In one of the most famous scenes in The Godfather trilogy, Michael Corleone grasps his brother Fredo’s head in his hands after learning of his betrayal. From between gritted teeth and with an even, measured voice, he says to his younger brother one of the most memorable exchanged in modern cinema.
“I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!”
Today, the role of Michael will be played by me. And the role of poor, soon-to-be-departed Fredo will once again be played to the hilt by Atari. Indeed, this should come as no surprise - Atari has been faithfully making the role of Fredo its own since the video game crash of 1983. For certain, Atari has had its share of missteps over the years, and there are a lot of market factors that played into the decline and fall of an electronics giant to a now substandard software developer. But today I’m only here to talk about one of those factors, and the decisions that Atari continues to make that alienate the very people that could save them. And I speak of none other than the game “Alone In The Dark.”
But first… let’s talk a little history. Atari Inc., the company founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972, was responsible for creating the foundation of videogaming as we know it today. Few would argue that without the mass-market success of the Atari 2600, the shape and landscape of modern gaming would look and feel very different. If you grew up playing an Atari… you realized how different it was. No longer were you handcuffed to the repetitive Pong or the supremely limited Odyssey systems. If you owned an Atari - and more kids did than any other gaming system - you knew, instinctively, that things had changed. With its expansive library of hundreds of titles, the Atari had it all over its competitors. Kids that owned Intellivisions begged their parents for an Atari. Even kids that owned Colecovisions, arguably a much better and much more graphically intense platform, still wanted to share in the Atari brand.
Atari still holds a very special place in my heart, as it was my first gaming machine. I realize that admission belies my age, but I was a tender 4 years old when my parents brought the Atari 2600 into the house, and presented it to me and my siblings. My brothers enjoyed the system for what it was… but I can say I truly loved it. And that love, which has now carried me through 5 additional generations of hardware and countless software purchases, all starts with Nolan Bushnell’s little upstart gaming system.
But Atari today isn’t the Atari of my youth. Atari Inc., as an entity, has not existed since 1984, and the Atari name has not truly been associated with any kind of quality entertainment since 1996. That was the year when Atari decided to engage in a series of failed relationships with other entities, most of whom weren’t fit to exist in the marketplace at all, much less do business with a company with such a long and storied history as Atari. Atari had become, as of 1996, a prostitute - nothing more than a holding company to be used as a bargaining chip. A sad, pathetic shell, and end of a once proud name.
Atari is now owned, 100% part and parcel, by a company called Infogrames Entertainment. Thanks to a series of buyouts and market moves, Infogrames is now the proprietor of such franchises as Unreal Tournament, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Test Drive… and the Alone In The Dark series. And that, my friends, is the crux of this diatribe.
I know it was you, Atari.
Now, to say that the newest edition of Alone In The Dark is egregiously, irredeemably awful is a matter of personal opinion. Game reviews are notoriously open for interpretation, and mine are no different. However, I do think it noteworthy to mention that the majority of the reviews on sites like Metacritic give the game a range typically between 3/10 and 4/10. Are people panning the game for its lack of ingenuity, or its hackneyed scenarios? By and large, no. Are they giving it poor ratings due to its innovative fire effects, or its non-compelling story? In most cases, no.
The majority of the criticism of Alone In The Dark is twofold. Number one, the game itself is very short and, in many cases, not very challenging. However, it’s the second criticism that is most pervasive in all the reviews of this game, which is thus:
Alone In The Dark, as it currently exists, is broken. B-R-O-K-E-N.
The controls are sloppy, to be sure. Fine, that can be overcome. The character models are a little jaggy and sharp. Okay, but so are the models in the original Grand Theft Auto titles, and that didn’t stop them from being some of the finest games ever made. The “make your own weapon” system is a little unwieldy. Sure, but that’s not a dealbreaker, right? But characters getting stuck in walls? Car-driving sequences that result in faulty collision detection and graphic breaks? A faulty engine that requires repetitive button-clicking just to keep the screen from blurring over tacked on as a “fun” minigame? An overwhelming sense that nobody actually performed any quality-control testing on the title?
That, my friends, is BROKEN. And yes, Atari, if you’re wondering…people have noticed. That’s why your sales on this title have been lackluster. Gamestop, never known for its restraint, has dropped the retail pricing on the game just 8 weeks following its release. Rumors of a deeper manufacturer-sanctioned retail cut to $29.99 - following its initial release at TWICE that amount - are flying about the internet as well. That’s not a discount structure designed to get people to try your game, Atari and Infogrames. That is a none-to-subtle white flag of surrender.
You broke my heart.
And yet, the biggest transgression wasn’t that you made a broken product and shipped it out for people to consume. No, your biggest flaw was how you dealt with the negative press surrounding the release of your title. I direct you to Wikipedia, where I found this particular snippet of information:
After several European websites had given the game average or low ratings, publisher Atari threatened the responsible websites with lawsuits, claiming the reviews could not have been based on the final version since it was not available by the time they were published; Atari themselves had not delivered review-versions to them. The publisher suspected the reviewers to have used illegally downloaded versions of the title. However, review website Gamer.nl claims that it was in fact sent a legitimate copy of the game prior to its release by Atari executives and, after the review was published, “They explicitly told [Gamer.nl] that they only let high scoring reviews break the post-release embargo date.” Gamer.nl still has the offending review posted on the website, despite Atari’s wishes. In addition Atari claimed that reviews were not done as demanded by the official product-review standards at all and should be deleted immediately. Most other websites have defended their reviews and refused to delete their articles. So far it is unclear whether or not Atari will decide to sue these websites.
Oh, Atari. Has it really come to this, you and I? Need I worry that calling your game out in exact, negative terms will result in you trying to silence me one day? The Atari I once knew, and you once knew, is dead. The avatar for the brand, once revered as a hallmark of fun and ingenuity, has become a suit-wearing corporate whore… selling its name and reputation in exchange for bandages of currency designed to temporarily prevent its inevitable bleedout. One day soon, Atari will be no more, and even its name will no longer exist except as hushed whispers of a time no longer remembered. Least of all for broken software and petulant lashes at game reviewers. And on that day I’ll raise a drink to the passing of an icon that helped forge my love of gaming. But I will not mourn you.
That will never, ever happen. You are, after all, already dead.
I know it was you, Atari.
You broke my heart. You broke my heart.
See for yourself at GYG for all of your online game rental needs. At least you can say you didn’t spend good money on it!