Word on the net has it that a few reviews of Alone In The Dark are based on illegally obtained code for the game, and Atari is none too happy about it. They're so displeased, in fact, that their lawyers went on the offensive -- causing at least one Scandinavian site (as reported by Kotaku) to temporarily pull its lowball score within minutes of its debut on the Internet.
Fast-forward to the present, and German gaming site 4players comes forward with a similar story of being under Atari's glare, and accused of reviewing a (supposedly) illegally obtained copy of the game. In other words, Atari didn't send them a review copy personally, yet they were able to post a review on it. Sound suspicious? Maybe not, as the site claims that they simply walked into a local store and obtained their copy the old-fashioned way -- by purchasing it.
The common theme among all involved seems to be scores that are less than flattering. The million-dollar question remains: Is Atari doing the right thing in their attempt to preempt negative publicity surrounding reviews of unpolished versions of the game, or is something sinister going on here? Atari isn't exactly in the strongest of financial positions, and we're sure they were counting on Alone In The Dark to provide some much-needed relief. As of now, scores for the game are hovering around the 70th percentile, so there's still time to recover. As someone who's been looking forward to playing this game since its inception, I hope those scores are indeed flaky. Who do you believe?
[Via Next-Gen and Kotaku -- Thanks, Jonathan]
Contest:
4:58 PM on 06.20.2008
| 
Seems to me they want the gaming press to shut the hell up until they can make their profit off of unsuspecting buyers at launch. Chill out Atari, let the game speak for itself!
they are trrying to prevent the game from tsnking in the US after bad reviews appear in europe.
And in what bizzaro-world should 70% be a terrible sales-killing score? I buy games based on my taste first, and other people's numbers last.
anyways i really dont like the way how 4players present themself in this dispute. they stylise themself as the only keeper of the freedom of speech with sentences like "hello? where do we live, in china ? or even iran ?".
fact is, they broke an embargo on online-coverage of the game, by 3 days (the embargo was then lifted for others sites). these embargos are there for a reason and are a common thing in journalism.
I was hoping it would be at least as good as Condemned 2. I guess not?
I will rent it for sure.
cant be as bad as the incredible hulk game.
Too Human looks equally mediocre and will get the same scores. You heard it here first! woooo
what I see is some really frustrated reviewers about the controlls some say it reminds one controlls from
resident evil 1,2 and 3 as opposed to 4
the 1/3'rd of the article is about bad controlls and glitches.
Since I like the controlls of re 1,2 an 3 :)
and I own reasonably good pc
those above won't mather as much...
I'll just wait for the patch..
and make some macro's on my logitech g15 :)
I think I'll buy it....
the only thing that I care about here
is that it can bring some tension building terryfying experience as you expect from an survival horror game..
I'm hoping for some Alone in the dark :)
hmmm good old pc...
read the reviews!
4Players are idiots for publicly using a pirated copy on their site that has ads and everything. Atari are idiots for trying to contain it in this way, since people will only take a sharper look at reviews and game community feedback than they might have done before. I hear Atari even tried to cover it up by saying that the leaked copy was unfinished code, which is... unlikely.
The game does look cool in the vids and the ideas are nice. Too bad they weren't implemented and the game feels as finished as Halo 9. I can't believe that sites give this a 7 or even an 8.2 in german mags. They really do seem to use a 7-10 scale. More than anything, I really really want to see Rev Anthony's take on this game :)
They decided to give the main character psychic powers... ok... but in order to do this you have to >>>grind<<< killing evil trees in order to be able to use the powers. The review I read said this would take an hour or more of straight grinding. So, that kinda kills the game... (probably more flaws but that one seems to be the biggest one I've read)
Makes you wonder what Atari would've done if they would've given it a 9/10...