Alone in the Dark
Preview
Carnby is back: Battered and beaten, but back!
by Marcus Mulkins
previewed on PC
What?s It All About, Carnby?
For those that have faithfully followed the AITD series over the years, they are quite familiar with the series? protagonist, Edward Carnby. (In several editions, there is an alternative female character that the player may choose, for those wanting to explore their feminine side.) As with the Call of Cthulhu that inspired it, the game settings were in the 1920?s - 1930?s era. However, in AITD 2007, the setting has been catapulted into the present day and Carnby hasn?t aged a day in nearly a century. (Maybe it?s actually Carnby?s great-grandson, carrying on the family tradition of private investigations?) In all of the earlier editions of the game, Carnby would be initiating an actual investigation with some sort of supernatural overtones. He would enter the arena (usually through the front door) and wander around gathering clues about what was really going on. Along the way he would be required to confront and defeat or evade a wide selection of supernatural Bad Guys. He would gather clues that filled in the numerous blanks in the background, until at the very end, Carnby knew which Ultimate Evil he faced and what he needed to do to destroy it. The pacing of the games were not actually all that fast, giving the player plenty of opportunity to work through one elaborate puzzle after another. (Or resort to buying a hintbook.) And the player always viewed Carnby in the third-person perspective.
All that changes in AITD 2007. Atari has switched developers to Eden Studios, which produced the very successful Test Drive Unlimited. By using a next-generation version of the Twilight engine from TDU, instead of viewing the world strictly in the third-person, seeing each room from a limited number of angles, Carnby will now be able to get an almost spherical view of the world. Additionally, much of the time you will be literally seeing the world through Carnby?s eyes. This should, if anything, make the player identify much more closely with the protagonist.
An even more significant change is the pacing of the game. Whereas in the past editions, Carnby practically meandered through the settings, in AITD 2007, Carnby will literally have to deal with Death nipping at his heels every step of the way. The game has been delineated into a looonnngggg string of ?episodes?, each lasting about 20-40 minutes (depending on how talented you are). And almost invariably, the end of each episode will literally be a ?cliffhanger? which shows that unless Carnby does something clever, he?s going to die. All in all, the arrangement should make for an almost continuous adrenaline rush.
So, what's the challenge this time around?
The start of AITD 2007 has Carnby being held prisoner and tortured by a gang of thugs. (Who are they? Why are they torturing Carnby? Will we ever know?) The initial location is in a nondescript, dilapidated room of an obviously abandoned building. In the midst of the torture, Carnby blearily notes that there?s something rippling through the wall, just under the tattered wallpaper. (Think of a graboid in ?Tremors?, tunneling just below the surface.) Whatever it is circumnavigates the room until it?s behind one of the thugs, at which time a monstrous creature bursts out of the wall and very bloodily rends and tears one thug after another. Despite being in a condition of Death-slightly-warmed-over, Carnby must choose discretion and try to flee the scene, with monstrous baddies in pursuit, burrowing through the walls, severing power lines, breaking load-bearing wall supports, starting fires, etc. The whole, the-building-is-collapsing-around-your-head scene. Very quickly, Carnby discovers that he was in the penthouse of a derelict skyscraper. Joy. Now he must make his way to the ground floor, covering much of that distance on the outside of the collapsing, burning building.
And you thought Lara Croft had it tough in Tomb Raider? Imagine her difficulty in doing what she does in that game after she had been thoroughly tortured for several hours.
Eventually, Carnby will arrive at the ground floor (either that or die, in which case it?s Load Saved Game time) and discover that he must flee into Central Park. With the monsters in close pursuit, naturally. By this time it will be obvious that someway or another some murderous undead creature from the Afterlife has been loosed upon an unsuspecting New York City, and the ONLY person capable of dealing with it is Carnby. Battered, beaten, Death-warmed-over Carnby; yes, that one. That is to say, YOU.
Now, doesn?t that just seem like the most fun you?re ever going to have?
