Alone in the Dark Review – A Case Best Left Unsolved

Alone in the Dark on PlayStation 5

Ever because it was introduced in 2022, my hopes have been excessive for Alone in the Dark. The franchise is the founding father of the survival horror style, predating the first Resident Evil sport by 4 years and establishing the fastened-digicam creepiness that Capcom’s collection would go on to make a worldwide sensation.

It’s a property that has lengthy laid dormant; the rights flitting between publishers till this new excessive-profile reboot from THQ Nordic starring Jodie Comer and David Harbour. The result’s a sport of contradictions: it concurrently tries to reclaim its survival horror throne, all whereas poorly apeing the video games it impressed in the first place. Alongside a few of the worst technical efficiency points I’ve seen in a present-gen sport, it turns into extremely exhausting to suggest.

2024’s iteration of Alone in the Dark is a full reboot of the collection, loosely adapting the 1992 unique. You play as both detective Edward Carnby (David Harbour) or Emily Hartwood (Jodie Comer), each investigating the disappearance of Emily’s uncle Jeremy at Derceto Manor, an ominous-wanting asylum.

The sport guarantees diverging tales for every playable character, the extent to which you’re really useful to play via each of them, a la Leon and Claire’s separate campaigns in the 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake. Doing so is far more of a chore than an opportunity to dive additional into the lore, with solely about half an hour’s price of unique eventualities and sequences in each. The solely saving grace is that the sport is extremely brief: my first run-via as Emily took round six hours, whereas the second as Edward clocked in at simply over 4 hours. There are a variety of endings to see, however having to trudge via the total sport twice merely isn’t price it.

That’s as a result of the gameplay at the core of Alone in the Dark is uninspired, clunky, and never particularly enjoyable. If the Resident Evil collection caught to the unique’s survival horror roots throughout the PS3/Xbox 360 technology, that is precisely what it could look and play like. Characters run slowly round the manor, take ages to open doorways, and hearth weapons that really feel imprecise and floaty. Enemies are at finest spongey and at worst damaged, and haven’t any in-universe clarification for present in the first place. So a lot of Alone in the Dark’s DNA feels immediately ripped from Resident Evil, however to a a lot decrease commonplace.

Even the map you employ to traverse Derceto Manor – alongside basic options like colours denoting whether or not you’ve explored the entire room or not, and keys that regularly open up new areas as you progress – is tough to navigate resulting from an absence of directional arrows in your character, and fully absent throughout gameplay exterior of the asylum.

The solely a part of Alone in the Dark’s gameplay that’s notably enjoyable is the puzzles, which quantity to a a lot bigger proportion of the sport than you might anticipate. A lot of them require you to look via notes you gather, translating coded messages into inputs for the mystical talisman you carry round, and there’s a very rewarding feeling while you determine them out. Going again to the sticking level of getting to play the sport twice to see its correct endings, although, they unavoidably turn out to be boring and much too simple on that second playthrough.

But the primary cardinal sin of Alone in the Dark is simply how unpolished it feels. The sport already went via a good few delays, however even now it actually feels prefer it wanted far more time in the oven to be prepared for a correct launch. Simply put, Alone in the Dark is so tough round the edges that I can’t in good conscience suggest shopping for it till these points are fastened.

It isn’t simply the odd visible glitch right here and there: at worst my sport crashed fully, and it doesn’t get higher when you’re previous these. There have been quite a few occasions in each playthroughs my character acquired caught in the wall or flooring, that means I needed to reboot the sport (shedding progress in the course of) to proceed enjoying. On-screen button prompts are extremely finicky, typically taking upwards of 4 approaches to indicate up correctly. Boxes you open with these floaty controls typically include nothing in any respect, fully losing your time. The bayou part in the direction of the sport’s finish is by far the worst offender, with leaping leech-like enemies that typically clip via partitions to succeed in you and different occasions float in the air, static, as soon as defeated.

These technical issues made Alone in the Dark a chore to play via the first time round, and simply bitterly disappointing on the second. It’s barely simpler to look past the uninspired story and gameplay, placing it all the way down to double-A manufacturing and a need to return to the collection’ roots, however the quantity of sport-breaking issues I encountered take away any of its appeal.

As it stands, it’s very exhausting – if not not possible – to suggest Alone in the Dark in its present state. Even in the event you can look past the blandness of its design, story, and gameplay, the sheer lack of polish is way too irritating to warrant spending any cash on. It’s a sport that, with out exaggeration, I had been wanting ahead to for years. All that’s left now, although, is a bitter style.