If you can excuse the mess that was Uwe Boll's box office flop back in 2005, the Alone in the Dark series hasn't been seen since 2001. The last installment, The New Nightmare, saw protagonist Edward Carnby investigating Shadow Island just off the coast of Maine. Publisher Atari and developer Eden Games (Hydravision Entertainment for the PlayStation 2 and Wii ports) are moving down along the East Coast and taking the series to New York City's Central park, hoping to scare the crap out of you in the middle of the Big Apple.
Reprising the role of Carnby, gamers will be searching for answers to eerie rumors, allegations and hearsay of clandestine activity within Central Park – and a fine representation of it at that, not to mention the rest of Manhattan the game includes. The use of GPS and satellite imaging only helps stress what Eden Games is going for. Venturing into to the next-gen format, the game offers plenty of more game mechanics and interactivity with your surroundings. The park and city moves in real time, giving it much more of a realistic feel.
Alone in the Dark developer Pieces Interactive has been hit with layoffs a month after its release, as per the latest information.
That genuinely, genuinely sucks. The reboot has clear flaws, but it really felt like a solid first step for this team to receive *greater* investment.
That's standard. Teams are together for a Project, after its done some..and sometimes most devs are fired until the next Project is in the works and people are needed again. Only the core members stay in the time between the hot phase of the game development.
What’s annoying is people don’t understand how contractors work, either. All of this is uninformed knee-jerk reactions without any understanding of how employment works in this industry. There are key developers and staff that stay with a studio/publisher, but often times it’s a hire per project and then seeking new employment for a project. That’s how it’s always been…
That's a fair point too. I would say that in light of its tepid critical/commercial response and ongoing mass layoffs across the industry I think it's understandable for fans to worry about the longer-term implications. We'll see how it plays out in the future.
VGChartz's Lee Mehr: "In one sense, it feels strange to even think Pieces Interactive had big shoes to fill with this series' legacy. Given what's come before, did it really? And yet, even when considering the last two flops over a two-decade span, there's still something about Alone in the Dark emblazoned on a title screen that carries a sense of revered history. In that respect, perhaps this reboot's best accomplishment is in honoring that spirit through its inventive world. It's also fair to emphasize knocks against its survival-horror design, some puzzle-solving, and so on; it certainly won't be considered a trendsetter like the 1992 classic. Still, the amount of goodwill wedded to its brighter qualities makes for something that dawdles the line between unfortunately-flawed and impressively-enticing."
The new Alone in the Dark remake doesn't do anything especially noteworthy, but that doesn't mean it's bad. It's just... cromulent.
