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The very first Alone in the Dark game came all the way back in 1992 for PC. I never have played it but I do remember vaguely some of my friends playing it since they had PC and I always had consoles. There is one Alone in the Dark game I did play, namely the 2008 game which was rather bad. Even so, the original Alone in the Dark inspired games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, which are one of my favourite games to play. Let’s see how does Alone in the Dark re-imagination do.
Story, gameplay, controls and visuals
The story is somewhat different to the original game (1992). A private investigator Edward Carnby (acted by David Harbour) and Emily Hartwood (acted by Jodie Comer) comes to Derceto; a mansion that is a home for mentally ill to find Jeremy Hartwood, Emily’s uncle, whose gone missing. It becomes soon clear that the mansion—and its inhabitants—are odd and something otherwordly is happening in there. This is the main storyline and it twists into so much more as the game goes on. I think the story was overall good, odd and not everything made sense, and I liked that. I like when movies, TV-series or video games leave room for the viewers perspective. There are different endings and I think I got the good one.
Gameplay was, well… it was kinda bad OK! At least moving the character around and especially fighting and shooting were difficult because of the jankiness of it all. You have guns in the game and also melee weapons (you can carry one melee weapon at time) and they broke very easily. You can kill maybe 1-2 enemies and it was gone. Hitting the enemies with melee weapons were a true struggle. Shooting was much more easy as long as the enemies stayed afar, because if they got close, shooting them was nearly impossible. There was also throwables, but these player couldn’t carry with them. They were found only certain places where enemies were around.
If we forget the whole poor combat aspect of the game; I did like the rest of the game. In the beginning you choose which character you wanna play. Either Emily or Edward. I did play my first playthrough with Edward, but I do recommend that you play the first run with Emily. It makes more sense that way, I think. In the mansion player must solve puzzles, interact with people and fight enemies and find the way back to the real world after getting sucked in to the other world. These “other worlds” are Emily’s uncle, Jeremy’s, weird dreams that comes true. It is almost like in Alan Wake 2 where player goes between horror world and mellow reality.
All the areas were designed well and I would’ve got lost if it weren’t for the map. It really felt like those early Resident Evil games; running around in a mansion and doing puzzles. The puzzles themelves were OK. They weren’t too difficult and I barely got stuck on any of them. I also liked how the game always pointed me toward the next place and next goal. I did get lost sometimes as the mansion might first feel very confusing, but the map is the savior of this issue.
So, what’s the difference with playing either Emily or Edward? Well, I didn’t finish my second playthrough with Emily completely, because I quickly learned that it is nearly the same experience. What is different is the details, such as some characters’ dialogues were different, details in the map was different, Emily can reload her handgun much faster than Edward… so there were detail-oriented thoughts put into the game.
What comes to the controls. I think I already said everything that was to be said. Moving the character around felt OK-ish, but they either walked too slowly or ran too fast. It didn’t feel right. Then the whole combat was janky as hell and making everything feel sluggish and bad.
(I did play this through by using ‘better graphics settings’, the other setting available was ‘better performance’). Graphically the game looked OK. Something between last-gen and current-gen. But there were so many sloppy animations that it made the game feel amateurish. I don’t know much about the studio who made this (Pieces Interactive), but every cutscene was real-time rendered and they were very bad at times. Quickly searching; the studio is an indie studio that used to make small indie games and Alone in the Dark seemes to be their first big title. Overall, they had made a good job visually, but the animations, details and polish what needed the attention the most.
Final Verdict
I played Alone in the Dark through a little under 7 hours on Easy setting. I didn’t rush it, rather took my time with it. I think it was a little bit short for a 60€ game, but it has a good replayability as you can play it through with two characters, find all hidden treasures and get all the various endings.
Alone in the Dark wasn’t a bad and horrible game; it was just unpolished at some parts and that can make players frustrated. Especially if they play it on harder difficulties. Maybe this was the best the indie studio could offer, but I wouldn’t pay a full price for this, unless you really want to play it.
Alone in the Dark is available for PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S and Windows.
SCORE:
4/5
“It really felt like those early Resident Evil games; running around in a mansion and doing puzzles”
One More Level 