Alone in the Dark Review (PS5)

Before there was Resident Evil or Silent Hill, there was Alone in the Dark. The grand pappy of survival horror games had more misses than hits during its career, before it faded away into oblivion. Now it returns from its slumber with a cast of renowned actors like Jodie Comer and David Harbour. But after all these years of pause can this franchise still be relevant? Let’s find out!

Since its inception in 1992, Alone in the Dark’s history has been strenuous and although it will always have its place in video game history for creating a new genre, the various iterations were not always a hit. More often than not they failed to reproduce the memorable moments of the first game, and after the low point of the 2015’s co-op focused episode, Atari sold the IP.

Now the famous series return, both literally and figuratively. The new game developed by a team led by Mikael Hedberg who signed games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent or SOMA, is a throwback to the origins of the series with a dark mysterious story inspired by the universe of Cthulhu.

This means that the events of the new game take place in 1920s America in a remote mental asylum with a rich history. The newest Alone in the Dark although is a return to the origins of the series is neither a remake, a remaster or a reboot. It is a modern survival horror that pays tribute to the legendary series, reusing locations and characters in a new fashion.

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As such the things are put in motion by a letter received by Emily Hartwood from her uncle. In order to make sense of things the young lady hires a private investigator, Edward Carnby. When they arrive in the swamps the hosts the Derceto estate, things take an esoteric turn, and reality morphs into a nightmare, the occult being intertwined with fragile psyches and hidden agendas.

The entire game is built in order to encourage multiple playthroughs. First you have to choose either Emily or Edward as the character you control. This first and important choice will influence your abilities and the perspective you will experience. Since they have relatively different trajectories, you will need to play with both characters to get the full picture.

Moreover, the developers hid throughout the entire game plenty of collectibles. Named lagniappe, these seemingly mundane objects form sets that can offer not just new details about the events but can trigger new missions as well. Collecting them will take several playthroughs, that will put the pieces of the Derceto puzzle in place.

The entire game dims the boundaries between real and supernatural, as creating confusion is one of the preferred tools in the arsenal used by the developers. Until you uncover every detail you cannot be really sure if what you see is really happening, or it is your psyche collapsing on itself. Two or three successful runs should uncover everything Alone in the Dark has to offer.

One thing is sure: the monsters you will encounter may not look real, but they cause real damage to our heroes. The fights reflect the fact that our heroes are not hard trained combat specialists, and they have plenty of weaknesses. As a result, the combat feels a bit hectic and inaccurate, and there is constant stress caused by the fact that your melee weapons break after a certain number of swings, and there is a realistic limit to the amount of ammo you can carry around.

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Except for the lowest difficulty level this means that you will always be outnumbered and underpowered, requiring you to bid your time, sneak around and avoid conflict as much as possible. Your most trusted allies will be the throwable objects that can distract the monsters lurking around, creating an opening for you. Getting surrounded or facing several monsters at once even on easy difficulty will lead to certain demise.

Overall, the combat system feels a bit too basic, without offering too much satisfaction for beating your enemies or stealthing your way around them. The fights themselves feel like intermissions between the puzzles and exploration parts of the game. Fortunately, the later parts are quite atmospheric and satisfying. During the various chapters you will uncover more and more from the old mansion, by stumbling upon new keys and solving various puzzles.

You will have to discover various items in your environment and use the clues scattered in various notes or diaries to solve the mysteries found at every corner. They are not overly complicated, but on the hardest difficulty settings any kind of hint system is disabled, and it is up to you to make the connections. As a result, the initial playthrough will be over 11-12 hours, but each new attempt will be faster and faster. That being said, it’s possible to finish Alone in the Dark in just under three hours.

Technically the game is a mixed bag of treats. While the environments look acceptable and sometimes even polished, some of the rooms and the gardens being fairly detailed, the character design is severely lacking. Looking at any character up close or during a dialogue you will feel like you took a trip back to the past. The clumsy animations and poor camera angle choices only aggravate things.

As mentioned already the cast includes also two award-winning actors, David Harbour and Jodie Comer, but these are not the roles people will remember them for. Beyond the bad lip-sync and the often-trivial dialogues, you will often feel that the actors forgot to act, or they did not really care about their in-game characters.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion