It's clear that the fifth Alone in the Dark game is aiming for a wide audience - it's being released for the Wii, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, and PS2 this summer. Developers Eden Games and Hydravision Entertainment (Hydravision is making the Wii and PS2 versions) are trying to widen the customer pool even more by making the survival horror game friendly to less skilled players - it's going to let you skip the hard parts.

Nour Polloni, producer of Alone in the Dark 5, explained in an interview with OXM that players will be able to skip segments of the game if they get stuck, like skipping chapters when you're watching a DVD. "We want everybody to be able to finish our game," said Polloni.

The idea of "skipping" portions of a game does irritate my inner nerd a little. The idea of being a game being "kind" to the player is nothing new, though. As a rule, Lucas Arts adventure games never killed you (except for the last boss fights) and that was a reaction to other titles in the genre like Dragon's Lair dropping a stone column on your head because you forgot to hit the right arrow button twice when you walked into the courtyard (or whatever).

Still, even if you couldn't die in Curse of Monkey Island, you still had to solve the puzzles. The game wouldn't let you just skip through it. This is purely an elitist concern on my part. "Let everyone finish the game? But then how shall we distinguish gamers of good breeding from the riff-raff?" However, now that I think about it, I wish more games allowed you to skip sections. Frankly, even in the best games, there's parts that just...don't work. VTM: Bloodlines is an amazing RPG but I'd never think of playing it through again because there's this, like, five-hour stretch where you're running around a goddamn sewer underneath Hollywood. I like the idea of skipping through a game to replay the "sweet spots" after I've beaten it. My current method of doing so - making a ludicrous amount of save files for each games - is a bit unwieldy.

According to the interview, Alone in the Dark 5 will offer an Achievement for playing through the game without skipping once. Fear not, gaming snobs - we'll always have our Gamerscore.