What Was Atari Thinking?

I was tempted to really see what Alone in the Dark was all about after the recent controversy. Atari were on the warpath to "defend the game's honour" as such. I was never really a fan of the original game. I always thought that the imposed third person perspective was awkward and somewhat hackneyed in its delivery as a game mechanic.

I was ready to set aside what I thought of the original games and the controversy and just give the game a go. I didn't realize that this would be time that I would never get back as much as I wanted it to return.

The game implements a "blink" function. As the game starts in the first person perspective it fools you in to believing that the game will play in this manner. As you have just woken from a slumber (possibly drug induced) the game developer (Eden) make the right stick button a function to blink your eyes in the game. Never in my life have I had to tell my eyes to blink. They do so as a reflex or a need to moisten my eyes and maintin correct function. If I had to tell my eyes when they had to blink then I think the continual focus of my thoughts would be that this necessary but frustrating function of my body was not working as it should. This is much the way the "blink" function is implemented in game. This is a poor device. It is used to show off some HDR type visual effects in game which, I must say, are pretty much of a muchness now. HDR really has lost its "wow" factor and will hopefully one day pass as an implemented effect and become just a part of the game environment. Obviously Eden are pretty chuffed with their visual effects. But why didn't someone during the development of the early part of the game say that this is not working. I wouldn't have minded if the blinking was incorporated in to the character's first person perspective. But having to do this manually was a bad choice in game. While I can choose to blink my eyes when I chose to I prefer to let my body manage that function of my sight without my need to interfer with it and this is what should have been done in the game. If you choose not to blink then your view of the world becomes overwhelmed by light (which I have never experience in 'real life' myself).

Further to this Alone in the Dark pretends to be a first person game. The start of the game is in first person perspective but then it changes to the third person fixed camera. This, once again, is poorly implemented. As soon as something happens in the game world the game pulls you out of first person and back to the fixed camera view. This can happen many times during one scene which constantly made me switch back and forth between the two views.

This game is frustrating. Needless to say that I won't be completing it. The story may be interesting, but yet another game about an "evil power" that has over run an area ... well, haven't we all seen that before. Surely, this story concept must be considered cliched.

Sorry Atari, but what were you thinking?