Quality survival horror games are woefully hard to come by on consoles these days, and it's easy to understand why. As hardware gets more powerful and gamers' expectations grow, building a big, beautiful world full of mind-bending puzzles, creepy creatures and compelling storylines is an increasingly Herculean task. But it's a job Atari's Eden Games studio bravely took on with Alone in the Dark, an ambitious adventure game set in and around New York's Central Park. Alone in the Dark (only nominally connected to its genre-spawning predecessors) follows the tale of a paranormal investigator who wakes up in a burning building, unable to remember who he is or how he came to be surrounded by menacing thugs.


He soon learns that he is Edward Carnby, a foul-mouthed tough guy who's mixed up in some devilish doings. As he makes his way out of the crumbling skyscraper he meets up with the feisty Sara, and they flee into Central Park to uncover the mystery of Edward's background and the secret behind a stone with mysterious properties.

I love a good yarn, and I was hoping to find one in Alone in the Dark. Instead I was introduced to yet another amnesiac fighting demons and carrying around a spooky stone. It doesn't help that our hero is challenged in the dialogue department, having been endowed by the game's writers with a nasty blue streak. You can count on hearing the words "f***" or "s***" nearly every time our scarred-up hero opens his mouth, an attempt at gritty realism that comes off as adolescent and trite. It's a shame that there's not more depth beneath the surface of Alone in the Dark, but it's not just the tired storyline that makes it a disappointment. There are many genuinely inventive ideas at play in Central Park, but few of them work as well as they should and most are failures. As a result, the game feels loosely cobbled together, and the experience ends up being full of inconsistencies, aggravations and contradictions. It's been a point of pride with the developers of Alone in the Dark that they've implemented realistic fire effects in the game, and they have reason to boast. Flames lick the walls to stunning effect; objects catch fire and can be used against enemies; puzzles, especially near the end of the game, make use of fire's destructive properties; and flames can help light your way in dark corridors. At times, the flames behave so realistically that you forget they're an illusion. Now that's a feat.

The problem is, fire is the only way to kill enemies (inexplicably named "Humanz"), which is interesting at first but quickly becomes tedious. Although, there are many different methods you can use to dispatch your enemies -- lobbing Molotov cocktails, blowing up cars, using makeshift blowtorches, touching monsters with burning furniture -- your gun (you only have a single handgun throughout the entire game) is useless against them. Unless, that is, you pour flammable liquid on your ammunition to create "fire bullets." Even then, you can only kill monsters by hitting them directly in their "fissures," which are glowing fiery scars on their bodies. Most of the time, you'll find access to explosive items severely limited, which means the most effective and consistent way to kill monsters in Alone in the Dark is to touch them with burning chairs. Yawn.

Unlike the Resident Evil series, which scatters storage chests around the game for quick access to your stockpiled items, Alone in the Dark restricts you to only a few slots in your jacket. And each side can only hold a certain category of items. Manipulating items in videogames can be cumbersome enough without having to delve into a jacket and poke around while monsters attack you in real-time. Combining items to make new ones, a central part of the game, is also frustrating. Want to combine a wick with a bottle? You can't select the bottle first -- it has to be the wick. Good luck sorting out inconsistencies like these when "Ratz" and "Batz" are nipping at your heels. What was intended to add tension and challenge instead creates a situation in which you must constantly wander around the game, combing glove compartments and trash cans for disposable weapons. And once in your arsenal, they're deployed inconsistently at best, both against enemies and the environment.

Setup Instruction

1- Extract Rar File
2- Mount ISO file with DAEMON Tools (Or whatever)
3- Click "JPN-AiD5.exe" to Instal the Game
4- Copy "d3dx9_34.dll" From Crack Folder to the Folder Game Directory
5- Play & Have Fun