Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

Seems you can’t puncture a major artery in an electronics store anymore without splattering a gory survival-horror game. Though Alone in the Dark essentially invented the genre in its early-’90s, PC-only incarnations, its first console appearance sticks to the time-worn B-movie script: Explore a graphically impressive 3-D mansion and endure the familiar “put object A into slot B” puzzles while searching for an ancient tablet. Alone’s visuals are suitably atmospheric—the “surprise” monster attacks still pack some shock value—and the brooding soundtrack by former Police-man Stewart Copeland keeps things moving when game play bogs down a bit. By no means a classic, but it’ll tide us over till the next Resident Evil.