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19.03.2024 - 15:01 / radiotimes.com / David Harbour / Emily Hartwood / Edward Carnby
The new Alone in the Dark game, a relaunch of the horror series that first launched in 1992, is not quite what we expected it to be. And for the most part, being surprised is a good thing in this case!
One thing we knew in advance is that Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and David Harbour (Stranger Things) are starring in the Alone in the Dark cast, with their likenesses and voices both being unmistakable from the off.
What we didn’t expect is that you have to pick one of these big-name stars right at the start of the story. The one you pick becomes the sole playable character, while the other fades into a background role and you’ll hardly interact with them at all. This is something of a shame, but it does give you an incentive to go back and play the campaign with the other character in the driving seat.
For our first play-through, we opted for Jodie Comer’s Emily Hartwood, as her character seemed to have closer ties to the main story. She’s arrived at the creepy Derceto Manor psychiatric hospital after receiving a mysterious letter from her uncle, a patient there, and she’s brought David Harbour’s Detective Edward Carnby as a bit of extra investigative muscle.
What we expected in terms of the gameplay, given the decades-old comparisons between Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, is that we’d spend most of our time at Derceto. It seemed at first that the hospital is effectively this game’s version of the Resi 2 police station, with numerous puzzles to solve and keys to find that will gradually allow you to explore more rooms and piece the story together.
To an extent, that is true. Derceto is a fascinating place that – cliche alert – feels like a character in its own right. With gothic design, gloomy lighting and a confusing layout, it’s a great location for this sort of Resi-like gameplay. However, it turns out that Derceto is not the only location you’ll be exploring here.
Making some brilliant use of the speedy loading times that come with the current crop of consoles and PC graphics cards, the developers have engineered some fantastic moments when you’ll suddenly find yourself transported out of Derceto and into totally different places and even different time periods. To say why this happens might be a bit of a spoiler.
This location-hopping mostly works really well, and as the game progresses, you may find yourself looking forward to your next excursion more than you’re enjoying each return visit to Derceto. The other locations keep things feeling fresh, while the Derceto puzzles do start to feel a bit repetitive over time.
When you’re not finding clues to open safes, or piecing together various smaller items to complete a larger puzzle, there is gunplay to enjoy in the game as well. You’ll start
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has many puzzles for you to solve, including one in the Gallery of Derceto in Chapter 2 where you have to reassemble the plate pieces of a Clock. Arranging the broken parts of this Clock will unlock a new area to explore, allowing you to progress further. This task demands the right equipment, which can only be found by completing other puzzles along the way.
Chapter 4 of has a section where you are trapped in the Medical Ward until you solve a puzzle that uses the area's blueprints. You have to escape by not only finding the floor plans of the Ward but also by arranging them in the right pattern on a grid. Those who channel their inner architect have the best chance to find the right solution.
As you progress through Chapter 2 of , you'll encounter a plate in the Boiler Room with a mosaic of images acting as a puzzle you must solve. Some of the plate's pieces are missing, preventing you from fixing the boiler at first. Gathering every piece of this puzzle will allow you to arrange parts together in a specific pattern and unlock a new area.
If you're playing Alone in the Dark, by now you've probably encountered the Talisman puzzles in the game.
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Another hectic week is in the bag, and I’ve been playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 so I could collect the video footage for our review and obviously not for any kind of enjoyment. It is definitely very, very fun though, even if you have to look out for the odd disappearing Pawn on PS5. Other than that it’s been New Star GP, Unicorn Overlord, Street Fighter 6, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and some Songs of Silence for my gaming week.
Without Alone in the Dark, quite simply, there is no survival horror as we know it today. Way back in 1992, when the original game led us down the haunted hallways of the Derceto mansion for the first time, the impact that ill-fated journey would have on the landscape of video games could not have been fully understood.
After Resident Evil 4 was successfully remade last year, this week another reimagining of a classic horror game dropped.
Alone in the Dark is the definition of slow burn horror – something that’s pretty much a given when playing, reading, or watching anything that takes heavy inspiration from the works of H.P. Lovecraft. A modern take of the 1992 classic created by Infogrames, it’s easy to see why THQ wanted to take a punt at reanimating the series, especially when you consider the back-to-back successes Capcom has enjoyed with its recent string of Resident Evil remakes. After all, it was Alone in the Dark that inspired Shinji Mikami in creating the very first Resident Evil all those years ago. Both games took place in a sprawling manor complex teeming with jump scares and puzzles, though Alone in the Dark veered more towards the occult and committing to a period setting.