Customer Reviews

Alone in the Dark

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Most people attribute the start of the Survival Horror genre to Resident Evil. While you can trace the birth of Survival Horror back far, far before that game (to Sweet Home or, if you want to stretch it, to Haunted House in 1981), modern Survival Horror games were firmly established by the first Alone in the Dark. Since that first game, though, the series has been an up and down roller coaster that never seemed to be able to outmatch some of the better known and more famous franchises like Resident Evil or Silent Hill.

So, when Eden Games started to work on reinventing the franchise, I was cautiously optimistic. A lot of the ideas and concepts they spoke of seemed like great ideas, and they seemed to be trying to Do Something Different. Unfortunately, the sum is not greater than its parts and Alone in the Dark, while reaching for the stars, can't stay afloat.

Things begin appropriately apocalyptic. Edward Carnby awakens in some hotel with some bad men arguing about cryptic shenanigans. Carnby, no longer useful, is led up to the roof to be executed but before that can happen, bad juju hits the fan as a "scar" tears through the building. From here, this first episode really picks up as you're trying to escape the building alive.

Here is where the goodness lies. Alone in the Dark has a great opening that's appropriately cinematic but in such a way that only games can do. The building starts to fall apart, you have to run and jump your way to safety, climb along the outside of the building while debris tumbles and while watching cars below you explode. You learn how Eden Games created some appropriately realistic fire for the game as you watch it spread and have to put it out or use it as a weapon. You'll see things happen to the various rooms you're in that will make you want to believe you're watching a cinematic, not playing through a game. It's very cool.

And then you try to move.

Movement is the worst part of the game. It's all controlled with one stick which makes actually moving feel as if you're controlling a drunk, disobedient person. Once you get a melee weapon in your hand, you'll see another problem: using the right analog stick to attack. You'll have to swing it one direction, then another just to attack. Unfortunately it's sluggish, as is the animation, resulting in you taking more damage than you should need to. Fighting monsters becomes a chore, one you'll grow to hate because as the game progresses, you'll learn that basically all monsters can only die via fire. So, grab that chair, light it on fire and swing away...hoping you hurt it more than it hurts you. Similarily, gun fights are also not terrific as you have to pop into first person whenever you want to shoot someone. No lock and pop here.

Likewise, if walking around makes you feel like a drunk, driving is a good approximation of drunk driving, I believe. The controls are incredibly loose and in the first driving portion of the game, loose controls isn't a good idea. What should be an exciting escape sequence that involves the ground behind you exploding, tears appearing across the streets, buildings collapsing, fire, death explosions, cats and dogs sleeping together turns into frustration as you'll probably find yourself repeating the episode. Over. And Over. From the beginning. It loses its fun and becomes a chore.

Towards the end of the game, the game pulls a Zelda: Wind Waker moment and has you hunting down certain things and destroying them in an effort, one has to assume, to artificially lengthen the game. If there's one thing that Alone in the Dark does exceptionally well, it's the pacing. When you hit this moment it's like running smack dab into a brick wall. It's sad.

There's a lot going for Alone in the Dark, don't get me wrong. The inventory system is a cool innovation. The whole episodic "TV show/DVD" feel is perfect, with DVD-style menus complemented by the ability to switch to any episode you like. The graphics are pretty decent, as is the engine it's running on. Some cool, small features, like the ability to blink your eyes is very effective during some sequences. And the pacing--for the most part--is perfect; it can really get your adrenaline going...until you're forced to repeat the same thing over and over again.

I really wanted to like Alone in the Dark. I didn't honestly think that Eden Games would elevate the game to the front of the pack, but there was enough little things and innovations that I thought maybe it'd be a good game. When I played it, I was amazed. Eden Games wanted no less than to shoot for the moon and make the most ambitious Survival Horror game yet. Unfortunately, reality is sometimes like gravity and unfortunately Alone in the Dark isn't the masterpiece I, and Atari, I'm sure, was hoping for. Definitely give it a rent, but I'd hold off on purchasing it.

