Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

The Good
In a way, The New Nightmare closes a full circle. The original 1992 Alone in the Dark game developed by Infogrames for DOS was a major source of inspiration for Resident Evil, the 1996 PlayStation game that defined and popularized survival horror. By that time Infogrames had already squandered their potential with two rather bad AotD sequels and didn't seem particularly interested in revisiting the franchise. When they eventually did, they outsourced the console-oriented reboot (developed for the Dreamcast and PlayStation) to Darkworks, a relatively new studio which decided to base it on... Resident Evil games.

The similarities are obvious - while the very idea of a predetermined, cinematic camera system was an innovation of the original AotD, The New Nightmare definitely looks and feels more like the first four Resident Evil games (the last of which, called Code: Veronica, was released just 1 year earlier, also for the SEGA Dreamcast). To make the Capcom inspirations even clearer, TNN opens with an RE- or DMC-style intro movie and the game's title being read by an evil-voiced narrator. It's worth noting that Darkworks would later go on to rip-off Resident Evil to much better results with Cold Fear, released in 2005 as Ubisoft's answer to RE 4.

Overall, the Resident Evil influences combined with more experience of the action-adventure genre as a whole definitely do AotD 4 some good. The game looks really good, controls a bit better than the original PC trilogy, it doesn't allow you to softlock yourself or require you to leave items on the floor for the lack of inventory space (then again, it doesn't limit your inventory at all, which goes against the spirit of survival horror).

The Bad
Unfortunately, The New Nightmare is much sloppier and less polished than classic Resident Evil. Interactable objects usually require you to stand at a very specific angle to activate them, the hitboxes of both background objects and enemies are very awkward, as is the aiming system. The puzzles, while not quite as unintuitive as in the original trilogy, can still be pretty cryptic and leave a lot to be desired. In many areas enemies are either located just in front of the entrance or spawn right next to the player character, which is simply unfair.

Alone in the Dark 4 brings back the idea of two protagonists from the original game, except this time - like in Resident Evil 2 - both characters' routes are actually different, although they do share a majority of locations. It's an okay way to pad the game's length without becoming too repetitive, but unfortunately the two paths are pretty uneven. You can tell that a lot of the visual and atmospheric creativity was kept for Edward's playthrough, while Aline's is not only less impressive, but also more unpolished, with more technical hiccups, an annoying timed section, and an absolutely terrible final boss fight.

Plot-wise, Darkworks bring back two classic Alone in the Dark themes - Lovecraftian horror of the first game and Native American magic from the third one - and pits them against each other. On the one hand, the themes of fascination with otherworldly shadow creatures and trying to use them to improve humanity work really well, but on the other hand, the worldbuilding in the game is rather shoddy. Native American deities having names clearly taken from Greek, Latin, and Mesopotamian cultures is an especially blatant blunder.

The Bottom Line
The New Nightmare, borrowing a lot from the Resident Evil series, ends up being an improvement over Alone in the Dark 2 and 3, but it's a still an uneven and unpolished experience that leaves a lot to be desired. 5/10

[played in an emulator]

The Good
The first half of the game --from the great intro sequence to the first 'boss-fight', right before they prompt you to switch CDs- is a quite scary and inmersive experience.

There are lots of "bink" cut scenes all over that add a great deal of interest to the whole package.

The scenario graphics! The game has an ambient like few others. Specially the forest under the rain and the manor levels. If you have a powerful video card, using the 'high-detail' shadows will add a lot of effect. The lights will go off every now and then, and some creatures just flash before you to disappear in the blink of an eye, which will make you jump on your seat a few times and draw your weapons and flashlight, aiming to nowhere all confused. The sound effects add a lot to the ambient, and although the music is kind of weird and does not sound quite 'musical'; it doesn't bother nor add much. Just tags along fine.

One would think that in the times we live in, a game with 'fixed-backgrounds' is kind of retrograde. Well, AITD4 not only shows that is not the case, but even makes use of some really attractive camera angles that would not be possible with the 'moving' kind of background.

The first half of the game really fills in with the 'horror' thing.

The Bad
The second half of the game seems to be the 'survival' part of the package, and resumes itself to a mainly 'run-n-shoot' type of game. Sadly, the control interface doesn't match with the idea; you find yourself dealing with a clumsy character that will have lots of trouble answering to your commands.

