Belated Game Reviews - Alone in the Dark: Inferno

Now that I'm going through some of these older games for trophies, I may as well tell all y'all what I think about them and the prospects of getting trophies in the games. I'm hoping to try and make this a regular feature here.

Anywho. Alone in the Dark is credited as the first survival horror game, with Resident Evil coming after it. Alone in the Dark: Inferno is the 5th game in the series and some of the ways I've been able to describe it is a smarter Resident Evil and the best bad game I've played.

You play as Edward Carnby, a private dectective/paranormal researcher who is suffering from amnesia. You wake up in the beginning being held at gunpoint in a New York City hotel by two thugs who keep talking about handing over a stone. As the story progresses, you find that not all is what it seems in New York City. Large fissures at random keep opening up in floors and walls, etc. swallowing people whole or corrupting them into the "zombies" of the game, Humanz. The fissures seem to be radiating out from Central Park, which is where you eventually end up and discover the secret of.

Without giving too much away, the story involves the occult and gateways to the afterlife, and is very good. The voice actors do a very good job at conveying the story and what's going on without going too over the top which is something Resident Evil has had issues with in the past. The story is also broken up into 8 episodes. A nice touch is that each episode ends in a cliffhanger and then goes to credits. You can then choose to continue to the next episode or quit out. If you quit a selection of cutscene from the next chapter is shown, similar to a teaser trailer you may see at the end of a TV show. Additionally when you start a chapter from a saved game you get a recap of what's happened which I think is a nice touch. [Trophy note: there are at least 19 trophies from just progressing through the story and not killing a thing, except when you need to]

The graphics are good but not spectacular. I guess the thing is that I've never really seen a bad graphical game on the PS3 so it's hard to say how good they are. If we are comparing to Resident Evil 5 then I would say they definitely not as good as RE5.

Evironmental interaction is where AITD really shines. To start, you're inventory is limited to what you can carry in your jacket. When you access the inventory screen your character actually opens his jacket and looks down into it, which is a nice touch. You only have 1 of two guns during the game, a 9mm and a Magnum, but you have so many other options for destruction. You'll find all sorts of flammable bottles scattered across Central Park (apparently everyone drinks gasoline or Everclear there). The bottles come in glass and plastic varieties and it affects how they work. Glass obviously will smash, soaking the area in gas and making things flammable. Plastic doesn't. You can also find aeresol canisters that can be used as impromptu flamethrowers when used with your lighter, you can even pour gas on your bullets to make them fire bullets [Trophy note: There are 5 trophies for killing creatures in inventive ways]

The combinations of items are quite numerous. Sure you could just use bottles as bombs, throwing them and shooting when they are close to the creatures. You can also wrap the bottles in doublesided tape so they stick to the enemies and then shoot the bottles at the right time to take out more at one time. You can combine a handkerchief with a bottle to make a Molotov Cocktail. You can tape a flare to a bottle for a time bomb or a box of bullets to make a spread bomb. Flares and glowsticks can be taped to walls to add light to a dark hallway. [Trophy note: there are 8 trophies associated with item combinations]

The smartness of the game also extends to the cars, if you come up against a locked car, you can smash out a window and unlock it. Once inside you can check the glove compartment for items, and then check the sun visor for the key or hotwire it. You can also shoot out the gas tank to make it explode, or punch it with a knife to drain the gas into an empty bottle. [There are another 6 trophies related to cars, 4 of which can be had on the 1st car you see]

So by now you're wondering why I say it's also a bad game. Weeeeeellllll, to start the method of killing creatures sucks balls. They have these cracks on their bodies that have to be set on fire or they'll never go away. There's (usually) no shortage of flammable materials but it literally make your aerosol + lighter combo the most deadly in the game and not your gun. Actually unless your gun has fire bullets it's pretty worthless, and even then it's not incredibly useful as you have to shoot 2-3 fissures with fire bullets to kill the humanz and that's hard unless you've knocked them out already.

Secondly, you can only shoot in 1st person view and do melee attacks in 3rd person. Also the 3rd person view isn't all that great (although it's better than the XBox version)

Next, driving sucks and is a pain in the ass. If you hit the smallest bump, you'll fly out of control. Also with some ramps, you can't hit them straight on or it registers as a crash

If you quit in the middle of the chapter, even though you can save you still have to start from the beginning of the chapter with none of the in-chapter progress saved. This is especially a pain in the ass on Chapter 8. Speaking of, in Chapter 8 you have to take on a stupid quest to destroy certain targets which magically popped up in areas you already were in. Of course you need to destroy them all if you want the trophies.

AI characters are kind of dumb, but at least you're not tasked with keeping them alive as the humanz are programmed to go after you only.

You can take quite a beating, but if you touch fire for more than 3 seconds, you're toast.

Also I had the game freeze up on me twice during play, and if you try jumping on a car as a stepping stone the game sometimes recognizes that as getting hit.

The game has it's issues, however, it's still pretty playable....for about 12 hours, because that's all it takes to finish it, and you could probably do it quicker than me. The game has 50 trophies and you can get them with a single playthrough (no difficulty level BS) The breakdown is like this:
-43 Bronze
-3 Silver
-3 Gold
-1 Platinum

Final Verdict: Even though it's about $15-20 now, I'd still say this one is a renter. It shows flashes of brillance but is saddled with some questionable bugs/design choices. I'd definitely pick it up if you're looking for some cheap trophies because there aren't too many games easier than this for the # of trophies. I give it a 6/10