Which is a plus in my book but IMHO it indeed age poorly because of another reason: The animation and control is, let's put it diplomatically, "not exactly advanced".
Apart from the fact they didn't have motion capturing, yet, the way the characters move looks very awkward. I have the feeling that it plays like that, too.
We've come a long way since then, not only graphically.
It is an awkward control system, which is often referred to today as "tank-like" controls. It's interesting to note though that the first several Resident Evil games, which came out several years later adopted the same type of control scheme. With all that said, it's very playable even though some - not all - of the animations look a bit weird.
Despite the graphics looking rough to our modern day eyes, I argue that it still creates a very scary atmosphere and experience, particularly when taken in its entirety. It was expertly designed and for that it deserves every praise. Again, it's no accident it was chosen to headline a chapter in Vintage Games. There were tons of scary games prior to it that really weren't scary, just horrifically themed. This was absolutely scary and a case can be made that this was ONLY possible by going to 3D/polygons. One can argue that Infocom's "The Lurking Horror" (1987) text adventure generated some good scares - especially when a rare version had sound effects (Amiga/Atari ST) - but it was naturally a very different thing from an action game, which is much harder to get the same effect from. You still see Alone in the Dark's influence regularly in today's major releases.
Which is a plus in my book but IMHO it indeed age poorly because of another reason: The animation and control is, let's put it diplomatically, "not exactly advanced".
Apart from the fact they didn't have motion capturing, yet, the way the characters move looks very awkward. I have the feeling that it plays like that, too.
We've come a long way since then, not only graphically.
It is an awkward control system, which is often referred to today as "tank-like" controls. It's interesting to note though that the first several Resident Evil games, which came out several years later adopted the same type of control scheme. With all that said, it's very playable even though some - not all - of the animations look a bit weird.
Despite the graphics looking rough to our modern day eyes, I argue that it still creates a very scary atmosphere and experience, particularly when taken in its entirety. It was expertly designed and for that it deserves every praise. Again, it's no accident it was chosen to headline a chapter in Vintage Games. There were tons of scary games prior to it that really weren't scary, just horrifically themed. This was absolutely scary and a case can be made that this was ONLY possible by going to 3D/polygons. One can argue that Infocom's "The Lurking Horror" (1987) text adventure generated some good scares - especially when a rare version had sound effects (Amiga/Atari ST) - but it was naturally a very different thing from an action game, which is much harder to get the same effect from. You still see Alone in the Dark's influence regularly in today's major releases.
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.
[About Me]
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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director
Armchair Arcade, Inc.