Suddenly, all the "bink" animated cut-scenes start being replaced by still images; and while at the beginning there was an animation every 5 minutes, somewhere in the game you start getting this still pictures where you have to imagine what happened.

The game prompts you with a 'yes/no' every time you need to do such silly things as climbing a ladder, which is quite annoying. If I press 'action' on a switch it clearly means I want to activate it, you don't need to double-check asking if I'm sure; it's not like I'm asking you to format the hard drive or something.

Everyone complained about this one, but here it goes again: the 'hot spots'! You will find yourself several times running in circles over an object or a door, while asking yourself 'am I doing something wrong or maybe this this a bug and it will never work?'

The monsters --not being the zombies, which are pretty good- are awful. There are just a few 'breeds', and they're very poorly designed.

The storyline isn't as nearly as attractive as it was in the first AITD. No other AITD had the strong plot the first one had, but in this one you can smell all the intention on recreating the kind of plot that the first had; sadly not being able to accomplish the task. It's a pity, since the ambient is all there for a well-driven strong story; and I think a good plot would have helped the 'second part' issue.

The 'downs' on AITD4 (specially the technical issues) are specially bad since this is the 4th chapter of a saga. One would expect a more robust and polished product by now. Instead, this looks like a first try.

The Bottom Line
A typical Horror/Survival game. Alas, the separation between 'horror' and 'survival' is too clear, which is not good for the final product.

The first half of the game is the 'horror', while the second would be the 'survival'. Sadly, the second half of the game is quite boring and frustrating, bringing down all the great atmosphere created on the first half.

Nevertheless, I think the game deserves a try, if only for the first half. Despite the poorly designed monsters and the clumsy interface, the atmosphere is really scary. Those of us who enjoyed the first AITD, this is how we would have liked that awesome game to look like.

The Good
My god I expected a lot out of this game. I'm a big fan of the Alone in the Dark series and when I heard the main guy behind the prequels also made this one I really thought this would be yet another super cool AitD game... but no, this world we live in is evil and all good games turn bad. It seems like the developers have played far too much Resident Evil when they made this game, it has far too many similarities.

But all in all, it's not that bad a game. The music's okay, the game is okay for playing through once with each character, but nothing more... and yeah, the graphics is more than okay too.

The Bad
Well, the game is basically Resident Evil only a lot better in comparison. It doesn't have any good storyline. The characters are dull and a big cliche. I was hoping to see once again the good old Edward Carnby in action, but it's just a different guy with the same name. Actually, they made a really silly addition to the storyline where they explained that every now and then a person called Edward Carnby is borned and is destined to rid the world of evil yaaaawn the last time I heard similar crap was when I playing Resident Evil. They should have called the main person something else so it wasn't an insult to the old cool Carnby.

There's also more things which seem to have taken from Resident Evil... the game is far more action oriented than the original AitD series, the puzzles are more rare and more simple in this game (though lightyears ahead of Resident Evil), the voice acting isn't exactly good, the storyline is crap (yeah, I mentioned this already, but it is really crap).

The game was released for quite a few machines, PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, GBC and PC. Not often you see that... just too bad that the PC port in particular has some really bad flaws. It seems to have inherited the classic console gripes, almost no options, an extremely silly save system and horrible controls. This is nothing but an insult to pc users. And yeah, one thing, the pc port has far too big machine requirements. The PS1 is a very weak machine, yet they actually bothered to port it to that machine, why not have graphical options in the pc version to make it so it plays like the PS1 version and have small requirements? It shouldn't be hard... but nooo, they didn't do it, and you need a ninja pc to play it. Actually, if you have a weak computer you're better of buying the PS1 version and play it in an emulator, which is a real shame.

The Bottom Line
All in all, it's a nice game. It just isn't as good as the other Alone in the Dark games. Fortunately it's a thousand times better than the Resident Evil series. As I said earlier, it's nice to play the game through once and nothing more, if you aren't rich you should buy something better though. And yeah, Resident Evil fans (yeah, that means you weirdos in the corner of the room!) should definately get this one and see how Resident Evil should have been made.