Alone in the Dark (2022) Review

The Alone in the Dark franchise has experienced its fair share of ups and downs. Pioneering the 3D survival horror genre, it has often been overshadowed by the titles it inspired, notably Capcom’s Resident Evil.

Throughout the years, various attempts to revive the series have fallen short, placing developer Pieces Interactive in a challenging position as they attempt to reestablish the series as a cultural zeitgeist.

The 2024 iteration of Alone in the Dark is presented as a modern reimagining that weaves a new narrative while retaining elements that harken back to the 1992 original.

The game’s opening shots offer an expansive, cinematic view of the bayou’s solitude as protagonists Emily Hartwood and detective Edward Carnby journey toward Derceto Manor, an asylum where mentally fatigued patients seek recovery.

Located away from New Orleans, the institution houses Emily’s uncle, Jeremy Hartwood, who sends his niece a disturbing letter that prompts her to check up on him. As the duo arrives, they not only learn that he is nowhere to be found, but strange occurrences soon begin to suggest that Derceto may be harboring darker secrets.

It begins with eerie whispers and strange sounds that you easily brush off before meeting the patients. Several cutscene-driven interactions reveal seemingly reasonable people who each carry a different brand of weirdness.

Then, as you explore, the door you just opened a minute ago refuses to budge and you’re suddenly thrust into an alternate reality, where hostile rot creatures seek to bring a swift end to your life.

Alone in the Dark skillfully draws you in with the introduction of its different elements, seamlessly transitioning between surreal journeys and calmer moments of exploration within Derceto Manor.

Yet, as you slowly unravel the mystery of Jeremy’s disappearance, it becomes evident that akin to the spreading rot within the manor, certain attempts to modernise the game’s formula sap it of its strength.

Its most compelling segments are those that expand on the original’s groundwork, focusing on the exploration of the manor itself. Making your way across its hallways to meticulously examine each room for objects that help you complete puzzles, open locked doors, and get closer to Jeremy makes you feel like a detective, regardless of which protagonist you control.

The spirit of a great adventure game flows through AitD, not just echoing the original but also effectively recreating the gratification of finally using a hard-earned key to unlock a door you couldn’t previously unlock, opening the way forward.

Verbal and textual clues alongside items rewarded for venturing into different realities and braving the horrors within create a fine thread that constantly nudges you towards new places to explore.

The inability to solve all puzzles immediately led me to frequently revisit rooms, mentally bookmarking locations for later exploration. This process naturally helped me memorise the building’s layout - despite the availability of a map at a button press - and gave the manor a proper sense of place. Each return to its familiar corridors felt somewhat like coming home, even as the atmosphere grew increasingly more foreboding.

The ability to customise how much help the game offers also acts as a welcome addition. Where the Modern setting conveniently highlights relevant text inside documents and adds map icons for puzzles waiting to be solved, the Classic mode lets you work out more of these things yourself. In addition, you can also turn individual features on or off, allowing you to remove interaction points and the list of objectives that provide further guidance.

Yet, even with Modern settings, you still need to pay attention to your surroundings and read through the various notes you find to complete the different puzzles. Some link names to astrological symbols that open up locks, others point you in the direction of a broken plate that lets you solve a picture puzzle which, in turn, opens the way to a brief journey through a different world.

Aside from a few headscratchers, including one safe puzzle that proved way more tricky than it should be, all of them require you to put in some effort to find their solution without becoming frustrated.

Aside from a multitude of key items, you’ll also find collectibles called Lagniappes spread across the manor. Completing sets yields flavour text that adds context to the unsettling picture of the game’s broader world. They carry over between playthroughs and one particular set unlocks the case that holds a double-barreled shotgun, giving you an additional weapon to use against foes.

Alone in the Dark also boasts excellent writing and expressive voice acting that makes reading every book and note – or listening to them being read by the character who penned them – very much worthwhile. The notes often reveal details that add to the creepy atmosphere pervading the otherwise familiar rooms of the manor, while the cutscenes add levity through exchanges with the other patients.

These characters aren’t given a lot of screen time, yet still manage to paint themselves as distinct figures whose vastly different lives have brought them to the same place. The protagonists, brought to life by actors David Harbour and Jodie Comer, enjoy strong performances, despite their personalities being slightly blander and their encounters with past traumas occasionally seeming a bit forced.

Yet, while the exploration and puzzle-solving shine, allowing AitD’s psychological horror to slowly work its magic, the poorly executed combat and stealth sequences fight to undo these efforts.

Unwieldy controls and animations reduce melee scraps to mashing the F button and watching Edward and Emily wildly flail a melee weapon around while hoping that the swings connect to elusive enemy hitboxes.

The major problem with melee combat is that – when enemies don’t ambush and gang up on you resulting in a swift, unavoidable death – it puts you in harm’s way more often than not resulting in taking unnecessary damage.

While you can technically dodge enemy blows, getting a sense of when they’re about to connect rivals dabbling into the arcane arts. The protagonists can only carry one melee weapon at a time that does eventually break, but its durability isn’t shown. In addition, there were instances in which a bug stopped me from picking up additional weapons, claiming that I was “full” although I couldn’t use any of them.

Thankfully, you don’t need to resort to melee weapons much, since ammo pickups and health-restoring drinks are generously awarded. On standard difficulty, I could actively avoid using melee weapons for the most part.

Unfortunately, while the pistol, shotgun, and Tommy Gun sound fierce, firing them feels a bit too loose while landing shots don’t have quite as strong a punch as expected.

You can also pick up throwable items but, unless you already have a target in your sight, you’ll find their usefulness severely limited. While aiming throwables – which you can neither store in your inventory nor put down – you move at a snail’s pace, so you either have to unnecessarily backtrack while being chased or hope that enemies clump up and wait for you to throw your Molotov cocktail at them, which doesn’t happen all that often.

The terrifying thing about the few bosses AitD throws your way is how much of a nuisance fighting them in cramped spaces gets, where even aiming your gun can become fiddly. Instead of making the horrific design of some of these enemies memorable, encountering them mainly reminds you of how slapdash the combat system feels.

Stealth is even clunkier and forgettable. At certain points, you can crouch to move through small areas without alerting the same enemies you’ve already shot multiple times. Since the reasons for getting spotted aren’t communicated enough, it’s simply not worth engaging in any sneaky activities, especially since pulling out your gun and going loud gets the job done much quicker.

To experience the full story, Alone in the Dark demands two playthroughs – one as Emily, and another as Edward. You choose which character you control at the very start and that decision remains locked in for the remainder of your run.

The main differences between the two come in the shape of different dialog lines and cutscenes that shed new perspectives on what’s happening inside and around Derceto. The locations you visit, puzzles you complete, combat encounters, and overall gameplay loop do not change, which, even at a brisk 6-10 hours, makes the second playthrough feel like a bit of a chore.

As I was completing the same puzzles and killing the same enemies a second time as Emily, I couldn’t help but wonder how great it would have been if the development effort that went into combat was instead channeled into fleshing out the investigative part and making the two protagonists’ playthroughs vastly different.

Performance

On an i7-13700K, 32 GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 3080@1440p , Alone in the Dark ran smoothly, having no trouble hovering around the 165 FPS mark on Epic settings, aside from a few admittedly violent loading-related stutters. I did, however, notice some fairly heavy texture pop-in while also having to occasionally deal with poor audio mixing that made gunshots especially loud during a few ambushes – a kind of spontaneous, likely unintended jumpscare which I could have done without.

Tested Platforms: PC and PlayStation 5