Review: Alone in the Dark Reboot Can’t Avoid the Curse of Its Name

I had been cautiously optimistic about the new Alone in the Dark reboot. The announcement of Amnesia and Soma writer Mikael Hedberg working as creative director and writer for the game sounded promising, and the new meta-textual take on the original 1992 game got me interested in what could come out of this. Sadly, the second attempt to revive the franchise fails to deliver on both the narrative and gameplay aspects, with a mostly forgettable survival horror adventure that barely holds up in more ways than one.

The story of the Alone in the Dark reboot takes protagonists Emily Hartwood and private detective Edward Carnby to investigate Derceto Manor after Emily receives a strange letter from her uncle Jeremy Hartwood. It warned her to stay away from the manor and to not look for him. The letter itself is a callback to the original 1992 Alone in the Dark, which kickstarted the plot of the game. The difference between these two stories is that Jeremy is already dead in the 1992 release, whereas in the new 2024 reboot he’s alive and playing a more active role. The stakes are set immediately, and the angle of this premise takes a familiar meta-narrative approach that we have seen in recent years in games like FFVII Remake and FFVII Rebirth, where knowledge of the original game is rewarded with more than references.

However, this is all the story offers in terms of interesting concepts. While Alone in the Dark is supposed to follow themes of predestination and plays with the idea of analyzing the original text in a more modern perspective, during the entire game there is never an attempt at saying anything at all. It only vaguely gestures at ideas that never get explored. This was a major letdown for me, especially considering my expectations regarding the story and narrative.

Publisher THQ Nordic and developer Pieces Interactive repeatedly stated that understanding the whole story of the game will take at least two playthroughs, one with each playable character. However, in the roughly 6 to 8 hours it takes to complete one single playthrough, you will get as much narrative as this game offers. Playing Emily or Edward only affects how many bullets your starting pistol holds and one single short level in the later parts of the game. Most scenes and interactions with the characters of Derceto will change depending on which character you play, but they all follow the same exact plot beats and take you through mostly the same structure. This wouldn’t be so bad if exploration of Derceto Manor was any different between characters, or your choices in different playthroughs changed the way you interact with the manor in significant ways. While the new Alone in the Dark was directly inspired by titles like the Resident Evil 2 remake, this barebones approach makes second runs with another character tedious and repetitive.

At least exploring Derceto is fun during a first run. The mansion offers some fun and interesting puzzles, and it’s clear that there was an honest effort to replicate a modern survival horror mansion. The developers also put a lot of effort into filling the world with plenty of files and supporting text that fleshes out the world of the game. However, it can be frustrating to find various files in a row that contain walls of text of up to 6 pages. There’s not enough playing for how much text and pauses to read inconsequential text there are. Even more so when the main plot and narrative of the game is so thinly stretched, and cutscenes and events happen so rarely. The main plot and characters of Alone in the Dark feel underwritten, while the supporting text and lore files are long-winded. Characters enter scenes spouting some cryptic dialogue and then leave without much sense nor reason, only to provide a vague sense of mystery. These characters, as well as Emily and Edward’s personal stories, amount to very little by the end of the game and don’t change anything meaningfully.

The layout of Derceto starts out interesting, but quickly evolves into a sort of hub world where you do puzzles and unlock more linear levels. It is during these levels that you encounter enemies and experience combat. Gunplay is mostly decent and responsive, and weapons have considerable power. However, melee combat is clunky and frustrating. Even though there are plenty of different melee weapons, they never felt distinct. Enemy AI is pretty basic and it is extremely easy to cheese enemies and looping them to finish them with little effort. There’s some enemy variety, but all it changes is the way they attack. You either have normal monsters that attack with melee attacks at slightly different ranges, bugs that fly, enemies that puke acid at you, among others. Other than their methods of inflicting violence and their varied designs, they don’t shake things up much. Same goes for the different weapons you get. You have three different guns, a starting pistol, a shotgun, and a tommy gun. You also get a flare gun in the last level of the game, but this is more of a puzzle item than a weapon.

Alongside clues and lore files, Lagniappes are the main collectible in the game. These are used to unlock even more lore and text files, as well as to unlock the cabinet for the shotgun early on in the game. Another important use of the Lagniappes is unlocking new endings. I wish I could speak about the alternate endings, but I unfortunately experienced a bug that deleted all of the Lagniappes that I had collected in my first run with Edward, leaving me with only 4 or 5 collectables in the last scene with Emily. While this bug was the biggest I encountered, it was not the only one.

Emily and Edward will oftentimes get stuck on invisible collision (enough to be a noticeable problem), which forced me to reload a recent checkpoint. Additionally, some specific melee weapon stashes will not give you a weapon after interacting with them. Audio bugs were relatively common as well. I encountered one instance where all game audio, except minor background noise, stopped playing. In another one, all audio became bass-boosted and voices sounded oddly deep. Audio would also crackle often too, particularly during a couple of sections in Chapter 3 and 4. While most of these can be fixed by restarting the game, being unable to see new endings after collecting all the required collectables was a major letdown.

What I cannot deny is that Alone in the Dark is a very good looking game. Derceto Manor is a very distinct and fun environment, and even during a second run I was able to stop and appreciate every detail of the world. Graphically speaking, the game doesn’t push anything to its limit, but the art direction is definitely the strongest aspect of the game. Some of the more fantastic levels reminded me of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. The music also does a good job at helping with the atmosphere with its particular blend of dark jazz.

On the whole, Alone in the Dark is another derivative and bland entry in the survival horror genre. There is some fun to be had exploring Derceto Manor. Combat is bland and generic, but could be somewhat serviceable if it was supporting an interesting narrative. However, the story is mostly non-existent and it fails to do anything with the themes it attempts to look at. To make matters worse, the abundant bugs and glitches present in the game that were not disclosed as known issues muddied any enjoyment I had with this game.

Alone in the Dark will come out for the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC via Steam on March 20, 2024.