I've been reviewing games for Amazon since 1999. I've seen the worst of games...Daikatana, most especially. Now, after many moons have passed, I have come across one of the worst, if not, the buggiest, most annoying piece of program I have ever encountered in my life. Alone in the Dark is a major disaster, from it's storyline, dialogue, annoying voice acting, frustrating controls, unforgiving checkpoints, and the most buggiest collision detection EVER! The only PLUS in this game are the graphics but that's about it. So I'll keep my review straight and to the point:

GRAPHICS: Excellent. No complaints

CONTROLS: Main character moves like a tank with a bad engine. Controls are completely unresponsive. Some buttons do not function as stated. For example, you press A to turn off a flashlight. If you're holding a gun in one hand and holding a flashlight on the other, you can't press A to turn it off. You have to press the gamepad down, open your virtual jacket and then unequip from there. HOW TEDIOUS CAN THIS GET??? Another example: you're standing next to an object your wish to pick-up, an "pick-up object icon" appears telling you to press A. To pick up an object, press A. The problem with this is that turning off the flashlight you need to press A as well. So if you're holding a flashlight and you need to turn off it off (it has limited battery life by the way), you'll have to move away from the pickable object so you can turn off the flashlight.
Here's another example again: You have a zombie attacking you, controls say you have to double click the left analog stick to do a quick turn. If you're holding a gun or a melee weapon, quick turn won't work, but then sometimes it does!!!
And here's another example: Driving a car is like driving a bar of soap on a smooth glass. A slight turn on the stick will spin your car uncontrollably. There's an action sequence in this game that requires some driving. I will warn you now, prepare to do this about 200 to 500 times because you will fail.

BUGGY ACTION SEQUENCE: There's an action sequence on Episode 2 where you have to escape an earthquake. The entire driving sequence requires you to get away from the earthquake before ti swallows your car. Unfortunately, the car is just completely unresponsive. Second, there's a jump that you have to make before the entire road cracks open. Sometimes you'll make the jump sometimes you won't. What's weird is that once your car flies over the cracked road, the game will turn into a full motion video showing your car making the jump. But once your car lands, somehow the game randomly decides whether the earthquake catches the tail end of your car thus killing you instantly or by some algorithmic calculation, you do make it. But that's just half of the problem because this action sequence will continue for the next 10 minutes and if you fail halfway or even on the last part of this sequence, the game will throw you back to beginning of the sequence. TOTALLY UNFORGIVING CHECKPOINTS. By the way, you can't skip the full motion videos which means you'll be forced to watch cheesy FMVs over and over again everytime you fail an action sequence.

How about weapons you ask? Forget about using guns. Guns are completely ineffective against zombies (which you will be battling the entire game). So if ever you decide to collect ammo, well...it's pretty much useless and waste of space. Zombies can only be killed by fire. If you do have to use your gun to kill zombies, you'll have to find gasoline or any flammable liquid, combine it with your bullets, load your gun with said "gasoline dipped" bullets and then shoot the zombies. But wait, you can't just shoot them anywhere. Zombies have this glowing yellow areas of their body that's vulnerable to fire. So on top of mixing and matching items to make fire, you'll have to be a sharpshooter to hit the zombies where it hurts. Otherwise, you'll just be wasting time and ammo.

I think I've said enough. This game is the worst ever for 2008. Do not waste your money on this. Believe me, when I read the poor reviews, I told myself "Nah, I don't believe these reviews, I will buy it and try it myself." So now, I am $60.00 poorer, and my blood pressure just skyrocketed after playing this game. Avoid this game. Stick to the DOS version of Alone in the Dark.

Many of the other reviewers have very similar feelings.

