Alone In The Dark - Inventory System Gone Bad

So this weekend, I decided to finally pick up the new Alone In The Dark game for Xbox 360. I was intrigued by the preview videos as it appeared the game was doing some interesting things with the inventory system as well as the way the character interacted with the environment. It has probably not been since I first played Fatal Frame for the PS2 that I truly seen a somewhat different approach to the survival horror genre. I was not surprised, however, that after playing the game lived up to the negative press it was receiving.
There are two points regarding this game that I thought were detrimental to its fun factor: the inventory system and an overly clunky attempt at immersion. In this article, I only wish to talk about the inventory system as I think it is rare that I even notice an inventory system, much less find one that throws the game for me.
In Alone In The Dark, the inventory is represented by pockets inside the player character's jacket. When it is accessed, the player actually opens up his jacket and peers down at his body to reveal the items stashed away. The inventory system provided is limited space with stacking, real-time and gameplay blocking. This basically means we only have so much space to store things of differing types, any attempt at access does not stop the game and the game screen is completely obstructed by the inventory system when activated. Normally this would not be an issue if the implementation was sound, however, what we have next is a combination of:

1. An awkward inventory access system - On the Xbox 360 the inventory is accessed via the control pad. Within the inventory, items are individually selected either by rotating the thumbstick to slide through the items or individually with the control pad. In essence, this means that the player must take their thumb off of the control stick in order to fiddle with their items and since the game screen is blocked by the inventory when active this essentially means the player must come to a stop to poke around in their inventory. This is a not a fun situation to be in during some of the combat heavy scenes. To be fair, there are "hotkeys" into certain inventory items and combinations of items, but these are selected via a combination of the control pad and one of the four face buttons. Not much better really.

2. An overabundance of items as well as the ability to combine items into yet more items - There are a lot of items in this game. A knife, a lighter, a gun, ammo, various types of bottles (empty, water, brandy), tape, bandages, first-aid spray, and mosquito spray all make of the types of items that can be placed in the player's inventory. Along with these base items, some can be combined into sticky bombs, Molotov cocktails, fire bullets (pouring liquor onto bullets??!), etc. Combining items again was awkward by first selecting one item and then selecting the other and pressing X. Once again, there was an awkward "hotkeys" that was the same as above to instantly create combinations.

So in essence, I spent the vast majority of my time in the game dying due to fumbling with items in my inventory. So how could this have been better? Well, I think for starters just pausing the game when inventory was accessed would have saved a lot of headaches. It may be that the inventory was meant to induce a sense of anxiety in the player as they were involved in certain high-adrenaline scenes, but I don't think any player finds it fun to lose to a system that is bogged down in awkward controls and a rigid attempt at realism. While I applaud the designers for at least thinking in a different direction, my experience was not positive of the way it was implemented in the game.