Watching the Alone In The Dark film adaptation of the game at the moment. Sometimes film/game tie ins actually attempt to remain close to the subject. I should probably give an impression of the original game (which I played to death!) to show what the contrast is …
The original Alone In The Dark was an all time classic. It was inspired by the HP Lovecraft stories, specifically the Cthulhu stories. It’s centred around a paranormal investigator, Edward Carnby, who is looking into a mansion. He then gets trapped in the mansion and the objective of the game is to get him out again. Just going out the front door wasn’t an option – you’d get sucked out into some swirly vortexy thing.
It was kind of a forerunner to the Lara Croft games, although the Croft games like to think they’re totally original. It didn’t have any acrobatics and the gunplay was minimal (I’ll come back to that) but the basic structure was there. Inventory system, free running and walking were what made this game a huge step up from the Point & Click games that were extremely common when it came out.
The key to Alone In The Dark was figuring things out. You had to solve certain puzzles, unlock certain doors, find how to get through some rooms and there were one or two bad guys to sort out too. I’m currently remembering the Ball Room, where if you touched the dancers, you’d explode. They start static, thereby blocking the exit, so how do you get around them ? Start a record playing ! I also had a save point ready to roll at the start of the encounter with the Zombie Pirate Swashbuckler. That encounter was a fencing fight and I used to get paid biscuits by my housemates to help them get around it.
There were guns in the game but the game wasn’t based around clearing hordes of monsters, it was based around thinking through the puzzles to allow you to not fight the monsters.
On to the film – the scene that inspired this post, for all the wrong reasons, comes up halfway through. You have Carnby and Aline Cedrac (token love interest, along with token sex scene) in a warehouse/museum with Big Monster chasing them. They get to where the guns are and then … Cue heavy metal music, cue rifles to full auto and we get oh so close to a Babes With AK47 moment. (She still has her clothes on but the rest is there)
Ok – the game plotline of “One Bloke Alone In The Dark Trapped In Mansion” probably wouldn’t have worked in a Hollywood type film but it could have been interesting to at least try to have a psychological type thriller instead of a Wake Up The Neighbours film where they fire off the contents of a small ammo dump. Will have to try and film Relic again, I seem to remember that was a decent Scary Monster Movie.
There’s a new Alone In The Dark game just come out – the word (i.e. PC Zone intel) is to avoid it like the plague. Games should be fun, not tortuous and the new Alone in The Dark game looks like it errs on the side of masochism.
I watched another new film to me last night – this one was Rise starring Lucy Liu as Another Vampire Movie. Not a bad start this one and an interesting take on the vampire myth. I don’t think I’ll be buying the dvd though, sometimes once is enough for a film. However, Lucy Liu is always worth watching, just needs better scripts.
PS The plant in the wardrobe was deadly.