In all, it does make for some suspenseful gameplay, but when you get down to it, it's nothing more than eye candy. In several areas of the game, you might catch a glimpse of a dark figure standing right next to your character, only to have it disappear moments later. Also making use of the meshing system is the lighting of prerendered backgrounds when lightning strikes. While the visual trickery is interesting and adds quite a bit to the dark and gloomy feel of the game, it ultimately is just there for aesthetic purposes only and doesn't play a key role in the game. Carnby and Cedrac both come equipped with a flashlight as standard equipment, and as you make your way through the dark recesses of the mansion, you can illuminate darkened areas with your flashlight, which serves to add to the dark and gloomy feel of the game. This game tries very hard to innovate with a lighting technology known as meshing, or, in layman's terms, simulated real-time lighting. As a result, her game is more puzzle-oriented and subsequently more challenging.Īlone in the Dark: The New Nightmare borrows heavily from the Resident Evil series, complete with all the trappings involved in this style of game. Cedrac, on the other hand, begins the game armed only with a flashlight, and she finds fewer weapons throughout the game. Carnby tends to pack a little more firepower than his counterpart, so his side of the story is more action oriented. The two sides of the story do play like night and day, however. From here on out, you can choose from either of the two characters and play out their intertwining storylines, which is very similar to what you can do in Resident Evil 2. Carnby safely falls to the ground using a parachute, while Cedrac narrowly misses a grim fate by landing on the roof of a dark mansion. Carnby and Cedrac travel to the island where Fiske was found dead, only to have a brush with death themselves when their chartered helicopter crashes. When Edward's best friend, Charles Fiske, is found dead on the shores of an island, Carnby vows to not only get to the bottom of his friend's death, but also to seek revenge. The story of the game once again follows the exploits of the mysterious Edward Carnby, but it also introduces a new sidekick, Aline Cedrac.
#ALONE IN THE DARK PS1 METACRITIC SERIES#
Now, close to six years later, the Alone in the Dark series rears its head on the Dreamcast, and it does so with some fairly decent results. While there have been no less than three iterations of the game for the PC, the series has never really gotten its due on consoles, even though it has made appearances on the PlayStation and the long-forgotten 3DO. While Capcom's Resident Evil is known as the series that brought the survival-horror genre to the mainstream, Alone in the Dark is the series that invented it.