Eden Studios

The Second Time's the Charm

HIGH Pushes the edges of design further than most in recent memory.

LOW This game might have been a blockbuster if it hadn't bungled its initial release.

WTF As much as I loved it, adding alcohol to bullets really makes no sense.

A couple of days ago I finally located a copy of Alone in the Dark: Inferno for the PlayStation 3. I'm not a huge Alone in the Dark fan in general, but prior to the game's release for the Xbox 360, there had been quite a lot of talk from the developers about different ideas they were trying out, and their approach to making something they saw as fairly revolutionary.

…Of course, it ended up accumulating countless negative reviews and extremely poor word-of-mouth. Last time I checked Metacritic, the 360 had an average score of 58. Basically, pretty much everyone who played it hated it, and it crashed and burned spectacularly.

After this potent feedback, the development team at Eden Studios gave the game a radical makeover and fixed many of the things that sunk the first release. This new and improved version (PS3 only) was subtitled Inferno, and despite addressing the concerns, this release also went nowhere. Currently, a brand-new copy can be had for $20 or less, and last I heard, any hope of a sequel has been utterly destroyed.

When the reviewer wasn't being unfairly disinterested, he was flat-out wrong. So I decided to make my review a little different, and take the reader, point-by-point through why its author was not just wrong, but unprofessional. How unprofessional? I suspect he played very little of the actual game.

Game Description: An adventure-action game that puts players in charge of a character named Kya who is on a quest to find her lost brother and a way back home. Plunged into a mysterious world, Kya must seek her way through multiple dangers to find her brother and a way back home. She discovers the Nativs, a peaceful tribe, oppressed by the Wolfens, the menacing army of the evil Brazul. Kya must lead the rebellion of the Nativs for their freedom. Mastering magical powers, Kya can liberate the Wolfens from their mystical imprisonment and restore their true Nativ identity.

Dear Kya, I'm writing this letter to tell you I was wrong, and I'm sorry. I know that I pride myself on being open-minded and I always try to give small games a chance, but I'm only human. Please forgive me for thinking that you were just another generic 3D platformer trying to keep up with some stiff competition. How could I have known?

According to ESRB, this game contains: Cartoon Violence, Crude Humor, Suggestive Themes