At first the game seems interesting, unique, fancy, innovative, and pretty. Not long into it you'll begin to encounter the very real problems the game has. Controlling your character with any precision is impossible. You can select first person, which is painfully sluggish, but the game forces you back into 3rd person most of the time. 3rd person _looks_ really nice, and I can respect the artist's vision of the world. Trying to actually function in 3rd person is a whole different thing: completely frustrating. The camera is rarely where you want it to be looking. At many points in the game you may have to resort to hand to hand combat, which will be forced in the 3rd person, and will make you want to throw your fancy wireless remote right out of the window, followed by the XBOX and TV, still plugged into the wall. At least hand to hand, while completely worthless in this game, isn't like Silent Hill: no stance fighting. But: basically as useless.

The inventory system, while it seems innovative, is actually quite stale once you get a bit into the game. It's also extremely clunky and hard to use under duress. The healing system, too, at first seems innovative, but is actually quite obnoxious. Let's face it, they were neat ideas on a white board in a room full of excited marketing guys -- but in reality they don't work well. The game boasts this open style combination system. Flammable liquid in container, tape, box of bullets, throw at bad guy, shoot, repeat. Put alcohol on bullets, aim for little cracks in baddies, shoot repeatedly because the targeting system is crappy, repeat. There really isn't much too it after you've done it a few times. One little gripe here: the eye blinking spectral vision thing. Yes, push down and hold the right thumbstick which is also what you'd need to use to aim, precisely, on a moving target, to kill it. Who play tested this, and where can I find them? I'd like to have a little dialog with them about this subject.

Vehicle driving... man, what can I say? Nothing like tapping a 3" curb and watching the vehicle fly up into the air and shed all of it's fenders in one motion. You can do some neat things with vehicles... cut open the gas tanks, fill bottles, use them as rolling bombs, all kinds of things. Too bad the interface sucks so bad that it's hard to pull any of that stuff off. Once again: it sounds neat, but doesn't work out that way.

To be fair, I haven't completed the game as of yet. Honestly, while I like to see things through, I may not. Some of the puzzles are, frankly, very annoying. Some of the stuff is very... cryptic and without any real clue of what is happening. Sometimes you'll find yourself somewhere, nothing is happening, and you don't really know what to do next. Other times the solution is so obvious and streamlined that it is a wonder they put it in at all. The story is not engaging. The story doesn't even make sense in a few places.

I could go on and on, but basically I am very disappointed in this game. The fire effects are out of this world, the environments are decent, water is awesome, and there is some definite lighting/atmosphere neatness... but that's about it. Otherwise, the game is very awkward, repetitive, confusing, and above all else: frustrating. It's just not the game it could be, and it's not the game that was advertised. This is no surprise, none the less, it is what it is.

I really wanted this game to be spooky, creepy, innovative, cool, engaging, and immersive. It's not. It's just a waste of time and money.

I purchased Alone in the Dark at the same time I bought Silent Hill: Homecoming. I'm a sucker for survival horror, and both games came highly recommended. The difference between the two is quite illuminating.

There has been a trend recently to reverse the gamist influence of tabletop role-playing games on their video game counterparts. Consoles don't lend themselves well to complex rules systems and designers find their beautifully rendered enemies disrupted by floating hit point numbers over their heads. In response, Alone in the Dark goes full simulationist - forget the rules, this is all about horror!

And so Alone in the Dark, like Silent Hill, starts out in media res. You learn to play as you go by ferociously clicking buttons to blink your eyes so you can see straight. You play an amnesiac anti-hero with a secret connection to a certain stone held by a certain priest. A bald villain, named Crowley (yet another mystical foe named after Aleister Crowley, the occultist), marches you to your doom until he is disrupted by something even scarier: extradimensional tears in the fabric of reality.

Thing is, extradimensional tears aren't all that scary. The entity that is in charge enjoys possessing hot chicks and growling in a deep voice, instantly rendering the villain rather mundane. Those looking for the Cthulhu Mythos-inspired connection that suffused the original Alone in the Dark will find the chatty archnemesis lacking.

