Our first steps Alone in the Dark

[draganess]

Xbox.com | News & Features - Our first steps Alone in the Dark

Four years in the making, Alone in the Dark for Xbox 360 looks stunning and features many imaginative gameplay ideas to keep you enthralled. This week we got chance to experience three hours in hero Edward Carnby’s eerily troubled life, cowering as New York City gets destroyed by an unseen force with Central Park at the epicentre

Action is slick from the beginning with the prelude to the main story played by you, seen through the eyes of Edward Carnby. Although he appears to be in his mid-thirties Edward is in fact almost 100 years old. Disorientated and suffering from amnesia, our enigmatic hero finds himself held prisoner within an elaborate New York apartment block with an old man named Theophile Paddington. Your captors are interested in keeping the old man alive but want Edward killed. However the unseen force we mentioned literally tears the building apart in an attack that destroys most of New York City, and in the process foils your captor’s plans. It’s your first task to help Paddington to safety, whereupon he reveals Edward’s important destiny.

The pace of the game never lets up with Edward constantly solving deadly conundrums. The environment is interactive and unpredictably volatile; the unseen force manifesting itself as ‘fissures’ that disfigure objects and people… you’ll notice Edward bears a scar on his face, but its origins are secret (for now). These fissures cause destruction, leading to one of the game’s most impressive features: fire. This behaves with uncanny realism, forming barriers that Edward must extinguish, or it can be used to burn through doors and defend against demon-possessed humans.

There are many cool ways to physically interact with the environment. Edward can combine items such as a health canister and Zippo lighter to create a flame thrower, for example, or point and aim both gun and torch to target monsters lurking in the shadows. Manipulating objects is done by twirling the analogue sticks, and Edward can position anything in his grasp anywhere around his body. If moved with considerable force, an object can also be smashed into another – a fire extinguisher through a wooden door perhaps…

Security pads and vehicles can be hot wired into action, indeed there are many uses for abandoned cars – puncturing the fuel tank with a screwdriver transforms it into a huge Molotov Cocktail, exploding high into the air. Sticky tape can glue smaller explosives to unwary enemies for dark comedy effect!

Have no doubt, Alone in the Dark is a real showcase game for Xbox 360 and one that we’re seriously looking forward to playing through to the end as soon as possible. It’s a lengthy quest – roughly 12 hours of mayhem – but the innovative TV Drama presentation style allows this to be enjoyed in thrilling instalments.

Alone in the Dark for Xbox 360 will be released 20 June, and is published by Atari.