Alone in the Dark's Edward Carnby is in a sticky spot. He's several stories up, dangling precariously from a stone gargoyle on the exterior of a New York apartment block. The building is being rapidly consumed by a raging inferno and bone-crushing chunks of masonry are hurtling past him a little too close for comfort. Death seems as imminent as Carnby's next breath.
It's an intensely dramatic predicament and one that echoes whatwe've already seen of developer Eden Games' action-focused slice of survival horror. Thankfully, while the set-up itself is nail-biting, watching Carnby escape is just as edge-of-your-seat exciting and it serves to show off the impressive level of interaction that players will have with the world that Eden is creating.
Besides the expected ledge shimmying, Carnby is able to swing to points of safety using power cables - he grabs on to them and kicks off from the wall to gain sufficient swinging momentum. He can also use cables to ascend further up the building. Although, as Carnby hangs on to a cable, it eventually begins to come away from its fixings and he drops a few feet with a startling - and panic-inducing - jolt.
If Carnby wants to use anything from his inventory while gripping a cable, he must first tie the cable around his waist to free up his hands. This done, he's then able to look inside his jacket (where Carnby stashes his stuff) and pull out any required items. It's logical, see.
As platforming sequences go, it's an absolute humdinger. Not only are Carnby's actions realistically dynamic but the view across Central Park - seeing fire trucks pull up amongst the bustling night-time Manhattan traffic on the street below (you can even see the crews rushing about), the wailing cacophony of sirens, the screams of soon-to-be-kebabed survivors and the entire building's facade shuddering and shifting under the stress of it all - ramps up the atmosphere dramatically.
