So, this weekend I finished playing through the new Alone in the Dark. I have to say that the game is both very good and horrible. It has a lot of serious issues with the controls: third person mode is almost unplayable for any period of time. Furthermore, the camera is often your mortal foe when it chooses to arbitrarily shift you out of first person mode or when it chooses to be "cinematic" and focus on the events going on rather than focusing on your character. This situation often causes the controls to change subtlely and was a frequent cause of death for me.

On the other hand, the plot was interesting enough to keep me playing. The game also had several very well designed puzzles (my personal favorite was the flaming car catapult) as well as a rather high degree of detail for the world. As an example of the latter, you make use of various cars throughout the game. Every car can be manipulated in about a dozen way: you can sit in any of the seats, you can turn on the radio, flip the lights on or off, check behind the visors (on either side), check the glovebox (it usually contains at least one useful item), honk the horn, turn the interior lights on and off, and/or hot wire the vehicle. Also, you can puncture the gas tank of a car to use it as a makeshift explosive, dive out of it while moving at high speed to use as a battering ram, or break out the window to open a locked car.

Similarly, the game also gives you a rediculous number of ways to blow things up. You can use bug, rust, or medical spray with the lighter to create a makeshift flamethrower. You can also find both glass and plastic bottles of gasoline. The former can be made into molotov cocktails that explode on imact while the latter can be used to make "time-delay" molotov cocktains. Moreover, the latter can be wrapped with double-stick tape to create something akin to skicky grenades.

The game is probably worth picking up once it hits that $20 sweet spot (I got it at gogamer on sale for $15 a few weeks ago) if only to see the various interesting things it lets you do.

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