Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

aka: AITD:TNN, Alone in the Dark 4, Alone in the Dark: Koszmar Powraca
Moby ID: 4183
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Edward Carnby, private eye of the paranormal, is back.

Carnby's best friend, Charles Fiske, has been found dead near Shadow Island, a mysterious island near Maine. It is your duty to take up the investigation and find out the secrets of Shadow Island. But you're not going alone... your companion will be a redhead by the name of Aline Cedrac who has her own reasons for tagging along. Aside from being a woman and inexperienced in the world of danger, she is the only one with the knowledge for translating the ancient Abkhani tabloids which may hold the secrets behind Carnby's friend's death and the disappearance of Aline's father.

Upon arriving on the island, your plane has been shot down by the things unknown, and the heroes have no other choice but to jump with a parachute, thus separating them on the island.

Now you choose the character to play with, either as Edward Carnby or Aline Cedrac, as they explore the mysterious and gloomy island with all its secrets and parallel stories that contain different locations and tasks for different characters, thus adding the level of replayability in a different experience - Carnby's story is more action oriented while Cedrac has more puzzles to solve.

Just like in the predecessors you move your characters through pre-rendered backgrounds while the camera perspective switches around. You collect various items and books which are used to solve puzzles. Many situations can only be solved with violence which means you'll have to use guns to get rid of your foes. Aiming is manual and especially when playing Cedrac ammo is scarce. Saving a game uses up a save medallion which can be found during the game.

Spellings

  • Alone in the Dark 4: По ту сторону кошмара - Russian spelling
  • アローン・イン・ザ・ダーク新たなる悪夢 - Japanese spelling
  • 鬼屋魔影4 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 鬼屋魔影4:惡夢之夜 - Taiwan spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

210 People (186 developers, 24 thanks) · View all

An Infogrames Production presented by
Thanks To
"Alone In The Dark" (written and produced by)
"Alone In The Dark" (Music produced and composed by)
"Alone In The Dark" (Drums, bass and keyboards performed by)
"Alone In The Dark" (Recorded and Mixed by)
"Alone In The Dark" (Guitars performed by)
"Alone In The Dark" (Vocal performed by)
"Alone In The Dark" (Assistant to Mr. Copeland)
Special Thanks
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 70 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 119 ratings with 12 reviews)

Horror/Survival game... Alas, the separation between both is *too* clear.

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.

Windows · by Slug Camargo (583) · 2002

Dreadful graphics and performance for a PS2 game

The Good
I have had the opportunity to play this game on Dreamcast as well as PlayStation 1 and even the Game Boy Color version. Alone in the Dark is one of the original Survival Horror franchises, released many years ago, and before even Resident Evil was a gleam in it's creators eye. The plot and storyline from this game was recently sacrileged in a disastrous Hollywood game-to-film by the notoriously inept director Uwe Boll.

The game itself is a very atmospheric yarn following one of two selectable characters, each with unique aspects, and a slightly different path depending on which one you chose. There are many different locations and subplots, including mansions, sewers, observatories, and a wide away of weapons including a lightning gun! You can spend hours puzzling away and musing over the expansive areas, which if you're familiar with Resident Evil, you will have no trouble finding yourself at home here with. In brief, all a Survival Horror game should be, but make sure you choose the Dreamcast version, which has better graphics and gameplay.

The Bad
The slowdowns between angle-changes is appalling (some are several seconds long), and the quality of graphics is diabolical, even by PS1 standards. The controls are also very unresponsive, sometimes the character moves randomly around the screen! This PS2 version appears to be a lame direct port of the PS1 rendition. All in all, the Dreamcast version has better graphics, better speed and better playability than both PS versions.

The Bottom Line
Alone In The Dark 4 is a great atmospheric Survival Horror game, but just don't play it on PS2 - get the Dreamcast version instead! If you like Resident Evil, you'll love this.

PlayStation 2 · by Matt Warne (24) · 2005

When the game surpasses the cinematics. Awesome!

The Good
Just finished the game and had to write a review, it just didn't allow me to wait any longer and try playing with another character. It blew me off the chair having more to offer than I was willing to accept. The game is brilliant technically, subjectively or objectively looking. You pick a spot, and you'll find it laughing back atcha with its greatness. It wasn't long ago I got attracted to this horror-surviving genre, realizing they offer one of the best stories in general, and every fear you need to confront will be rewarding.