What Alone in the Dark does very well is completely conceal the rules from the player. Our hero can only carry so many items in his jacket - no unlimited, unrealistic inventory here! He can swing weapons or even light them on fire, and the fire mechanics allow him to do everything from blast explosive bottles out of the air to pouring flammable liquid on his bullets so they shoot fire. Realistic, huh?

There are no hit points, no health meters, and not much in the way of rules. What Alone in the Dark lacks in gamist structure it makes up for in narrativist railroading, with a capital R.

Alone in the Dark is hellbent on telling a story, and the developers just happen to drag the player along for the ride. It even has a function to allow you to skip any scene, with a brief montage at the beginning of each replay to describe what happened "previously, in Alone in the Dark..." I played a car chase sequence fifty times before I gave up. I ran around with a flashlight trying to make some black goo not eat me (repeatedly watching the starting sequence of a sewer worker swearing effusively before being eaten) thirty times before I gave up. I teetered inside a precariously balanced bus on the edge of the cliff dozens of times before the game crashed.

And so we have Alone in the Dark's problem - if you want to make a game all about story, it better be a good story. Alone in the Dark provides absolutely no guidance as to what to do next. You are guaranteed to die over and over until you figure it out, which renders any interesting cut scene or curious camera angle meaningless after the fifth time. The game is a buggy mess too. It crashes constantly; at one point, a villain just stood there and let me whack at him to no effect. Maybe he felt bad for me.

Alone in the Dark tries hard, but like an action blockbuster, it has no interesting story to tell. With stereotypical villains, enemies that aren't scary, frustrating camera angles, and a railroading plot that will have you tearing your hair out, Alone in the Dark will leave players alone in the dark.

Worst controls I've ever had for a console gaming system. It has 1st person and 3rd person. Your character walks slower than an 80 year old lady even though there's a fire and buildings are crashing around him and there's some crazy malevolent force trying to eat you. If you go into first person view to see what you're doing or get a better angle on something, it kicks back to 3rd person as soon as you turn a certain way. It literally would not stay in first person for the life of me. And to walk, you use one stick to move forward and one stick to move directionally....it was horribly done. It wasn't scary at all, either. I gave up on this one, I wouldn't recommend even borrowing it from someone, it's that bad. Don't waste the time turning on your console to play this...that bad.

This game isn't even worth the $15 I paid for it. It's too glitchy, and filled with too many bugs. The driving is also HORRENDOUS. Everything is just clunky, even down to the inventory.

It is also the first game that I quit playing in the first day of receiving it. I usually give most games a chance, but this didn't deserve it. If I payed $60 for this, I would have a heart attack, die, return to life, then die again.

Avoid it.

Despite being a successor to the early 90s horror series Alone in the Dark, the new Alone in the Dark game is only partially related to those old games. It has its own merits, and its own shortcomings, but does not seem particularly related to previous games and must be considered more as a stand-alone game.

The story of the game involves a doomsday cult trying to summon an ancient evil using Edward Carnby, the private detective and protagonist from Alone in the Dark (the original), who has been brought to the present by unknown means and has amnesia. At first, the evil presence (marked by glowing cracks in walls that move and seek out prey as if alive) is limited to a single building, but it quickly spreads throughout the entirety of New York City, leaving Edward trapped in Central Park.

As far as stories go, this is a decent one for a survival horror game, and there are a lot of good scares and surprises. In the beginning, you're trapped in a building where the very walls are trying to get you, and in addition you're also dealing with zombies - people swallowed up by the cracks brought back as malicious outlets for the main demon to speak and act through. The main demon's voice is kind of bad, though - it's the same deep monster voice that has basically become a cliche in movies about demons, and it makes the glowing cracks go from "unidentified, unintelligent, but malicious entity" to "scary-voiced demon guy". In fact, as far as scares go, the main problem with Alone in the Dark is that you're so rarely alone. Besides the short-lived survivors you encounter throughout the game, you also have a sidekick, Sarah, who comes and goes throughout parts of the game. Well, "sidekick" is a bit generous, since there's not a lot of cooperative gameplay involved. But the point is that there's no feeling of isolation; it's more like a disaster movie that happens to have monsters in it.

