Customer Reviews

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Okay. I'm going to do my best to be brief. If you are a player of PC games, you might want to avoid this game. From every angle it screams "I WAS MADE FOR A CONSOLE!" Very little attention went into importing this game for PC, and I'm afraid the bad outweighs the good.

The graphics sub-par. In some respects, they're actually embarassing... After all the hype and all the screenshots, the end result looks like it was produced about five years ago. The backgrounds are all washed out and flat, and strangely pixelated. The animation is generally terrible. In some places, the fact that they attempted to pass it off as professional animation actually makes me hurt. When you backstep, it's like watching film of someone walking played in reverse. When objects overlap, you could swear you were playing, say, Space Quest. When your character opens a gate, the screen goes black and then comes up again with the gate now open. Aiee.

This should give you some hint as to the lack of care given to this game's PC incarnation: there are no options. You can't select higher screen resolution, enable environmental sound, adjust mouse sensitivity or invert the y-axis... No, the designers apparently felt that such an array of choices would merely confuse gamers today, and in their generosity opted instead to allow you to configure a key or two and choose whether you'd like to listen in mono!

The saving system (that's right, there's a system), is bizarre and painful... for every amulet you collect, you can save once! I wouldn't recommend it, though, because whatever you did in the level on which you save, you'll have to do again. Yup, I'm not kidding.

The controls are awkward... They were clearly created for a gamepad, and only reluctantly assigned to a keyboard.

The voice acting is right on par with everything else, so I suppose they get points for consistency. Let's just say it won't help you immerse yourself in the story. The male lead shouts everything like Freddy from Scooby-Doo... and listening to the female lead is like attending a reading of the epic poem "I'm a Large Plank of Wood" put on by the National Association of Cardboard Boxes. "Carnby. Please. Come quickly. There are things. Terrible things. I'm begging. You."

The game does have some good elements... the design is extremely strong, and I can see how, with some more work, it could provide the foundation for the creepiest horror game ever. It isn't there yet, though, and what good it does have is simply overpowered by its problems. It may work on a console, but on a PC, it falls very flat. I can't recommend this game... I am a tremendous fan of the genre, both in gaming and in literature, and even I couldn't bring myself to complete it. It goes out of its way to prove that console gaming will eventually ruin the medium. No, that's not fair, because Silent Hill was brilliant...

Honestly, if you're the sort of person who really enjoys immersing yourself in a PC game, this is likely not going to satisfy you. If you're looking for a truly spooky and atmospheric horror game for the PC, please go out and pick up a copy of Nocturne. That game reflects real care by the designers, and contains possibly the most effective interpretation of Lovecraftian monsters I've ever seen.

This game would have been wonderful in 1997. Graphically and aurally, that's right where it is. By today's standards, though, it simply doesn't measure up. A lot of these problems could be addressed in patch form, so there is hope... but I have a very strong suspicion that we won't see that happen...

I really enjoyed this game immensely - the graphics are great, the storyline is very good, and it really is scary in places. A couple of times, I rounded a corner to be faced with some nasty thing, and actually yelled out loud because I was so startled. The soundtrack is INCREDIBLY creepy, the lighting is very dim, and the monsters make sufficiently scary noises, which all lend themselves to an astonishingly scary atmosphere - you'll stay on your toes, believe me.

The monsters are pretty grotesque, and this isn't a game I'd want younger children to play if I were a parent. There's a huge amount of reading in the game, and much of it is superfluous - any important clues are generally easily distinguished from them. There were a couple of bugs I found, mostly with objects not wanting to be moved in the right way for the next progression to happen, but overall, a relatively bug-free and stable game.

There are several weapons available, and a goodly number of monsters to fight. The puzzles can be challenging, and it's possible to get entirely lost - but those aren't bad things, in my view.

Get ready to be creeped out, and go grab this one.

A great looking game. Moody. Atmospheric. Creepy. Unfortunately the PC version is so riddled with bugs and lockups that it's almost unplayable ...Save your money or at least wait until the manufacturer comes out with a patch.

