User Reviews (1 - 11 of 36)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Don't waste yor time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: July 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Should be ZERO Stars - This Game is really bad.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: August 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Do not waste your money on this game. The controls are horrible, the engine is out of date and the puzzles are simpley find key try door. Any atmosphere this game has is destroyed by its horrible game play, slow and jittery engine and outdated approach to gaming. They should be banned from ever making another crappy sequel. Its a shame because the graphics are pretty, but the implementaion is the worst since the last ultima game...and that is pretty bad.

Pain...so much pain!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: May 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

STAY AWAY!!! This game is terrible! The dialogue, voice acting, plot, music, monsters, interface, and fighting are awful! Ooohh, scare monsters away...with a flashlight? Huh? One character explains how scared she is because everything is, "Really dark," when it's night out. The girl is a simp. (...). The music is a bizarre techno-rumbling which I thought was a computer malfunction. Everything about this game is just so...bad. Horrible. HORRIBLE!!! Oh, and it's not scary at all, just dark.

Far, far below average

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: July 27, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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...

Only played the demo - but that's as far as I wanna go.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: June 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Just a warning for those that aren't familiar with the Alone in the Dark series that they may want to try the demo first. The reason being I tried the demo and have never been more unimpressed by a game hyped such as this.

Fans of the Alone in the Dark series might find the sequel entertaining but some of my gripes with the demo -

(And keep in mind it was the demo so I can't give you an idea on the entire game, but like I said, the demo made me determined not to buy the game.)

-- The perspective is constantly switched. In other words, in one scene, you are looking at the front of the character, when he moves to another area (zone) that is downloaded, you are looking at him from the side, etc... Each small area (zone) has to be downloaded and the viewing perspective constantly changes which is very annoying.

-- The mouse didn't work. At least on the demo. It was keyboard only.

-- Great FX on the character, but the scenery (especially the pouring rain) was TERRIBLE. It was a giant clash comparing this beautifully, lifelike character with some aspects that looked like the old CGA graphics.

-- The gameplay system was very cumbersome. It wasn't managed to give you a smooth flow when you are switching items, etc..

With lack of a better way to explain it, the game reminded me of an 80's game. For instance, the downloading of every small parcel of land (zone) as opposed to smooth flowing through the entire area like ALL games today. And as far as the horror/spooky theme, it was very cheesy. I would recommend Clive Barker's Undying as a game that is everything this one attempted to be.

How to destroy a franchise

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: August 25, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Don't waste your time

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Only being able to save your game a half-dozen times or so over the course of the entire game is bad enough.

But this game is ridiculously hard. The combat engine is horrible, the weapons are ridiculously weak, and ammo pickups are rare, which is unusual since it takes around 50 bullets to kill anything. And when you do run out, unlike in previous aitd titles, you have no defense whatsoever. In fact, it seems like the only way to get anywhere is to constantly run.

I got it for 10 bucks and consider it a waste. After having to wade through the same cut-sceens over and over again, i just got bored with it.

I give it two stars simply because it had some potential. Unlike the resident evil series, this was genuinely scary. The atmosphere is nice and creepy, the use of a flashlight being a nice touch. That and the various monsters pop up out of nowhere, usually when you least expect them.

Boring, Repetitive, annoying.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 09, 2001
Author: Amazon User

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.

Ackward gameplay, bad controls

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 12, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I played the first and second AITD games and loved them. This one leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

First, when I loaded the game on my laptop, the opening animations are so jumpy that I only saw 5 "screen shots" in what was supposed to be a 30+ second animation.

Then I started playing the game, and at one point the game just kept exiting back to the Operating System. After getting very frustrated I updated my standard Win 2000 video drivers (which work fine with every other game/application) to the manufacturers video drivers. It works better now. Check out their tech support site and see how many others have compatibility problems as well.

The gameplay is frustrating because you are fighting creatures that are off screen. You can use the ALT key for automatic aiming, but there is never enough ammo to kill everything. The most annoying feature is that creatures reappear (but again, my ammo doesn't). For example, I'll be in the main room on the first floor and kill the monster there. There are 5 doors in this room and of course I want to check them all out. Every time I re-enter this room, the same monster is there. ARGH!!! I still want to play the game but think I need to start over and follow a different path as others have suggested.

And finally - I have a PIII 700Mhz machine with 8mb video card, I would expect better performance (loading of screens, animations, etc) from a game such as this.

I'm Just Not Sure.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: January 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have been wanting to play this game for the longest time. Finally got it and installed it.
First off...I have only played about 15 minutes of it and here's why.
It started out fine. Nice and spooky. Dark and creepy. Right up my alley. The graphics are great, but movement and interaction a little stiff. But that's not the problem. I can live with that.
I have fought many demons, in games. Killed many spiders and more rats than I could shake a stick at. Not to mention, very powerful demons, bosses and monsters of every variety. I have dismembered, blown up, and what have you.
This is also not a problem.
What stopped me in my tracks then?
Before you even get into the house, you run into some vicious dogs. Possibly demonic, but none the less, dogs. Usually, in the games I have played, if you kill an animal, that is attacking you, it dies. Wolves, bears, etc. But when you shoot these dogs, they don't die. They just lose control of their hind legs and drag themselves around, whimpering. I just couldn't deal with it!
Never even got into the house and I stopped the game.
A battle to the end, or a quick kill is okay, but I'm not sure I want to leave things still alive and maimed.
I just had to share this because there might be others like me, who might be disturbed by this. So fair warning!
It's really not right, that I even rate the game, since I haven't really played the game. That is why I went down the middle and gave it a 3 star.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 Next 

Actions