Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare is based on successful, horror games by Infrogrames (which has been making games over 15 yrs). Alone in The Dark featured breakthrough animation, cinematic
scenes, sound, scary storylines, and equally scary characters (ghost, zombies, killer plants to name a few). In fact, it's not wrong to say that Alone in The Dark might have inspired the Resident Evil series by Capcom. In the first Alone In The Dark games, you played a resident who was investigating the bizarre murders and supernatural activity of a eerie mansion.
In the Gameboy Color game, the plot revolves around Camby investigating a murder on an island where a fellow was murdered
by a tribe after a special statue.
All fingers point to Alan Morton who was living in a scary
mansion and who fiddling with voodoo and conducting secret expirements on the island.
Word is that Morton is dead, and has perhaps mutated in
a horrifying monster........
GRAPHICS 5
The battle scenes and scenes involving finding clues
are done through a series still, photographic images. The quality of the images is really good using a combo 2d pixels, shading , and sprites.
The backgrounds for the game are also quite including the shots of the mansion. The monsters in the game: Everything from spiders, to killer dogs, look like they drawn in a rush and could have used more detail, but overall, the monsters look allright.
However, there are certain parts of the game, where the scenery is drawn too dark and shaded so bad, that it makes it hard to tell in what area you are moving. For this fact, I gave the graphics a 5.
The intermission scenes with Camby discussing the situation and puzzles you encounter are amazingly smooth and clear. In fact, they are almost as good as the PC graphics and polygons of the original game.
The scenes in which Camby encounters the head monsters
in the game is really detailed and scary up to the point
where you do get a good scare at the very least.
SOUND AND MUSIC 6
Shotguns blast, secret levers, magical items all have their realistic sounds that suits them. In this regard, the game is good, it's not like other games I have played in which the same sound is played for all the items in the game (which is incredibly stupid from a programming and gaming point of view).
The sound and music in AD is great . In scenes that entail a battle or a scary sequence the music changes to it. In many cases, it happens so fast, that you do get a good scare or at the very latest a good laugh of it.
My biggest complaint of the music though is that there are only 2 or 3 soundtracks for the game, so it becomes repetitive in many areas, but since the music and sound is done well, it's not a big deal.
CONTROL 6
In AD you get through the Nightmare using a variety of different
weapons. Using the start and select buttons, a and b buttons you can switch between different weapons at once.
I found the control to be very easy and very good, a contrast between the Alone in The Dark pc games, where most of the control was done by mouse clocking and use of the keyboard.
This is ok, but taking the fact, that there are many controls, and weapons, the use of a gamepad, or d pad would have helped.
In that regard, Alone in The Dark The New Nightmare is a much better game.
Replay Value 5
It's a really interesting game to play the first
time as you encounter clues, secret passages and
fighting monsters. But unless you're a fan of Horror Game or Alone in the Dark, you're probably only play the game, finish it, and then never play it again. There is no random feature, or minigames included which would have made the game that much better. I personally would have added , a special section on the history of the game, to make gamers not familiar with All The Dark Games interested in the franchise.
Overall:
Alone In The Dark The New Nightmare is a great new story in the series. The graphics are respectable, though in some cases, the 2d backgrounds, and shading make some areas very ugly and dark to see. The sound and music is also good, for the most part it sets the tone in the game throughout, leaving you scared in some cases and leaving in suspense in others.
The Replay value is the biggest problem in the game. Once you finish the game, there is not much motivation to play it, unless you're a fan of the series.
However, from a game programming point of view, the game is done well and anyone wishing to program games, could learn a thing or too from this game.