Now, i don't spend nearly as much time playing games as many of the folks represented in this forum; i'm no "authority" or "expert," but i know what i like, and i really liked this.

Ok, so the screen goes dark when you open a gate to reveal the open gate. That doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the game. That's picky stuff. The atmosphere with its dark look and dark music is very effective, especially when playing the game in a darkened room. The nasty creatures each have their own challenges and appear just enough so that the anticipation of creatures is as nerve-wracking if not more than their actual appearances. i think the artists did a great job creating a detailed environment of dread. You can look at the dishevelled rooms and bloody hallways and piece together what must have happened there. The scenery is very detailed with a lot of character.

Playing as two different characters with their unique respective scenarios is a giant plus, despite the fact the female's scenario tends to be a little arbitrary and linear (i.e. being magically forced to a certain door in the mansion at one point was a bit silly). The puzzles are reasonably challenging and logical. The family history is well-developed and fun to delve into, especially how the two characters in their respective scenarios find out different things about certain characters that changes one's view of what they were all about. (i.e. J.M.'s fortress workshop notes) Unlike your standard shoot-em-up, strategy plays a bigger role than blowing everything to smithereens. Despite what some reviewers said, i completed both scenarios with hundreds of shotgun shells and other ammo left. It's actually pretty easy to run past many nasties without firing a shot. The saving system isn't really a big deal as long as you plan well. Some of the flirtatious talk between the two characters while they're supposed to be trudging through the next thing to hell seemed a bit incongruous to me but i suppose that must have something to do with setup for sequels. i've read many complaints about the controls on the PC version, but i found no problems with the interface, myself. i changed a couple of the default buttons and that was enough to make the interface pretty easy. (and this is coming from a fellow who has a terrible time getting about in first-person shoot-em-ups)
Bottom line: it's scary, bloody, moody, immersive, challenging and therefore fun and recommended.

I have been playing the Alone in the dark series for many years. My first ever experience was back in '93 or so. I purchased a 3DO interactive multiplayer and Alone in the dark. I waited till night and played it and got scared half to death. The next day I was edgy everywhere I went. Well, The New Nightmare has got the magic after the not so great titles in between the first ever and this, the newest. I waited till night once again, hooked up my laptop at my desk and played it with headphones and no lights. Absolutely wonderful. In the first half hour I got startled 3-4 times and am already dying to know what is going to happen to Edward and Aline and who some of these ominous people are.

The graphics are really great, and lightyears ahead of the old Alone in the darks. I place the graphics near, but not quite the level of the Gamecube remakes of Resident evil of course. (Barely anything matches those). I play this game on my Intel Mobile Celeron 2.0GHz 256kb L2 cache, 256mb pc2100 DDR 266mhz ram, 64mb AGP Intel Extreme Graphics 2 equiped notebook computer and it plays beautifully.

Highly recommended especially to old fans of the series.

I really enjoyed Resident Evil and thought that this would be something similar so I bought it.

This game starts out decent but looses itself after about five minutes. The controls are absolutely horrible because they were made for console and are a pain to use on a PC. You're often asked pointless questions such as do you want to climb the ladder yes or no. Why would you be asked that when you have to climb the ladder either way? In some places you can lock yourself out from going back even though you might need something in a previous room (such as going back through a mirror when you first enter the house).

Enemies are often placed in such a way that if you walk into the room you wouldn't have a chance to shoot them and they would attack you right away. This would have been OK if you could find extra first aid kits, or bullets for that matter.

You'll also most likely run out of ammo and will have to start over many times simply because the game wants you to follow certain path around the manor and if you decide to explore for yourself you will soon end up dead. More plot/path flexibility would help quite a bit.

A reviewer who said that atmosphere and graphics of this game were spoiled by bad gameplay was right. I never got very far because I found this game boring, repetitive and annoying. Not at all like good old classics of the same genre.