The standard gameplay is a fairly regular survival-horror control system. The game is normally played in third-person, with somewhat awkward tank-style controls (IE you have to walk, then turn, then walk, rather then just turning while you walk). The camera in particular is hard to manage, and trying to look around while moving or anything besides walking in a straight line was pretty difficult to manage. Aiming firearms is done exclusively in first-person, but melee combat has a bit of a unique twist to it - it's done in third person like normal gameplay segments, and swinging melee weapons is done by "swinging" the right thumbstick from one direction to another. This works pretty well in most cases, and it changes depending on the weapon being used. For example, with long weapons like 2x4s or swords, you only have the option to swing horizontally or vertically. However, with heavier items like fire extinguishers, you can also use the item as a battering ram to smash down doors.

Most of the enemies in the game can only be temporarily defeated by weapons, and must be consumed by fire to be fully destroyed. To this end, innovating ways to use fire as a weapon is one of the most important parts of the game. The most basic form of this is to light a melee weapon on fire by sticking it into the flames; the flames don't last forever, but they're an instant-kill to most of the monsters that you'll face, and the enemy cowers and flees accordingly. In fact, I would say that swinging a burning 2x4 while your formerly aggressive zombie enemies cower and flee before you is probably the most satisfying part of the game. There are other methods as well that must be thought up with more open thinking - things like molotov cocktails and improvised flamethrowers made out of a can of hair spray and a match. While the "make weapons out of things to defeat your foes" aspect is pretty much limited to fire, the fact that fire is what destroys your enemies makes it at least plausible.

Your inventory in the game is represented by the holsters and pouches in your jacket. The left side of your jacket is used for small items like boxes of ammo or batteries, there's a holster for a gun and a flashlight on your chest, and the right side is used for bottles and cans of various types. The fact that there's a legitimate, actual inventory (you actually look down in first-person to access it, and it's in real-time too so you have to hurry and put stuff together instead of just calmly making a molotov cocktail during a pause) helps with the atmosphere that's being created. In a similar manner, wounds show up on your body and must be healed with either bandages or a first-aid spray. There's no health bar (as with the inventory, all HUD elements are minimal in this game), but you can get a general idea of how injured you are by the status of your wounds (which are still present after being healed, but aren't red and open). You also get a phone/PDA at a point in the game that allows you to make calls and gives you access to a GPS map of the area you are in.

In many situations it's necessary to hotwire a car or activate a fusebox (which is done in real time, often with monsters closing in on you) by picking the right wires to spark together. You're often frantically pressing wires together hoping that they're the right ones but doing it quickly enough to get away from the monsters closing in on your car. This is a pretty good part of the game in an atmospheric sense. Driving the car is another thing, though; the controls are wonky and in most cases the demands of the game as far as getting away from giant apocalyptic cracks in the road are a little bit over-the-top. I spent a good hour on what is really a five-minute segment where you're trying to get away from a giant series of cracking roads and earthquakes because the car didn't turn enough, or it turned too much, or I hit another motorist and the car got stuck, or I hit something at a bad angle. The last one in particular is annoying; at the end of the sequence in question, you're supposed to go flying out through a window in a building, but the first time I got there, I assumed that was what was supposed to happen, but I hit it at an odd angle and I didn't go through (I left a mark on the glass though). The next two times I made it there, I tried looking around for other exits but got blocked off. Only on the last time did I realize what had happened and just drive straight into the glass.

The graphics in the game are pretty good; the best graphics are the fire graphics, which flicker and dance pretty realistically, while the worst are probably the wounds that Edward receives on his body. The idea's neat, but in actuality they're just the same image copy-pasted onto different parts of his body. The "slash that ripped through cloth and pierced the skin" image looks okay when it's on his pants or shirt, but when it's on his jacket it just looks like someone slapped it on like a sticker. Also, you get the same kind of wound no matter how you got the injury. Overall, though, the graphics are decent and atmospheric.