Now, after an intro opening, Edward Carnby, a PI, and Aline Cedrac, a scientist, are set to go in pair on Shadow Island, not knowing what awaits them there, and thinking of it as a part-time job... which will eventually arise to become a challenge in saving their own lives. But just as their hydroplane was approaching an island, a raging storm surrounding an island forced them to jump earlier. Thus separated by the fall, you're given a selection over Carnby as a man of action, or Aline, intelligent and beautiful companion to whom he had to protect during the trip. The best part of it is that each cahracter plays its own role, so wether you choose one or another, the game will look entirely and completely different. Some places will correspond since you're both stuck on the same island, and you'll run to each other occasionally when in need, or use walkie-talkie for communicating with each other, but inside stories and quests will be entirely different. We usually see games where just character is different, but most of it is the same. Well, this can count as two separate and different games. No wonder this game will strike you as short when you actually get to finish it.

Ingame models of Aline and Carnby are simply amazing, breathtaking. Moves, running, climbing, using a flashlight and achieving certain effects like rain, never-so-good-b4 terrain and atmosphere. On the other side, monster models look rather below the belt, I mean, either they had to look so low-poly for faster performance, or they did that on purpose. Either way, other ingame characters and monsters, beside the main cast, are everything but good looking. Though, that won't affect the atmosphere when it gets a grip upon you.

Voice-acting speech is incredibly good, hmmm, isn't this a french game? ;) Anyway, voices are simply perfect and dialogue between Aline and Carnby are really amusing for the ears, hehe, from the start when they talk as two strangers, 'til the moment when they start to have feelings for each other... appreciating being stranded in the land of horror, even if only 'cos it brought the two of them together. It's amazing how such a game of short radius can still only show you the surface of it so you can never guess what lies beneath, beautiful cinematics, nicely developed story with a strong grip of the background, eeriely real atmosphere, and places for which you'd never dream of to find in game that makes you think you'll be playing it in some spooky mansion for all the time.

The Bad
The game doesn't vary too into the music atmosphere and there are few songs (if you can even call them songs) that will mostly change depending on the place and suspense, but remind of sound effects more than of instruments. But yet if it's for achieving the atmosphere, well done, I'll sayeth :)

As for the monsters, just a bit more polygons wouldn't hurt, and there didn't seem to be more than 10 types of different monsters, so they could do a bit of detailizing on it. I admire the way they sparked a touch of details on all the other things. It's unbelievable real.

Also, a small portion goes to picking up the stuff. It's made so you can clearly see things like objects or weapons where they are when you flashlight them, but even then some of them cannot be picked, or if they can, you really ned to be at the exact position, sometimes hard to achieve, so you oftenly wonder wether it's a bug and you cannot pick it, or are you just so new with the controls.

The Bottom Line
This 3CD heavy/light adventure is well worth the seeing. I never could get attracted to the trilogy of "AITD", but strangely, I started with this one. It's not that I haven't played prequels before, it's just that they didn't show me anything but the technical achievment at the time. Now, I'm thinking I just might be wrong on that, but they had many illogical puzzles and such things, whereas this game won't give you much of a headaches covering that territory. I cannot compare it to "RE" series since I haven't tried them yet (though I intend to), but this game has really serious visuals to admire, as well as effects, so playing it will feel pretty alive. I'm just glad to see Europe is more than capable of making wonderful games that can compete with the marketplace. So far, I can tell that I haven't ran into any game with so good ingame graphic, cinematics of even greater quality I saw, but not the ingame, and that's the part we players control. Way to go Darkworks! :)

Windows · by MAT (240759) · 2012

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

4X movie compression

The 4X movie compression technology is only used in the Dreamcast version of the game.

Comic Book

This game had a cross-promotional "prequel" comic book, featuring Carnby and Aline Cedrac investigating in Tibet, published by Image Comics in September of 2002. The story was written by Jean-Marc Lofficier, while the illustrations were by Matt Haley and Aleksi Briclot.

Edward Carnby

Edward Carnby is the name of the protagonist in all of the Alone in the Dark games, yet AitD4 is set in the year 2001 whereas the original 3 titles were set in the 1920's. Carnby is also visibly younger in the forth title. The explanation on the game's official website (see links) is that every 40 years a man is awarded with the name Edward Carnby and that man will be destined to fight the forces of evil and darkness.

Engine

Developed with Terminal Reality's Nocturne Engine.

References

The name of one of the characters in Alone in the Dark: TNN is De Certo. This is a reference to the name of the ominous mansion in the original Alone in the Dark title, which was also called Decerto.

Information also contributed by n-n, Pseudo_Intellectual Sciere and Scott Monster

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Matthew Bailey.

PSP, PlayStation 3 added by Sciere. PlayStation 2 added by Xoleras.

Additional contributors: Macintrash, Unicorn Lynx, Sycada, JPaterson, Jeanne, JRK, Klaster_1, DreinIX, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Zhuzha.

Game added May 29, 2001. Last modified January 27, 2024.