Special thanks to Matt Cundy for the following preview of Alone in the Dark:
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 what we'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.

After successfully scrambling to an open window and climbing through into a dark hallway, we saw another - not as exciting as cable swinging but certainly noteworthy nonetheless - example of how Carnby will be able to utilize many of the items he comes across - in this instance a standing lamp, which was used as a makeshift flashlight.

Items that Carnby holds are directly controlled using the analogue stick, so the lamp can be pointed exactly where it needs to be or can, if desired, be swung about as an improvised cranium-cracking weapon.

Because the lamp is plugged into the wall, it's only as effective as the cord is long - stretch it too far and the lead pops out of the socket, making the lamp useless as a tool for lighting up spooky dark corners. Unfortunately, realism - like the cord - didn't stretch so far as to allow Carnby to simply plug the lamp back in. Oh well, one step at a time.

We're suitably impressed by what we've seen of Alone in the Dark - it promises to be actioned-up to the eyeballs with some genuinely cinematic and adrenaline milking set-pieces - but what we're really itching to see is some of the horror that the game's 'something has escaped from the afterlife' storyline hints at.

If Eden can do bowel-loosening paranormal sequences as well as it can do burning building bits, then we're guaranteed to be in for one hell of a ride.

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