REVIEW – The origins of the franchise go back further than Silent Hill or Resident Evil, so it owes a lot to the founding of the survival horror genre. The new installment, which is the umpteenth reboot, isn’t that memorable, so if you like puzzles it might be interesting, but otherwise it’s not that great: it’s about the level that will make it a PlayStation Plus Essential title a year from now…

Steam’s description: “Return to Derceto Manor in this reimagining of Alone in the Dark, a love letter to the cult classic horror game of the ’90s.

Emily Hartwood in search of her uncle

There are two main protagonists in the game. There’s the aforementioned Emily Hartwood, who’s looking for her uncle Jeremy, and there’s a tough detective, Edward Carnby, who’s been hired to help Emily. Jeremy has gone missing from Derceto Manor, a New Orleans landmark with a dark past. In the play, it serves as a kind of sanatorium for the spiritually weary. This is only the surface, of course, as more people have disappeared, and Jeremy has left many notes talking about being haunted by something supernatural. There’s also talk of traveling between worlds, with a chunky, creepy setting and a Cthulhu-esque theme. Mental illness? Dark gods? Hidden tombs? They’re all in Alone in the Dark, which feels like it’s trying to be a crescendo without a payoff. It’s a musical motif (e.g. Foals – Spanish Sahara, Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit) where a song builds and builds, but here it’s as if there’s no climax. This is what Pieces Interactive tries to hide by having two main characters with no significant difference in the story between them, and even if you follow the story all the way through, you will surely be disappointed at the end.

The Lovecraft inspiration is in vain, there is a good chance that a curse will leave our mouths at the end, but it could be more than that, given the way it draws from survival horror games both old and modern. A bunch of locked doors, puzzles, an abundance of reading material at Derceto Manor, and enemies will appear here as well, but not at first. Some strange inhabitants of the castle will also appear, interrupting the talisman-induced visit to alternate worlds. When you exit into the other world, you get something like what the Resident Evil 4 Remake showed, but with more emphasis on combat and not much to deviate from the path, and the puzzles seem to be simpler. These locations vary in quality and atmosphere, but this term could also be applied to the puzzles themselves. What is certain is that there are two extremes: some seem incomprehensibly difficult at first, while others can be solved easily without any help. Alone in the Dark fits this description for almost all elements, however incomprehensible they may be: inconsistent…

Edward Carnby, whose bloody clothes no NPC says anything about

The combat system is far from positive. The AI of our enemies is somewhere between a wooden block and a plate of pasta, and our weapons don’t feel effective. Combat is simple until the developers overdo it, and there are examples of that. The lack of elaboration is not a problem at first, but it will become one later, and then the promiscuous existence of power will become apparent. On the PlayStation 5, you can select Quality mode for 30 FPS, but Alone in the Dark feels even slower in that mode, while the visuals and frame rate vary in Performance mode. Edward’s hand often had a few pixels missing from the bottom of the screen in certain camera angles (something Quantum Error showed when changing camera angles, with models missing parts for a few frames…), but there were also a few glitches.

For example, there was a key that would have opened the door, but it didn’t open, and instead a strange color showed through the gap in the door when the camera was turned. The voice acting was mostly good (David Harbour and Jodie Corner voicing the two main characters), but the length of the title was not so good. It takes about 6 hours to get through the story, and Pieces Interactive’s game recommends that you replay it because the ending can be different and not everything is the same between the two characters. You might not even find anything at first, because the collectibles are not left out here either.

Emily is here! Emily is here! Emily is here!

Why on earth can document voice files be restarted with a button? Even if it’s a picture with those three words, it still restarts with a single press. Apart from that, Alone in the Dark gets a 6.5/10 because it seems a bit weak technically. If it were a little more stable, and maybe a little nicer looking, it would deserve a 7/10, but even then it would only get that rating in good grace. It’s become an average game, nothing more, and as such will be quickly forgotten until it shows up on PlayStation Plus and/or Xbox Game Pass.

-V-

Éditeur : THQ Nordic (Embracer Group)

Développeur : Pieces Interactive

Style : horreur de survie

Sortie : 20 mars 2024.