14 DAY TRIAL // Alone in the Dark: Illumination is an attempt to resurrect the classic survival horror experience, with the team at publisher Atari and developer Pure FPS aiming to create a new and modern take on the universe that allows players to play cooperatively with up to four players, wielding both firearms and magic powers at the same time as they seek to reach their objectives.
The beta period only features single player, with gamers able to try out the core mechanics as they get through the first campaign.
The character that’s pre-selected in Alone in the Dark: Illumination is the hunter, who is modelled on the original protagonist and needs to use classic weapons to try and keep his enemies at bay.
The setting is suitably dark and spooky, with abandoned houses and large avenues to move through, clearly designed to lull the player into a false sense of security, with the scuttle of creatures keeping him on his toes at all times.
Alone in the Dark: Illumination wants the player to be scared, but most modern fans of the genre will be pretty much immune to the jump scares that it tends to use.
A focus on fast movement and limited weapon use
The campaign is hard to get through even when the difficulty level is taken down to Easy.
Gamers need to move as fast as possible through the environments, making sure that they use their weapons only when they need to and are certain to get kills and keeping their eyes as much as possible on the objectives.
Alone in the Dark: Illumination is randomized, with monsters and locked doors never set in the same place, which means that knowing the layout of the land is important but there’s no way to use prior knowledge to completely solve a level the second time around.
Finding light sources and using them is essential for survival, but even then it takes only a moment of carelessness to find yourself surrounded by enemies and unable to move away and get to one of the health caches that are lying around.
Alone in the Dark: Illumination is still pretty much in beta
All the content offered in the testing phase could see major changes before the full version of the game is launched.
The performance is also poor at the moment, with plenty of moments when the game drops FPS and it will probably be improved in the coming months, before the 1.0 version is delivered by the end of spring.
The developers are also saying that they are planning to introduce another beta, probably in order to try and test the cooperative element of the campaigns.
Take a look at a video showing some gameplay from Alone in the Dark: Illumination beta below.
