I'll be level 80 by 2012.

Let me state, i haven't experienced anything of the X360 make and model. The game looked likei had serious potential and looked really snazzy, but something held me back.
And its a good thing too, if i subjected myself to the awful mechanics of the game i would have demanded my money back no matter how illegal it is in Canada.

However, i really don't like judging by what others say, or let someones "professional opinion" sway my vote. To be blunt, i like alot of games people deem crap. Take for instance, i loved Tai' Fu: Wrath fo the Tiger on PS1. Got substandard reviews but i had a blast. I also found some sort of fun in Sonic '06, blah blah.
So i downloaded the Alone in the Dark demo for PS3.

Im happy to report, the game is fine now, with all those nastly little bugs and annoyances cleared. But i have one serious issue with it... overall: The Controls.
When i play a game, i look for a few things: Gameplay, is it fun? Controls, is it easy and robust? Graphics, are they passable/beautiful? Innovation, is there any?
Lets take a few games into further inspection here, "Halo" for FPS controls on a Console (and to spark some X360 fans attention) and the other is the other game that closely mimicks the FPS mechanics: The Darkness.

Call me crazy but i value smooth and responsive controls. The moment i feel impeded by the characters inability to translate what im telling them as an order rather than a humble suggestion, is the moment i start losing interest.
Halo, had perfect intuitive FPS controls. If it were Third person itd still control very well.
Alone in the Dark, has clumsy controls, where in FPS mode we have to wait for Edwards body to catch up before taking the next instruction set into focus
The Darkness, has somewhat clumsy controls. Suffering the same fate as Edward, except hes just quicker at overcoming that obsticle.

theres nothing wrong with showing feet and hands in an FPS experience, but do not sacrifice responsiveness for 'realism'. If i want to sidestrafe left at THAT moment, goddamnit let me, otherwise im just a sitting duck for any monster to come out to slash a new scar down my other eye!
Dear lord there have been OTHER games that feature this stuff and dont have this limitation. it doesn't detract from the realism for smooth movement. Look at Fear! look at Halo 2/3? Look at Condemned! Looky, FEET! Yet the movement flows smoothly!
Eden Games, take note of the titles im mentioning here, use them as reference, make sure you take notes as to why they were deemed "fun to play", i can assure you, it wasn't for the pulitzer storylines.

My other major complaint comes in the form of aiming. Something about the aiming mechanics just dont pan out to well, and i end up under/overshooting the shot, causing me to shoot just slightly left of the enemies face, etc. Theres challenge, and then theres the fact i know im not inept at shooting in a console game. The aiming feels very stiff and hits an interesting sweet spot where its too sensitive, yet never quick enough, no matter how much you fiddle around with the sensitivity selector.

But i should give credit where its due.
What i DID enjoy, was everything else. Despite my inability to always move how i wanted, doesn't matter if it was in third or first person, and my apparent inability to aim and shoot at the same time, everything else was A-Class Fun. What gets me is what i like to call 'playable cinematics'. These directly mimick everyday lifes 'Unique Challenges' crap. The problem with video games, is that they are built around an engine that gives you some abilities, and some static levels to use said abilities. Edwards levels (in the demo) Break and destroy around him. Every single room offers a new sort of challenge, whether is rappeling down an elevator shaft, or trying to stay inside a building that constantly collapsing around you.
Its REALLY cool stuff, and the music, oh my god the music, always kicks in just right, and relly gives the feeling of an interactive movie.
Excellent. So what i got to give Eden Games credit for, its an engine that gives you a moveset, mapped to sometimes intuitive control scheme (L2 to lockon still feels weird) that allows you to overcome any challenges thrown at you, no matter what they are, for Edwards ever changing reality around him.

The cinematic quality of the action is pretty epic, though i have a few choice words for Edwards dialogue. The other characters were passable to good, Edwards dialogue felt like the guy was on his last day at the job and didn't give a shit. Everytime he cusses it comes off as "well it was IN the script, i HAD to say it, i didn't want to though, im a giant pussy when it comes to swearing, mom might hear". You can easily tell the voice actors who know how and how not to swerar, and they should have either stripped it out, or hired someone who can pull it off.

Beleive or not, Swearing is an artform in Entertainment.



So thats it, thats my words. Alone in the Dark on the PS3, is pretty polished, but some lingering issues with stiff unresponsive controls still exist.
And for the love of god, i would think that by now weve moved past the notion of "Tilessets that cant receive shadows". Im still notcing in thsi very dynamic-shadow-indusced-dark-world that the characters shadows dont show up on certain tiles sets, both in gameplay and cinematics. Its VERY annoying, and when your used to seeing the shadow,definitely helps kill off the 4th wall.

though maybe thats the intent, the walls are alive.



This completely unprofessionally written blog entry was brought to you by
Kyle