Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

The Good
STORY

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is not a direct sequel to Alone in the Dark 2 nor is it related in any way to the previous entries in the series bar the inclusion of the main character. This title is more a rejuvenation of the series and a most belated one at that which features a marvellous scripted engine but somewhat rudimentary game play. The game begins with Edward Carnby heading to Shadow Island in search of his lost partner; Charles Fisk. What unfolds is a tremendously twisted narrative which is very well paced.

GAMEPLAY

You can play as either Edward Carnby or Aline Cedrac (a young archaeologist) and while the two characters play almost identically Aline's story is more focused on puzzle solving and less on combat. Viewing the narrative from the perspective of 2 characters is a great way to encourage players to keep playing the game and while you can get a good picture of the story playing through entirely as Edward to really understand Obed Morton's insane fascinations you must play through as Aline and interact with Lucy several times. Instead of your standard staple of "Zombie", "Dog" and "Special Monster" enemies the monsters you fight with in TNN are actually quite intelligently conceived and some have a sizeable backstory. For instance the Ophtalmacid (the Ophtal part of the name referring to eyes) is a creature that drags you down to it's level to feed on your eyes and you can find this out through discarded journals later in the game while following the long cold trail of an Explorer.

GRAPHICS

Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a gorgeously moody game with a real Tim Burton feel to it. The game focuses heavily on paranoia and darkness and while some enemies are less adverse to light some can actually be destroyed by using it. The backgrounds are gorgeously high quality and fantastically rendered and character models are full of definition and are well animated. Particle effects are also fantastic and this really shows when wielding one of the games bigger weapons like the Plasma gun, which functions like a flamethrower.

SOUND

Mentioned before the atmosphere of the game is immersive and terrifying. Augmented by the chilling, thumping soundtrack wind buffets tree branches and lightning fills a room with illumination followed by a deafening crack that echoes across the island. Then there are little touches here and there such as stepping into the wrong place and being surrounded by a group of enemies, accompanied by a shrill, piercing scream only for them to promptly disappear, leaving you a quivering mess.

The Bad
While the engine is solid there are noticeable problems with it. For instance you will notice there is some serious ghosting apparent when then camera angle is close to the character models. Waving arms leave a surreal trail and although this may have been intentional, if it wasn't it's a big oversight. Also the control scheme is dated and rudimentary. Apart from the standard context sensitive actions such as climbing and opening doors you really can't do much more than you could do in the original Resident Evil. You control well, but it just feels rudimentary. After finishing the game with both Edward and Aline there really is nothing else to do.

The Bottom Line
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is a fantastically rendered game that totally oozes style and atmosphere. It has a tight story, competent voice acting and a solid engine. Unfortunately the game is held back by the fact that is feels kind of rudimentary. When you come away from the experience it is like you are simply playing Resident Evil with a new skin. Things like being able to control your flashlight are really just little gimmicks that only prove useful once. TNN is a game you should own, only don't expect to go back to it too often.

The Good
The Alone in the Dark series has offered a very early and interesting shot at action adventures. It always focused on the creation of a dense atmosphere and so does its newest addition. The graphics are dark and you will often have to find your way using your character's flashlight.
The game offers two different characters, which leads to different gameplays depending on your choice.

The Bad
The graphics are surprisingly low-res and remind me of Playstation games. Additionally the designers failed to correct one of the most nerve wracking gameplay errors ever. In all Alone in the Dark games it has been a great hassle to find the "hot spot" for a pick up item. That's the area where the game actually recognizes what you would like to do. So you will find yourself often walking from left to right in front of a door, feverishly trying to open it.

The Bottom Line
The game is a horror adventure with good atmosphere, a relatively high replay value (because of the two different characters) and nerve wracking keyboard control.

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.