The sound isn't bad, but the music just feels wrong. It's a nice attempt at atmospheric music, but most of the time it's not so much "scary" as it is "epic", with giant sweeping musical interludes and ominous chanting that fits more with "Carmina Burana" than a horror movie. It just feels overstated, and not particularly scary. Furthermore, it gets old pretty quickly, too.

As a whole, the worst part of Alone in the Dark is its execution. It has a lot of good ideas, and most of the elements taken by themselves are pretty sound. However, the actual execution of the ideas - the controls, the situation, the atmosphere - are all really terrible and frustrating, and the game seems more like a battle against the game itself than against any monsters or puzzles. The interactive environments seem more linear than natural; despite the fact that it's supposed to be stuff that's done in a manner that makes it seem "realistic", there's so many scripted sequences that it's hard to get into it.

As a whole, Alone in the Dark deserves a 6/10 - good ideas, but poor execution.

One of the most disappointing titles of 08 is Alone in the Dark.

Pros:
- good visuals (but you often won't be able to appreciate them due to a crazy camera)
- good effects (fire and electrical)
- good soundtrack
- good (looking) inventory (it's only good conceptually though, NOT good in practice)
- a nice rebuild-a-world concept. Eden did this incredibly well with Test Drive Unlimited. I suggest you buy that game instead.

Cons:
- EVERYTHING ELSE
- the camera/view/perspective is insane and simply uncontrollable. This game has a 1st person/3rd person/3rd person (forced) perspective. It switches back and forth between these perspectives every 5 seconds against your will (you have no choice), disorienting you, and when the perspective changes the control layout also changes which is even further disorienting. This means that if you are looking around in 1st person (with right thumbstick - like every other game in the world) and the game sudden changes to 3rd person (because they think it's a neat cinematic gimmick), that right thumbstick no longer functions as it did before. In combat, it gets worse. that same thumbstick changes yet again depending on the weapon. Wow, that, is, nuts.
- first person view is too slow
- controls are insane and uncontrollable. As described above, they keep changing and you have to unlearn everything you just learned and relearn what the h*ll everything does based on what perspective you are in and what the situation is. That's the problem. Your brain will still be using the layout you were able to use 2 seconds ago, because that's natural, intuitive and the way most good games work. h*ll, even really bad games have consistent controls.
- there is NO option for the gamer to map the controller as in other games. If they'd put the controls in the gamer's hands, maybe this would have been a 2 or a 3.
- even if you master the constantly changing controls, they are still slow, clunky and unresponsive. Doing things like jumping and just trying to pick something up can be goofy.
- While the inventory system is interesting and has a professional looking interface, it functions like everything else in this game, with poor unintuitive controls. Beyond that, the inventory doesn't pause the action, so you'll get your butt kicked in combat trying to figure out what to do with the inventory...nice
- the use "fire to kill everything" gimmick is overused and seems a bit silly. Fire isn't ubiquitous in real life.
- dialog not really inspired
- story not really engaging
- don't really care about the characters
- driving is horrid. I won't even talk about it.
- combat is tedious, long, difficult and silly using the clunky controls. and again, UNINTUITIVE and utterly inconsistent.
- All of the above means POOR GAME TESTING. Somebody, somewhere at some point must have mentioned the camera and controls. My guess is that somebody did, they weren't the boss, and the boss never played the game.

Usually with bad games, you have things like bad AI which runs right at you, low-rez textures, bugs, poor collision detection, stuff like that. These are hallmarks of low budgets, rushed titles, noob programmers, etc...Alone in the Dark is very bad is UNUSUAL ways. Like they had a big budget, decent developers, and had good tools in their hands, but still managed to create a monstrosity. That crazy show "Cop Rock" comes to mind. A complete disaster.

I've been thinking about writing a review for this game for the longest time, mainly asking myself, why bother? Many people have already spoken about the game and it has clearly divided those into love it or hate camps. Obviously from my star rating, I belong in the former, but by all means don't blow off this review based on a simple star rating!

