Alone in the Dark

Say what you will about Alone in the Dark, but 2008's fatally flawed horror/fire adventure had one thing that even its angriest critics found hard to hate: an awesome musical score. Performed by all-female choir group Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices, the music perfectly sets the stage for an pitched battle against a monolithic and unknowable evil. And if you listen to Who Am I?, its most prominent track, with the game's premise in mind (a race against time to prevent the apocalypse in a single night), the desperate vocals and crashing symphony arrangement are enough to inspire chills - something the game itself failed to do...

2008's Alone in the Dark can be summarized in two words: poor execution. The game was a technical mess, wrapped within a ridiculous story, but its ambition and attempt at innovation are impossible to deny. In fact, Alan Wake – which released last week to mostly positive reviews – shares many of the same ideas and concepts.

The one very distinguishable difference? Alan Wake is actually good, while Alone in the Dark is clearly not. Here's how two surprisingly similar games ended up so far apart in quality...

We love games. We love films. And most of all, we love a good pun. That’s why we’ve taken some of our favourite movies and games and stuffed them into a giant blender for mighty mash-up results. Ever wondered what would happen if Kratos collided with the Corleone crime family? Or if Sackboy met Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes? Well wonder no more, because we've answered your day-dreaming prayers with the following mash-up movie

In the context of a game, Achievements and Trophies are harmless. They're just carrot-dangling tactics that we're happy to indulge for our greedy pursuit of intangible virtual rewards. We wouldn't think twice about nail-bombing a kitten orphanage if it meant five more gamer points.

But, let's say, purely for the purposes of this here article, that we take Achievements and Trophies out of their virtual world settings and reconsider them

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Movies based on videogames don’t have the best track record. We can think of one or two that are actually good, maybe a few more that are acceptably mediocre, but in general they’re awful piles of shit. And if there’s one man who’s added to that problem more than anyone else, it’s Uwe Boll.

Alone in the Dark invented the survival horror genre. Hell, the original Alone in the Dark was arguably the first to introduce fear itself into the gaming experience. You wouldn't believe how terrified we were of a couple of shadowy strategically placed polygon blocks back in 1994...

Now imagine what the franchise can do with cutting edge graphics, surround sound, real world physics and cinematic storytelling. More importantly, after

Thanks to his videogame-based cinematic failures, Uwe Boll is one of the most loathed men on the internet right now. In fact his detractors hate his work so much that most of them have never watched any of it. 

So in the interests of scientific endeavor, we picked up three Boll DVDs and commited ourselves to watching them all in one night. Does Boll deserve the vitriol he so readily receives from the gaming community? Read on and find out.