The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

A History Lesson

That's right!
In between playing the dreadfully long-winded Estpolis Gaiden (please stop already!) and the much too time-consuming Final Fantasy Tactics (but in a good way! People who are looking forward to seeing an acid-pissing review of this one are going to be disappointed, I friggin' LOVE this game!) I have decided to create some backlogs on what has happened before I started this whole mad Blog thingy.
I got this Blog last month, but this insane project has been going on since July 28th 2004, and a LOT has happened in that time, and I'm not talking about the world in general, because, you know, nobody cares, right?

So! The very first game that kicked off this most useful pass-time was:
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare!
And I should point out that the "!" at the end makes the title already 10 times more scary than the game itself.

This is the 4th instalment of the Alone in the Dark series, which is widely credited as the series that started the whole Survival Horror genre, and although they were indeed first, it would be more accurate to say: Infogrames had this basic idea, and then Capcom looked at it and made it good.
I'll use my patented metaphor system to draw you an image:

Infogrames: Look, we made a huge pile of dung, but it's a completely new kind of Dung!

Capcom: And we've just mastered the ancient art of Alchemism and we're going to turn your Dung into gold! It won't be solid gold though, it will still retain it's core Dung value, but there'll be a very nice thick layer of gold around it.

Konami: "That's nice, we'll take that layer of gold then, and fill it with Pure Darkness and solid HELL" and they created what can accurately be called the Scariest Shit out there.

To be honest though, Resident Evil wasn't all that Dungy, and especially the games that star Leon Kennedy kick major Ass. Oh, no, wait, Major Butt, don't wanna get into trouble with the Animal Rights Association.

So what the Hell am I talking about?
I dunno! But that's never stopped me before!
The point is, AitD started the genre, by making an absolutely crappy game, then other companies tweaked the idea into something good, and then The New Nightmare copied that again and tried to get away with it.
So you're getting a Mansion with Pre-rendered backgrounds and Zombies, but you're also getting lousy gameplay and crappy controls.

The only thing they did manage to emulate perfectly is the excruciating voice-acting.
God is it ever bad. It might even be worse than Resident Evil 1. Barry is my hero.
The game offers 2 main characters with their own side of the story: Edward Carnby and Aline Cedrac. Carnby's voice acting isn't so bad, and he definitely has the most interesting course through the game, but Aline is absolutely horrible. And then there's the old woman at the beginning of Aline's story. She looks like an old woman, she's whiny like an old woman, but her voice is of a young inexperienced voice-actress trying to impersonate the voice of an old whiny woman. Crappy.

The renders are pretty nice though, but that's about the only positive thing I can say. Oh, and they make some original use of light in this game. Light can actually be used to keep some monsters at bay, and it is actively used in some puzzles, which is nice.
Music is horrible though. The Silent Hill series has built up a huge fanbase thanks to Akira Yamaoka's brilliant and critically acclaimed Industrial/Rock soundtracks, and it looks like Infogrames were thinking:"Hmmmm, Industrial eh? That means banging things together and making lots of noise, right? We can do that!"

No.

But there is one absolutely totally unforgivable aspect in this game, something that no other Survival Horror has done before, basically because it's an extremely stupid idea: RESPAWNING ENEMIES
Surival Horror has always been about limited health and limited weaponry and ammo, and this game is no exception, but we don't want to make it too easy right? So every enemy in the game respawns if you leave and enter the room again. THANKS Infogrames, I couldn't have done without that.

So basically, this game completely sucks, but it does have some nice surprises here and there, and you might still enjoy it if you're a fan of the genre. A 6 for this one.

posted by Ingen! @ 11:30 AM