To be blunt and honest; Alone in the Dark is probably my favorite survival-horror game of this console generation. It has great looking graphics (amazing fire effects), an interesting plot and an overall creepiness factor to its setting (Central Park). When you first take control of the character, it will probably feel ''wacky'' to you. mainly because the controls are somewhat similiar to the ancient PlayStation 1 and Sega Dreamcast controls of the older Resident Evil games. Edward (the protagonist) moves like a tank, and requires you to press ''A'' in order for him to run (unlike Alan Wake where the speed depends on the pressure of the left joy stick - excuse my ignorance on using old terminology).

But why do I like this game so much? What makes this game stand out to me compared to everything else? Why do game critics think this game is crap but not I? (I hope you like hypothetical questions!). I like this game because it did something to me that a game has not done in a long time - it required me to actually think about the most plausible and best solutions to solve complex puzzles and problems without assisting me in anyway. For example, you will encounter hallways with black goo littering the floor. This black goo will suck you up and kill you unless you shine a light over it to clear a path. The first possible solution to this problem is to use your flashlight, which is what I saw the most in YouTube videos as the most common solution (I laughed when the flashlight's batteries died!). So when I came across the black goo, instead of using my flashlight, I took a chair and set it on fire and carried it down the hallway causing the black goo to move to the sides allowing me to cross to the end of the hallway without dying.

That's why I like this game so much - multiple solutions to a problem! There is no definite ''right'' answer, it all depends on the player's solution!

The game does have cons when it comes to the difficulty of the driving sequences, but after a few times, you get the hang of it. Also, destroying the evil roots can become tedious, however it will allow you to appreciate the effort that was put into the game's details of Central Park!

Make no mistake, I loved every episode of this game! Yet, I can admit it is not for everyone - not for the faint of heart. If you are not capable of thinking outside the box on different obstacles, and not willing to adapt to an ancient control scheme; then this game is not for you. There were times where I was saying ''expletives'' to my television, times where I wanted to give up and go play Halo, but I didn't. I continued on, eventually pulled myself through every sequence without skipping a single part, I solved every puzzle and mastered every driving sequence. And when the credits rolled, I appreciated every part, the music, the detail of Central Park, the ''dreadfully awesome'' driving sequences and flow of the story. To me, this game is a keeper, and I don't regret spending $60 on it. In fact, ill probably pick up my copy off of my shelf one day and take it for another play through, for me, it was that good. Thanks for reading!

I saw that this game had 2 1/2 stars and was outraged.

I got this game a while ago (for the XBOX 360) and played it for maybe 15 minutes. The beginning of the game seems interesting enough with it's very imaginative controls. You wake up from a coma (I think.. it's been a while) and you have to blink using the analog control or else your vision gets blurry from the drowsiness.

Anyway, once you get to the serious gameplay, this game will make you wish you spent the money on a baseball bat so you could destroy every object in your house with rage. With melee combat, you have to swing using the analog control. That sounds fun, doesn't it? In theory it sounds very interesting, but in reality it is the worst decision for any game ever. You can 'get the hang' of the melee combat but that only goes so far, because it is very slow, unresponsive and sluggish. By the time you swing back the melee object (chair, 2 by 4, pipe, etc.) your enemy has already attacked you twice and got out of dodge. And then you have to heal yourself, which involves going into your pockets (by the way, this pocket menu does not pause the game, so you're still vulnerable AS you're healing yourself because the controls are too sluggish to fight back). Trying to fight in this game is basically the equivalence to trying to fight a pitbull when you're drunk.

The only thing going for this game is the story and the amazing fire physics. If the people at Microsoft weren't idiots who banned cheat devices like Gameshark for their game systems, I would recommend this game. The gameplay is horrible but the storyline is good. Not good enough to play through this horrible game but still.

I would only recommend this game to people with an unlimited amount of patience. I like a challenge, but this game isn't difficult, it's just cheap.