Alone in the Dark: Inferno

Of course, walking around in the 360 version was a dream compared to the nightmare of the driving sections. These too have received a severe thrashing from the fix-it stick, and it's nice to report that the cars now handle like cars - or at least videogame cars - rather than breezeblocks in a swimming pool full of Marmite. On the Moon. They've also added checkpoints, so death no longer means having to do the whole...bloody...thing...again. And again. And again.

All told, it sounds like a game that should finally deliver on the promise of the original. Eden Studios certainly deserves a warm hug for being honest and responding to criticism with some fairly major changes, even if we have to follow it up with a slap for not getting these basic design decisions right in the first place. With that said, the game is still far from a shining beacon of the survival horror genre. The use of fire and physics to create clever real world puzzles remains impressive, as does the versatile inventory combo system, but the fondness for instant death hazards remains, while Edward can still be blocked and snagged by random scenery elements.

It's this part of a preview that's always hardest to write for a game like Alone in the Dark. You don't want to start getting too critical, because then it becomes a review, and things can always change in the final few months of a development crunch. At the same time, much of the game is already a known quantity and there's a limit to how deep the changes can go. The PS3 version is an obvious improvement over the 360 version - which is apparently still in line to get some of these fixes in a patch - but I can't really say I enjoyed my second run through Alone in the Dark that much more than the first, even with the improvements.

The driving controls may be improved, for example, but the driving sections themselves are still clumsily scripted while the physics means that random debris can still end your game through no fault of your own. The same holds true of some of the more frustrating on-foot challenges, such as the subterranean pool of corrosive muck that must be inched through while your torch keeps the ooze at bay, until suddenly it doesn't and you die and have to replay the whole section again.