Is there a horror series more cursed than Alone in the Dark? Any franchise that gets a Uwe Boll film has got to have some black magic involved in its origins. The original ’92 Alone in the Dark is regarded as a grandfather of the 3D survival horror genre but the initial sequels never quite recaptured the magic. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare in 2001 lit the flame again somewhat, before 2008’s Alone in the Dark: Inferno snuffed it out. The less said about Alone in the Dark: Illumination, the better.
But nine years after that trainwreck, we’re back again with a reimagining of the original game. No subtitles for this, just straight Alone in the Dark. I’d normally look down on this sort of reimagining but the series has long been hidden from the spotlight, so maybe it was time. The end product is a mixed bag, which I think is the result of taking inspiration from Resident Evil, another cursed series. The problem is, when you’re taking bits from something like Resident Evil, you need to take everything. Otherwise you end up feeling, rather appropriately, like you’re trapped between worlds.
(Not Quite) Alone In The Dark
Alone in the Dark opens with Emily Hartwood arriving at Derceto, an insane asylum housed in a fancy manor. Turns out the Hartwood family has a history of going loopy. Her reason for turning up is a letter she received from her uncle, Jeremy, where he intimated that he was being abused by the staff. When they arrive, he’s gone missing. To help her out, Emily hires a private detective, Edward Carnby, who tags along, complete with fedora. You can choose to play as either character, though there are little differences between the two campaigns, save for a small section at the end where it digs into their backstory.
On the large scale, I quite enjoy the story. I stuck with Edward for the first run and it wasn’t long before Derceto started being infested with a nightmare world. The characters are constantly thrown between the worlds, sometimes on purpose, sometimes at random. The fact that we’re essentially exploring the corners of Jeremy’s mind means we can go from a noir setting to a creepy Egyptian pyramid fairly smoothly. Still, on a more granular level, the writing presents issues. Our heroes are fairly boring, for example. Edward is entirely cliché – a drinking, smoking, and grumbling PI.
Not even David Harbour, bless him, can save it. Partly because his heart doesn’t seem in it, but so many voice lines are just blandly restating facts that I can’t really blame him. He reacts to the Lovecratian horror in front of him like it’s just mildly perturbing. Jodie Comer puts in a slightly stronger effort as Emily, though. Still, I did quite like the world that these characters are thrown into. The ‘nightmare’ world is appropriately gross. It’s overgrown and saturated in rot. Enemies are covered in weeds, or held together by writhing masses of worms, which I like. There’s a lot of potential for some goopy, wonderful horror here. Problem is, I didn’t find Alone in the Dark very scary.
Puzzling With The Lights Off
That’s quite a damning statement to slip into a review, so let me backtrack a bit and say that Alone in the Dark does know how to build atmosphere. For the first hour or so, I was very much on the edge of my seat. There’s the right amount of wet, squelchy noises and I like how Alone in the Dark doesn’t make too much fuss about introducing its enemies. Half the time, you turn a corner and there’s just a weird, gyrating shape at the end of the street and you need to figure out how to handle it. The combat can be pretty panic inducing too. Squelchy monsters don’t care for pistol shots, and backpedaling while firing at an encroaching monster can be harrowing.
The gunplay isn’t too bad. It’s the biggest pull from Resident Evil after all. There are three main guns, the pistol, the shotgun and the Tommy gun and they all feel quite good to use. Ammo is relatively scarce, keeping things tense. There’s also melee combat. It’s fairly clunky, which isn’t bad in this case as it adds to the feeling of panic, though the weapons have durability, which feels like a misstep. The biggest flaw in the combat, though, is the stealth. Simply bending your knees makes you completely invisible to monsters, even when walking right next to them. That rather snapped the enemy threat over its knee with a squelchy crack.
Still, it’s not all shooting enemies here. In-between these nightmare sections, we return to Derceto to continue piecing together what’s happening at the asylum. There are quite a few light puzzle sections, which I did enjoy, but it feels a bit like old-school ‘Adventure Game’ logic at times. Some doors are held shut by a door wedge, for example, which you can’t knock away until you find a palette knife. God forbid we use something else, like the end of our shoe. That’s when we’re not just finding a constant stream of keys. The puzzles were good; endlessly wandering around the mansion, trying every door, was not so good.
Alone in the Dark – Stop, Start, Stop
The other problem these puzzle sections bring is that it feels like the horror has been portioned out. With a few noted exceptions, combat never happens in the Derceto sections. Once you realise that, all tension is released. Horror relies on a constant feeling of tension; letting that go ultimately kills it. A rollercoaster would not be exciting if it kept screeching to a stop. What Alone in the Dark should have taken from Resident Evil is how to be relentless. If you want an action shooter, then you need to make us feel like we’re always a second away from being overrun. Alone in the Dark’s monsters are actually fairly scarce, all things considered.
There’s one section where you encounter a giant monster, which looks like it could obliterate you with one swing. I was geared up for a terrifying chase through the swamp. Nope. We evade it in a cutscene and it never comes back. Alone in the Dark keeps raising the stakes and then forgetting to do anything with them. It’s stuck between two worlds. The poor writing and constant upsetting of the tension mean it can’t function as psychological horror, but the flawed combat and relative enemy scarcity mean it can’t function as a Resident Evil style action horror either.
The ultimate flaw, though, is that it never got me to care about its characters. It’s hard to appreciate a character slipping into madness when you don’t really know them to begin with. A footnote in a book that hadn’t gripped me. Alone in the Dark isn’t a terrible game, but it does make me think it’s time to turn the lights out on this series.
