13-Aug-2001 The granddaddy of survival horror gets a 21st century facelift. Mark Hill shines his torch on the wrinkles
Strange how games keep coming back to the same images and themes in their tireless efforts to scare us. Haunted houses, with dark rooms where shadows move in the corner of one's eye and grunting corpses scrape the wooden floors with their gammy legs; dark woods, intermittently lit by the lighting of a deafening thunderstorm and alive with the sound of creaking branches and overexcited owls. It's hardly original stuff, but it's been put to great effect in games such as Undying, the Resident Evil series and Nocturne (not to mention Realms Of The Haunting or the original Alone In The Dark). Why do we never get some real sources of fear? How about a game where you have to walk through Brixton late at night, dodging babbling weirdos whose hands are permanently attached to cans of Skol? Or one where you have endure a twelve hour flight while the plane is convulsed by uninterrupted turbulence even the crew acknowledge as severe and with the whole entertainment system down? And if you're looking for something really terrifying, what about a wrinkly old lady trying to force-feed you salty porridge in an Orkney Island Bed & Breakfast? I've lived through them all, and I can tell you they're every bit as scary as zombie-ridden mansions. Deplorably, Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare sticks closely to conventions and starts you off in some dark woods during a thunderstorm before sending you to an old house packed with monsters for the rest of the game.
ISOLOPHOBIA
The first thing all you Alone In The Dark old-hands should know is that The New Nightmare is set in the modern day rather than a turn of the century quaint era. No explanation is offered as to why Edward Carnby is younger and has grown a grunge hairstyle despite being about a hundred years older, but since this is aimed at the console market perhaps the thinking is that no one will notice. We'll come back to the console orientation of the game later (see the PayStation panel). Events are triggered when Carnby receives a message saying that his good friend Fiske has been found dead on Shadow Island (you'd never imagine it could be a bad place with a name like that, would you?) and he sets out to investigate. With him is Aline Cedrac, an archaeologist sent to find the ancient tablets that Fiske was looking for. What they uncover on Shadow Island can only be described as a cross between The Island of Dr Moreau - a mad scientist's experiments have created a breed of horrible monsters - and The X-Files - the whole thing is part of a government conspiracy yadda-yadda-yadda... On their flight to the island, Carnby and Aline are forced to parachute from the plane and in turn become separated. Carnby starts out in the woods and has to make his way to Aline, who is trapped in the mansion. You can choose which character to play as and, rather than playing the same game, you get to experience the adventure from a completely different perspective.
Although with Aline the game concentrates much more on intensive puzzle-solving and pure adventure - she doesn't even start out with a weapon - Carnby's side of the game also emphasises exploration over action. Rather than the tides of zombies from Resident Evil, Alone In The Dark opts for a quieter approach. You can spend large sections of the game running around from room to room, examining objects and piecing together the mystery of what's really going on without facing any enemies. This is supposed to enhance the horror of the monsters when they do actually appear although, as we'll see later, that doesn't always work out. The bulk of the game goes on inside the mansion and, like the one in Undying, this is one huge building, with seemingly hundreds of rooms and about three times more doors. You are provided with a simplistic map of your immediate area, but getting lost is still a big problem. You often end up somewhere you've already been, nostrils flaring in exasperation. As with most titles, you are herded through by finding appropriate keys to doors that open up new areas, but The New Nightmare allows you a certain amount of freedom to wander off into other wings of the mansion and return to previously explored rooms to make sure you haven't missed anything. There are the usual array of health kits and ammo packs along with keys of all sizes, documents that give you background information and the occasional object used to solve puzzles. As befits a game designed to be played in a front room with a gamepad, these are never too taxing and are usually quite logical. One clue goes to all the trouble of writing itself backwards, but that's about as far as the hard thinking goes.
CLAUSTROPHOBIA
Take a quick peek at the screenshots. Nice, aren't they? This is one area where The New Nightmare really excels. The much talked about pre-rendered backgrounds fill each screen with sumptuous detail and the character animations are very good. Developer Darkworks obviously spent a lot of time making sure the animations felt smooth and realistic and didn't clash too much with the backgrounds, and they have succeeded. The feature that stands out most though is the way the engine handles the lighting effects, which are almost on a par with those in the superb Nocturne engine. Your torch is the single most important item in your inventory. It helps show off the engine, find vital clues and allows you to see where the hell you are. Most of the house is plunged in darkness and switching on your torch always opens a delightful world of paintings, elaborate carpets and dozens of ornaments.
