It’s difficult to like a game that’s constantly firing a shotgun into its own foot. Before you skip to the end and see the poor score we’d just like to point out that at times we actually liked this game, at least for a few short moments during its frustrating eight episodes of gameplay.

There are so many fine and novel ideas but they’re not implemented well, making playing the game frustrating or repetitive. If you’ve ever played the (much less flawed) PS2 cult classic disaster-movie inspired S.O.S. The Final Escape, you might notice a lot of similarities in the first couple of levels. You’re thrust into the action with little let-up for a good hour or so. Gasp as you hang from about 30 storeys up as gargoyles come crashing down past you. It’s very exciting. The protagonist, Edward Carnaby, has no memory of his past (this isn’t one of the novel ideas) but has to escape a rapidly collapsing New York City and make it to Central Park. Huge cracks are ripping apart the city, they’re swallowing people, buildings, everything. Cars dangle precariously from the top of cliff as you gingerly guide Edward past them before they crash down into a bottomless ravine.

Almost everything can be picked up, although the detection of such items is annoyingly ropey. We wondered for a while why we could move bodies also, maybe it’s a gimmick we thought, until we came across a precariously balanced bus. A moment of revelation ensued, after Edward went crashing down with the bus into another one of the evil cracks, you have to move the bodies to the other end of the bus to balance it out while you exit the other end.

For the first couple of chapters you’ll be screaming at the TV. This isn’t the slow-paced fear action of previous AITD titles (which heavily influenced the Resident Evil series when the first came out back in 1992) it’s car-smashing action with a few smelly zombies thrown in for good measure. Even the set piece based car chase through crashing sky scarpers is good fun, despite the fact you have to repeat it several times to learn the pattern. At this point you can see the joins but at first they fade into the background because the ideas are so strong. Unfortunately the game can’t keep up with the pace. When you hit the third chapter the cracks are on full show and they’re not very pretty.

The inventory system is a case in point, it pretty much embodies what is so fresh and what is just so teeth-jarringly frustrating about the game. All items are stashed on the inside the inside pockets of Edward’s coat. Upon entering the inventory, he opens his coat like a Rolex salesman down Camden market. The coat edges are flipped out sideways and you’re given a top-down view of the objects. Everything is neatly stashed in tight pockets which are easy to see, however the problem is getting the items. The left stick is used to scan over the items but the controls are twitchy and it’s pretty much impossible to select any of the smaller items such as bandages or tape on the left side. This could be forgivable (maybe we’re being too forgiving) but entering the inventory doesn’t pause the game. All this cack-handed flicking about around the items wastes precious time giving the monsters time to catch up and bite you. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to have a breather and pause a game letting you assess what’s going on, but Alone In The Dark doesn’t let you. And the problem doesn’t stop there, in order to progress on with the game and kill the zombified enemies you need to frequently combine several items together in said inventory. Cue much shouting expletives at the TV.

As time goes on in the game you’ll find that most puzzles are solved using bottles of explosive liquid. You can chuck them, put tapers in them, explode them (obviously) and stick them to your enemies. Larger creatures need to be burned before they’re fully dead so an abundance of bottles is essential. In fact you can’t really run out of items, they’re just difficult to keep track of in Edward’s flasher jacket.

You can hit the enemies with any of the items you pick up using the right analogue stick to swing. Again, you’ve guessed it, it’s poorly realised and you can never quickly swing where you want, it always takes a few goes. Edward also has a gun for when the later enemies start spitting flaming chairs from their hands. You have to use this in first-person mode (making for some very confusing gameplay), the collision detection is off but there is auto-targeting, which again isn’t always reliable.

There is so much to it though, we’ve barely touched on the driving sections in the park (where the camera is too close to the car), or the parts where Edward is dragged along a constantly shifting crack in the floor and walls. And there’s a chapter where you have to close your eyes to see a ghostly apparition pointing at a wall. We desperately wanted to like this game but it’s like Frank Zappa being played by a bunch of arthritic pensioners. The ideas are there but you just can’t listen to it.

Henrietta Rowlatt