I haven't played other parts of the series before (especially the original trilogy), so I have nothing to compare it with. It's a really strange game all over the way. While being a survival horror, this game doesn't even try to scare you + doesn't keep you in suspense at all - there're always tons of loot and the game literally leads you to the keys/other items, so you don't have to walk around the mansion and look for them for a long time. The plot and storytelling are surprisingly decent, but the voice acting is just hilarious.
But ya know, even though it takes 5-6 hours to complete, it's simply fun to play, especially if you consider it as an "attraction" for a couple of evenings.
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402021098
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402021460
https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3402020503

2/5

My main problems with the game are I didn't relate or really like one of the main characters. The story line was convoluted and made not much sense to me, even towards the end when things were getting wrapped up. Left a lot of loose ends and plot holes. For a story based game, the story was lacking. Combat wasn't great. I ran into a few glitches where I got stuck on props in game.

The first half of the game was entertaining, walking around the manor and collecting clues, then everything kind of went bad, in terms of story line. I still don't really understand what was going on and I spent a lot of time collecting documents to unravel the story, but still, not great.

Overall, wouldn't recommend to anyone, it had a lot of flaws to me personally. Glad I got it on sale.

For almost 30 years now the Alone in the Dark series has been widely credited as the game franchise that created the survival horror genre. But when I worked my way through the whole series half a decade ago, I rememeber wondering if the first three Alone in the Dark games managed to scare anybody at all with their clunky gameplay and stylized cartoonish grafics, even at the time of their release. In fact, the only Alone in the Dark game that gave me a bit of excitement was 2001's Alone in the Dark The new Beginning. The original trilogy, as groundbreaking as it was, is borderline unplayable these days, 2015's Alone in the Dark Illumination is, mildly spoken, an extremely mediocre coop-shooter that has barely anything to do with the idea of the first games, and the reboot from 2008 is even worse, in fact one of the absolute worst games I've ever played in my entire life. So I was surprised that there was yet another remake that came out of nowhere last year, because I really didn't think that anybody asked for another game from a series that hasn't been relevant for more than twenty years now. But here it is and despite a couple of flaws there's no doubt that 2024's Alone in the Dark is the best one yet.

It's a remake of the very first game from 1992, which plays in the 1930s within the halls of Derceto manor on the outskirts of New Orleans. Emelie Hartford hires private detective Edward Carnby to look for her uncle Jeremy, who lives there but has gone missing lately and during their search they uncover the supernatural stuff going on at the Derceto mansion. The whole game strongly revolves around H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos and it absolutely nails that Lovecraftian aspect. Here lies the biggest strength of the game: Unlike many other survival horror games like Resident Evil or Silent Hill, Alone in the Dark is not exactly scary, it just has this extremely thick, eerie, mysterious and foreboding atmosphere. The game barely shows you it's horrors, it just suggests them and thus makes them play out all in your head. It's the kind of horror that makes movies like Blair Witch Project or The Shining so effective and through this approach Alone in the Dark is, in my perception, a lot more unsettling than clumsy, blunt slasher orgies like The Outlast Trials for example.

Gameplaywise it's a game that strongly focuses on exploration and puzzle solving. You more or less freely explore the Derceto mansion, which is now a kind of fancy mental asylum that frequently pulls you into alternate dimensions and places that only exist in the character's heads. The many puzzles you have to solve during your journey are mostly clever during the first half, but towards the end they become increasingly clumsy and a couple of them were so contrived that they required me to take a peek into a walkthrough at once. On the other hand, combat occures very rarely for a survival horror game, which is kind of a shame because the monsters do look legitimately unsettling and the weapons and shooting mechanics are decently satisfying. The basically biggest flaw of this game is that it has this striking imbalance between puzzle solving and action. Especially during the second half it would've done the game good, if some of the exceedingly clunky and slightly repetitive puzzles would have been swapped for some more combat, but with a pacing like it is in the end, Alone in the Dark just fizzles out and then just ends very abprubtly with a total WTF ending. The initially strong writing of it all doesn't quite come together as well, so it leaves you with a lot of questions at the end.

But apart from that, the only minor flaw that keeps Alone in the Dark from a higer rating is that even though it has some replay value through the two different main characters it's a pretty short (8 hours per character maximum if you don't take too long for the puzzles) and easy game and in addition, the framerate is not as smooth as you would expect it due to the average grafics. In general, there are definitely no triple A production values here: The music's good and the voice acting is mostly solid, but the visuals look extremely dated for a game that came out not even a year ago.

Nevertheless, fans of more subtle survival horror games will get their money's worth and for everybody looking to get into the genre, 2024's Alone in the Dark might be the perfect point of entry. This game was creepier than most outright horror games I've played lately and it did this without a single mutilated body, bucketfuls of blood or any predictable jumpscares.
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ALONE IN THE DARK (2024 remake)
Genre: Survival horror / Third-Person-Shooter
Release: Q1 2024

( ) 0/8 Simply one of the worst games ever made. Don't waste any money on this.
( ) 1/8 Bad. Seriously flawed with barely any redeeming qualities. Worth a couple of Cents at best, if at all.
( ) 2/8 Sub-par. Only for hardcore-fans of respective genre / series. Don't pay more than 5 bucks.
( ) 3/8 Meh-diocre. It‘s okay. Don't pay more than 10 bucks.
( ) 4/8 Decent, but not for everybody. Don't pay more than 15 bucks.
(X) 5/8 Good game, Must-play for genre- / series-fans. Worth 20 to 25 bucks max, if you are not a fan.
( ) 6/8 Great game, universal recommendation. 30 bucks would be a steal for this.
( ) 7/8 Outstanding game, a milestone of it‘s respective genre. Definitely worth its full prize.
( ) 8/8 Simply one of the best games ever made. Get this, the prize doesn't matter.