You can play both roles in this game. It is suggested you play the male first then the female role. The controls were bad. You use the same keyboard key for several functions.I had a hard time getting items. You have to be in a specific position or you will not get the message "you have picked up ___". In both roles you are forced to go back through the same areas several times. In order to climb a latter it asks if you want to climb [yes] or [no]. After answering yes, you still have to climb the latter. Instead of just letting you climb or letting you appear at the top. In two specific scenes where I had to look through a telescope, the game would not let me out of the telescope scene. I had to alt-ctr-del to end the game in order to break out of that scene. This happened in both roles. I wrote Tech Support. The suggestions they made I had already tried and did not work. Their last suggestion was, "you only need to know this specific number____". Which they gave me so I could skip the entire telescope scene. Combat was the real nightmare. You are playing from a third person view, which makes aiming more of a guess than a steady hand. I was able to get through it with the help of Prima's Guide and a gaming web site. The graphics are good but the mouths never moved when they would talk to each other. If I had read some of the reviews before buying this game I think I wouldn't have purchased it.

The original Alone in the Dark game was truly innovative and set many technological landmarks for other PC games of the day. Oh how far we have strayed. This game uses the Nocturne engine and, like every previous game that has used the Nocturne engine, the end result is washed out graphics, horribly awkward camera angles, bad movement control, and the joy of having to fight offscreen creatures that you can't see unless you run to a different area. I can only imagine that the Nocturne engine is [inexpensive] to license.

This is my first foray into Alone in The Dark, horror/mystery-type games and my overall opinion is positive. Every once in a while, however, I am finding myself a bit frustrated from just being stumped in general, because occasionally the clues you have to find to move forward can be a bit of a stretch of logic (that's my opinion). Other than that, I am having fun (those that are reading that have played it, I am stuck in the Library with that darn winged monster-thing, it just won't die even though I figured out the shooting trick-- but I'll get it!). The reviewer below my review obviously played the part of Aline (yes, you can play one of two characters that start off in two different locations with different equipment-- oh! The replayability value!) and gave up in the first 10 minutes without getting to any of the literature that explains the creatures of Darkness and their (obvious) aversion to light. After you start finding some of the reading --Obed's Doctorate of Phriendship was a good laugh! :-)-- you rapidly become immersed in a pretty sinister plot. And yes, some cinematics and monsters *will* pop out when you don't expect them, and they *will* startle you. Okay, the graphics, resolution and some of the music could be better (let's not forget the year it was from, games have come a long way since then), but overall I think the extra cheese makes the creepy atmosphere all the better.

Windows XP users will have difficulty installing and running the game unless they create a new copy of autoexec.nt, which newer versions of Windows, by default, do not have. In order to get this (and lots of other old Windows programs) running, check out Microsoft help here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324767

Within my experience it is not necessary to create a new command.nt as the help article suggests-- if you follow the instructions for just autoexec.nt you should be cruising toward Alone in the Dark bliss!

All-in-all, this game packs lots of entertainment, I wish it had a game timer to tell me how many hours I've spent lost in it (use the maps!!!). Used and new under two bucks? How can you go wrong? :-)

i buyed this game, because i like "surviver-horror" games (Silent hill,Resident Evil).And what is good in surviver-horror games :surviving tricks(like :zombie:can be killed by bullet in head :-)fear(it's good itself),reaction.

Story

You are waiting in a helicopter,with your partner(a girl)
but somethin' goes really wrong...
The pilot turns into... ...something like a demon.
You are parachute to the closest point from the heli(a forest).
Your partner is landed in a castle's roof.

You will find out that the pair of you are landed in a island,that is controlled by a doctor ,who creats demoness creatures.you have to find your partner ,and together destroy the island,and evacuate yourselves.Really easy aren't it?

Inventory:

At the start you have a: first aid kit,flashlight,save charm(really important,you can't save without this)and a pretty .357 Revolver.
As you play the game you will have more weapons:three barrelled shotgun,rocket pistol,granade pistol,plasma gun(really cool,at the end ,the ammo will regenerade to never-end.

This is a rellly good game,very good job,it is all have that a survival horror have.

if you like sirviver horror games,well,dont miss this!

This is a really