After I consider the survival-horror style’s finest video games, I typically marvel in the event that they had been made higher by their steadily unwieldy fight mechanics. The shortcoming to reliably defend your self heightened the fear in anti-power fantasies like Silent Hill, and the awkwardness of taking up the undead in Resident Evil grew to become core to its stress. With that in thoughts, may a contemporary horror sport profit from having equally janky self-defense programs? Alone within the Darkish, the 2024 reboot challenge from THQ Nordic and Items Interactive, emphatically resolves this query for me; because it seems, the reply is no–it’s actually worse off.
Alone within the Darkish facilities on characters and a haunted home all named the identical as they had been within the authentic 1992 sport, however it largely ditches that sport’s authentic story and old-school journey sport leanings in favor of a third-person, over-the-shoulder horror expertise according to fashionable counterparts. The sport’s writing pedigree flaunts Soma and Amnesia: The Darkish Descent’s Mikael Hedberg, and the story even performs out like an Amnesia sport at occasions, to its credit score. A lot of what it does nicely can also be spinoff, however a bigger subject is that it could’t do these elements of the sport nicely constantly. And all of the whereas its worst components are ceaselessly unenjoyable.
Chief among the many blemishes is the aforementioned shoddy fight. There are three weapons in complete, and although wielding them feels cumbersome in the best way a horror sport needs to, a lot else about dispatching monsters within the Derceto mansion’s hallways and bedrooms is a chore. Many enemies really feel uniform of their behaviors and are sometimes comically unaware or incapable of reaching you because of getting caught on geometry and even one another once they present up in teams.
Even the few that do behave in a different way, like a monster that lurks on all fours and pounces or flying bug-like creatures that swarm down onto you, are so simply killed off that I shortly felt like the sport may’ve been extra fulfilling if there weren’t any fight in any respect.
Melee fight feels worse than gunplay, with a swinging mechanic that behaves extra like a directionless flail. I discovered that for finest outcomes I needed to button-mash the melee weapon and simply hope that I took down the enemy I used to be focusing on earlier than they bought to me first, and I wasn’t at all times profitable.
However neither weapons nor melee can outdo the confounding use of throwable weapons. Scattered round environments are bottles and Molotovs that may be thrown on the many monsters in your path. However you possibly can’t add them to your stock: It’s a must to throw them from the place you discover them, and the sport’s method of telling you that is to immediate you to select one up (RT/R2) and watch as your character instantly tosses it and not using a care. That teaches you that the subsequent time you wish to use one, it’s best to as an alternative maintain the button down, thereby permitting your self to purpose the throw. However you continue to aren’t meant to truly transfer with the thing in your hand, and when you strive, the character will slowly stroll within the course you level, all whereas the throwing arc nonetheless sits in your display. It is simply probably the most undercooked fight mechanics I can recall in a horror sport.
It is also odd and distracting how the primary shot of any spherical of gunfire suffers an unmissable audio delay of a second or two. At any time when I might hearth a gun, the enemy would react to the harm, and a second later, I might hear the gunshot. It was at all times the primary shot and by no means any subsequent photographs in a sequence of them. It did not break the sport however it was jarring for all 15 hours I performed. I ought to point out that this occurred on Xbox for me, however not for a colleague taking part in on PC, although they did report different points comparable to sport crashes.
Alone within the Darkish additionally options the opposite gameplay tentpole of the style, as the frilly house it takes place in is suffering from puzzles. That is really an space the place the sport generally shines, however not constantly. Some early puzzles within the mansion-turned-rest-home are enjoyable to piece collectively and supply a way of reward not only for advancing the story, however for letting you piece it collectively and really feel like an investigator, like one of many two playable characters is.
I loved exploring the mansion and opening up new avenues by means of which to resolve its roundabout puzzles, and it was nice to combine in a couple of otherworldly sections that pulled me out of Derceto and into numerous nightmarishly twisted recollections. The transitions between the mansion and these different locations had been largely completed easily and caught me abruptly, albeit not with out an occasional stutter, however I by no means discovered this as distracting because the gunfire audio delay.
However different puzzles had been obnoxiously obtuse, with options that did not really feel like they had been accessible within the sport’s context clues. Many of those revolve round figuring out protected codes or piecing damaged objects again collectively. In a single instance, I needed to infer a three-digit code from a letter I might discovered, and the eventual resolution did not really feel logically telegraphed. Alone within the Darkish is usually extra of a headache than it must be.
Fortunately, the doom jazz soundtrack is a pleasant treatment for what ails you. I liked the sport’s ambiance, strongly aided by the nice music and good performances by Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and David Harbour (Stranger Issues). Finally, nevertheless, I by no means felt just like the acquainted faces from Hollywood raised the sport’s high quality degree to a level that justifies their inclusion past the marketability of star energy. They are not unhealthy of their roles by any means, however I did not really feel like they introduced a component to the sport that could not have been granted by different gifted people, making their involvement really feel like easy stunt casting.
You possibly can select both character–Comer’s Emily Hartwood or Harbour’s Detective Carnby–and play the complete marketing campaign as both. For big swaths of the story, these campaigns are the identical, however they every contain gameplay and story moments distinctive to them, like puzzle sections and a few hauntings distinctive to every of their backstories, together with a real ending for gamers who end each variations. These alternate pathways really feel like a enjoyable added wrinkle to the complete story, however the attract of taking part in the sport a second time is dampened by its points. I favored the sport’s story for essentially the most half, however I did witness a jarring sequence close to the top the place it so plainly and overtly pulls a plot element from one other main horror sport that I discovered it laborious to think about the way it bought by means of modifying. You possibly can’t simply repeat one other sport’s twist, are you able to? Alone within the Darkish suggests you possibly can.
I discovered that to be such a perplexing alternative, given how a lot else Hedberg has completed nicely within the horror world and even does nicely right here. At any time when the fight bored me or the puzzles left me completely stumped, I persevered, partly, as a result of I needed to see how the story shook out.
Led by the sport’s mysterious Darkish Man, an entity resembling a Pharaoh, Alone within the Darkish mixes in the identical sort of historical historical past aspect that the Amnesia sequence has completed so nicely. It initially feels so out-of-place that it really serves the sport higher ultimately. You assume you are getting a period-piece haunted home story, and abruptly the sport is making nods to a lot better supernatural oddities and mixing actuality and fiction in ways in which make it laborious to belief something you are seeing. It makes the world of Alone within the Darkish really feel extra unsure, and thus, much less protected. Save for the story beat that feels too shut to a different sport’s large second, I discovered the story to be Alone within the Darkish’s finest, most constant high quality.
With its reality-bending story, parade of puzzles, and unwieldy fight, Alone within the Darkish is, in some methods, extra trustworthy to some turn-of-the-century horror video games than their very own revitalized fashionable remakes. I loved the sport’s story, setting, and considerable lore, and I felt sensible once I’d overcome a few of its puzzles. However others proved so obtuse as to be irritating, and nothing concerning the fight even climbs to a degree I might name serviceable–it’s constantly poor. This is not Alone within the Darkish’s first revival try, and it is most likely not its final, however it is not the one that may put the sequence’ title in the identical breath because the all-time greats it initially helped encourage.