Best of all though, you don't even have to pay a high price for all this intricate detail. Moving from one location to the next is almost seamless, even on lower end machines (PII 400), which is hugely impressive when you consider how detailed the backgrounds are. And with this kind of free-flowing gameplay, it's easy to become absorbed in exploring the manor and solving puzzles. You even stop caring about the occasionally dodgy camera angles - so often the bane of survival horror titles. Nocturne was heavily criticised for its unforgiving and artificial angles, but they enhanced the idea of a world gone askew, as they do here. That's not to say that there aren't times when they're more of a hindrance than anything else. Sometimes you'll find yourself walking down a corridor with the camera behind you, only to be attacked from the front, so you can't see a damn thing, forcing you to have to shoot blindly while looking at Carnby's (or, if you're particularly lucky, Aline's) backside.
NYCTOPHOBIA
As I've already mentioned, Carnby starts the game in some dark woods in the middle of a storm, where the scary atmosphere is supposed to be created by the sound of thunder and some risible owls hooting as if in competition with each other. The minimalist soundtrack (consisting of only four notes) does a better job but soon begins to grate. Later, the music turns into a grindingly slow industrial soundtrack. The rhythms of heavy machinery are more likely to give you a headache than the creeps. But the main problem is that the exploratory nature of the game relies too much on the theory that when the monsters do finally appear you'll be so used to their absence they'll scare you to death. Unfortunately the monsters are not very scary at all, consisting mostly of long-legged creatures in the shape of large crustaceans, which would have been more effective had they come in waves. Even the obligatory zombies, despite being beautifully animated, aren't really frightening. When the undead in Resident Evil grabbed hold of you, you could almost feel their rotting teeth sinking into your scalp, tearing flesh, bone and brain. The sound of their distant grunting alone was enough to make you quiver. Here there is no sense of real danger when one of them grabs you. You never feel immersed enough to care what's happening to your character. Perhaps more time should have been spent making Carnby into a likeable figure instead of the twat he comes across as, or making the attacks on your character look more distressingly violent or even coming up with some better creatures.
However, there are plenty of moments of genuine tension and, while you never quite jump out of your seat, your heart will skip a small beat. An inoffensive bed might burst into giant tentacles as your browse its nearby chest of drawers or a facehugger (lifted straight from Half-Life) might jump at you out of nowhere. But there is rarely a sustained feeling of fright.
PHOBIAPHOBIA
Despite the inevitable comparisons with Resident Evil, Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare manages to stand by itself as a gothic adventure game that will appeal to those with a preference for a slower and more thoughtful pace. It may not be truly scary and it does have a number of flaws, but few other titles allow you to explore and solve puzzles with as much style and attention to detail. The option to play both sides of the story is an innovative way to expand the gameplay while adding a layer of depth rarely seen in action/adventures. It may not be the masterpiece we were all hoping for but it certainly beats sitting in a room with no lights on with no one to talk to.
// Overview
Verdict
Taxes the mind just as much as the reflexes
Uppers
Great animations Highly detailed backgrounds Very different game depending on character
Downers
Screen loading Not scary enough Exploring eventually become dull Under par music
AITD isn't the most difficult game around, but this should give you an idea of what to expect. This is the beginning of the game for Carnby, you'll have to play it yourself if you want to see how it is for Aline
Your tattered parachute hangs on a nearby tree, looks like you'll have to find a way out of these woods.
You find your way to a dying man in a stone room. Take the key lying next to him before he blows his brains out.
See, the key comes in handy almost straight away. Use it to open this gate and get into the mansion's grounds.
Your first victims are a bunch of dogs. Dispatch them as cruelly as possible and watch them crawl. You sick bastard.
Turn this valve to empty a nearby pond and access the sewers into the house. You didn't want to swim, did you?
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Great animations
