Alone in the Dark(2024) Review

I went into this remake with pretty low expectations, I'm not big on the Alone in the Dark franchise from what I played of a New Nightmare, I'm not really big on the survival horror genre as a whole either, on top of that the game got some pretty lukewarm reception but in spite of all that, I enjoyed this remake, it isn't going to revolutionize the way this genre is played and it's not going to be that groundbreaking title like the original game was, but at the end of the day I go into any game expecting myself to get some enjoyment out of it, and the game provided just that. 

I'll start with what I liked, the story, the atmosphere and the writing is pretty interesting stuff. I do think this is one of the more engaging stories in the genre, for one the game is quite committed with it's 1930s film noir motif, and the performances are pretty good. The various characters and Edward Caranby's interactions with them are pretty amusing and adds to the weird spooky nature of the game. The best complement I can give the story that unlike say a game like Alan Wake 2, Alone in the Dark's story doesn't take nearly as long to engage or get going and right away you are already into the gameplay. There is a lot of cutscenes and voice acting which is more than usual in the game of this genre since they require you to read lots of notes to understand what is going on. 

Speaking of voice acting there is lots of it, and I like that there is voiced narration for all the notes you read, I normally don't like reading notes that much in video games so having them be voiced is a welcome addition. 

The moment to moment gameplay is mostly pretty good, if you ever played a Resident Evil or even a Silent Hill game, you will be right at home here. Lots of inventory puzzles, lots of locked doors or items needing to progress furthur, lots of puzzles, combat, and shortcuts to find. There is even plenty in common with the first Resident Evil game in that it takes place in primarily in mansion, and it surprisingly enough uses the 2002's remake's map system where all the areas you haven't 100% explored will be highlighted in red and everything explored will be in green. It doesn't end there either since Alone in the Dark 2024 also takes inspiration from the Evil Within games in that reality will warp around as you discover clues when looking around in the mansion. You could look at being derivative but I don't mind this the execution when it comes to exploring the mansion is solid. There is always items to find and areas to come back to keep track of later in order to progress later in the game. Everything about the game in some ways feels like survival horror lite and if the combat was better I would surely reccomend this game for genre newcomers. 

What I disliked and I'll get this out of the way but the game isn't the most polished in the world, I got stuck behind geometry multiple times forcing me to restart the game but luckily the save system is super forgiving and I didn't lose too much progress. 

The hint system is also a red herring. You can set it to "modern" or "old school" but it didn't matter since David Harbour would spell out super obvious hints at me like, "I need a key" even on the old school setting. 

And finally, this is going to break the game or be tolerable for many people is the combat. At first, it's somewhat easy to praise since you have makeshift melee weapons like in the Condemned games and they break like in Condemned 2 and unlike Resident Evil to this very day you have an actual dodge button meaning you have a reliable way to move out of the way from enemy attacks that doesn't involve a contextual button prompt, all this sounds like it gives you more options than the remade Resident Evil games do. The weapons also have decent punch when fired too. 

This all sounds great, right? The problem lies is with the collison detection. This is somewhat okay with melee weapons since you can spam the attack button until it breaks but when you get hit yourself there is no stagger animation or any inviciblity frames so it's easy not to get a sense of weight when fighting, it can be very easy to get swarmed by enemies and get killed when attacked by multiple enemies at once. Due to this combat can feel more frustrating than it should but eventually I did get used to all these weird quirks regarding combat but this could annoy many other people. The lack of polished combat is the main thing that is preventing me from reccomending this game for someone new to the genre. 

Overall, Alone in the Dark 2024 is a solid remake from a franchise and genre I don't care for, the only thing fully reccomending this game is it's overall lack of polish but if you can look past that there is an enjoyable game to be found here.