As a fan of survival horror type suspense games though I was still intrigued enough to want to give it a fair shake on my own. There seemed to be some cool and interesting elements here, and could easily outweigh the bad stuff if executed well. So how did it turn out?

I know it's been talked about before already, but it really needs to be said.... the fire in this game looks downright incredible. Early on it's easy to actually stop playing just to admire the dancing flames. I know companies sell game engines and playing this game I kept thinking that Atari should sell that bit of code to other companies to use in their games. Like juts drop in that Fire widget to kick up the awesome factor of watching stuff burn. Seriously Atari, get on that.

Gameplay wise there's a really sweet system for swinging weapons around. Using the right analog stick you can shift the weight of the object you're holding in any direction, with the speed you swing the stick translated to the screen. The first time I had to use the mechanic I was wielding a fire extinguisher and needed to break down a door. Most games would require you to walk up and hit it and "bang" door falls off. Here you need to put some muscle into the swing (so to speak), a light swing results in you tapping the door. This carries over into the hand to hand combat, and swinging all matter of weapons feels visceral and legitimate. It's fun.

The inventory system is also ingeniously implemented, though not without issue. When you enter the inventory screen you really just look down and open your jacket. Pockets and holsters hold your items but the real-worldness of it is also it's problem, you simply don't have a lot of room to hold stuff. There's also a severe lack of first-aid kits and healing items spread throughout the world. It's not a tension builder, it's really just annoying. Seems like right before a large battle you're left with nothing and end up having to try multiple times to get through it.

The game actually does a hell of a lot right, and playing it I could help but wonder why it seemed to be getting knocked around so much. Sure there are some problems here that I really couldn't wrap my head around. Here again we have a protagonist that moves around the world so slowly that there's just no believing that some spooky evil nonsense is chasing him... there's just no urgency in how Edward Carnaby (you) moves. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune I figure is the high water mark on this one, that dude moves around like a person in that situation would be. You get the feeling when you're being shot at that he's being shot at, ya know? Nathan looks worried. Here, it's as if he's just out for a walk in the park (pun intended, maybe). Let's get a little pep in that step!

Driving in the game is downright terrible. Period.

The story line plays out not only bland but with enough stilted dialogue to make you want to just skip the exposition and get back to the action. Sadly that cuts out a lot of the tension, but with cut-scenes that ring this corny, it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

I had heard about the point in the game that most people were left scratching their heads (and perhaps cursing the developers) and it hung over the game time like an albatross. I knew at some point I was going to have to deal with the "evil tree in central park" section of the game. Sadly, it's as bad as I've read. All the cool elements of the game grind to a halt while you engage in this epically dumb fetch quests I've come across. You need to run around, backtrack and repeat destroying these evil looking trees in Central Park. It's bad, but the part where it attains epically bad status is when after you're a ton more evil trees pop up on your map and you need to do the same thing again, just a lot more times. It's rough, and a lot of people would argue not worth it.

It's really just an artificial way to extend how long it takes to get through the game. I really wish developers would worry less about length and more about making the game engaging the whole way through.

It's a shame too, because while the game did a lot of stuff right (especially that hand-to-hand system and the fire) it ends up collapsing under the weight of a few small problems and a single HUGE one. That middle portion was really just a bad call from a design standpoint, and like the atrocious bathroom save system in Dead Rising will probably be remembered as the thing that most gamers just couldn't get past.

Now the PS3 version of the game has been delayed a bit, so they could adapt the game rather than just port it.... so it's entirely possible that they'll be fixing a few of these little issues. And I gotta say, the thought of seeing those flame dance around in 1080p make me drool.

In the end if you dig this type of game I think you'll find enough good stuff here to justify a purchase, but it's certainly not going to win anyone over.

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