Alone in the Dark (PC) REVIEW – All Hail Dark Jazz

It’s a damn good time to be a survival horror fan. In fact, whisper it, but we might just currently be in the midst of a second golden age of the subgenre, and maybe even horror gaming as a while. Resident Evil is in its greatest ever phase, Dead Space made a triumphant comeback, and Alan Wake 2 had us all spiralling out of control late last year. But Alone in the Dark, the grandfather of them all, is also looking to find itself some space in the subgenre, and, for the most part, it does provide a pretty unique spin on things. However, it’s by no means perfect.

Right off the bat, it’s important to note just the kind of gap we’re talking about in terms of production budgets when it comes to all of the games mentioned so far. Resident Evil is a certified money-printer for Capcom, Dead Space was produced by a studio with over 100 employees, and Alan Wake 2 had V-Buck money to burn. Alone in the Dark attempts to join those games with what seems to be a AA budget from a studio of around 50 people making a new entry in a series that hasn’t been profitable in well over two decades. Temper your expectations, and you could really enjoy the best Alone in the Dark game in two decades, too.

Playing as either Edward Carnby or Emily Hartwood, Alone in the Dark sees you traveling to Derceto Manor to find out what’s going on with Emily’s relative, with the patients there seemingly all being a little bit “off the boil”. It’s no Spencer Mansion, but the Derceto Manor is a fascinating labyrinth of locked doors and opportunities that slowly opens up the further you fall into its twisted tales and discover more about its odd inhabitants.

Comparisons to Resident Evil in general are pretty hard to avoid here — doubly apt considering the kingpin of survival horror drew a lot of inspiration from Infogrames’ pioneering slap ’em up to begin with. Drawing heavily from the 2019 version of Resident Evil 2 (which is truly upsetting to hear is now over five years old), Alone in the Dark features dual storylines with unique differences between both, very deliberate third-person combat, and a whole bunch of backtracking to use the random MacGuffin you got on the fridge you saw three hours ago to maybe get a couple of bullets. It’s a pretty potent cocktail that still works great here.

However, what really helps Alone in the Dark stand out is its more psychological horror-esque elements, with the scenes shifting with the kind of alarming regularity of something like Layers of Fear. One minute you’re chilling and being told off by some cantankerous cook, the next minute you’re on an oil rig. It’s disorienting at times, but it’s exactly what writer Mikael Hedberg of SOMA and Amnesia is known for. Nothing is ever exactly as it seems, with there being plenty of subtext, pretext, and all kinds of other texts for video essayists to absolutely gobble up, with loads of throwback nods to the glory years of the franchise and the subgenre as a whole too.

It’s also good to see how well Jodie Comer and David Harbour especially take to their roles as Emily and Edward, with Harbour’s turn as the horror icon being perhaps the best ever interpretation of Carnby. His gruff, tortured performance as the private detective who’s lost himself might be familiar in plenty of ways, but the crazy-eyed mania really sells Carnby’s descent. And while Comer never really gets out of second gear as Emily, she is still a huge step up from basically every other performance in the series up to this point.

However, probably the biggest character in Alone in the Dark is the southern gothic aesthetic itself, the kind of grotty, humid muckiness that you can tell was worked on relentlessly by the team at Pieces until they got it just right. The deterioration of the manor is fascinating to behold, with so many different background assets telling so many stories and just an almost wild amount of background lore to read up on through logs. Backed by some truly fantastic “darkjazz” (read: very unsettling brass with some elements of metal), Alone in the Dark basically becomes Southern Gothic: The Video Game.

Unfortunately, while it nails so many things, Alone in the Dark does tend to really struggle where it counts: the gameplay. Particularly when it comes to the combat, which very purposely apes Resident Evil 2 but without the almost painstaking attention to the small things that made it so good. Gunfire feedback is weak, your shots actually landing feels a bit hard to gauge, and enemies just don’t seem to react quite as kinetically as you might expect. And then there’s the melee action, which honestly constantly reminded me of the windmilling scene in The Simpsons — just a whole bunch of flailing. It doesn’t quite undo all of the good work done by the game’s more narrative elements, but it’s so basic feeling to the point where you wish it’d really been dragged up the priority chain a bit more. You’re gonna be shooting a whole load of Not Molded over the course of Alone in the Dark, and probably won’t be able to remember a single encounter that felt “good”.

There’s also just how the game performs in general. While you often have to give some leeway during pre-release reviews for incoming day one patches, there was just so much jittery, juddery action during my time with Alone in the Dark that it’s impossible not to discuss it. The game auto-defaulted to a 120fps cap to begin with, which was chaos, but even when that cap was brought down to 60fps, getting it to stay there was a huge ask, even with FSR enabled. And while it’s obvious that the project is AA, the differences in animation quality between the two main characters and every other NPC borders on the uncanny sometimes. A lot of this will probably be smoothened out for launch day (there was even a giant patch that got pushed out just before), but it’s important to not my experiences all the same.

Fortunately, while there are elements of Alone in the Dark that may feel a little bit cheap, this is a rich world to get lost in for a dozen hours, and something a little bit different in a rather bustling space. It’s good to see the series again, so here’s hoping it’s not left alone for quite so long next time.

A Steam key was provided by PR for the purposes of this review.

Verdict

While it has plenty of rough edges, Pieces Interactive's take on horror royalty is the best the series has been in decades.

7