In 1992, the world of interactive entertainment changed forever when Infogrames Entertainment released the first survival horror game, Alone in the Dark, which then influenced many future game developers who made many of the hit survival horror games we love now. Yesterday, THQ Nordic and Pieces Interactive released the faithful love letter remake of the original. Thank you to THQ, Pieces (especially Game Tomb) for the reviewing opportunity!
Alone in the Dark takes players to the Derceto Manor, a sanitorium, in the middle of the Louisiana Bayou, where Private Detective Edward Carnby (David Harbour) is helping Emily Hartwood (Jodie Comer) find her uncle Jeremy Hartwood, who says he’s being pursued by a “Dark Man”. Soon after arriving at the Manor, Edward and Emily encounter otherworldly happenings.
Now, onto the game itself! When it comes to controls, They’re as basic as you would expect if you’re familiar with 3rd-person games, which makes it easier to get right into the story. When it comes to the game’s art, it’s good for the most part but I’ve noticed some rendering issues during cinematic scenes.
The sound of the game is good overall, I just noticed some sync issues during combat, I fire the gun, and a millisecond later, there’s a bang. So far in my playthrough, that’s only happened about three or four times. I’m really digging the soundtrack, when things get spooky, so does the music, but when it’s not, it’s a nice dark Jazz that fits the Noir vibe of the story.
One aspect of the game I was not expecting was the full voiceover work done with documents, which was a pleasant surprise, I’m not one of those kinds of people who hates to read but I’ll admit sometimes in games when a simple document is as long as a thesis, I won’t read, but having a voiceover for a document is a nice touch, I’m also loving the chapter narrations as well.
When it comes to gameplay, I played the original ’92 game back in the mid-90s growing up, possibly one of my earliest exposures to horror, the remake is a lot different than the original, and believe it or not… it’s not a bad thing. If anything I think if this game tried to mirror the original too much, it would have been laughable as some parts of the 1992 game would not work well with today’s audience.
The puzzles are fun and not too complicated, the combat is your typical survival horror kind, and exploration is rewarding as you find “Lagniappes” objects to collect. At some points in the game, there are some decent jump scares, of course, I’m doing the Edward playthrough so I don’t know how different the story and gameplay will be between his and Emily’s stories, but I guess that adds to replayability, and if it turns out the playthroughs are different, that’s awesome.
Overall, I actually enjoyed Alone in the Dark contrary to what I’m seeing others saying. It has a unique feel compared to the original, to me personally this feels like an awesome game of “Find the Lovecraft Easter Eggs” that has some things in the game that are Lovecraft-inspired, and some subtly reference works from Lovecraft. On my scale of 1-10, the only real issue that game has is that the in-game graphics look better than the cinematic, and some sound sync issues, other than that, it’s a pretty good horror game paying homage to the Grandfather of survival horror games, I give Alone in the Dark an 8/10!
Alone in the Dark is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
