Alone in the Dark 2

aka: AITD2, Alone in the Dark: Jack is Back, Alone in the Dark: One-Eyed Jack's Revenge
Moby ID: 907
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

In Alone in the Dark 2, you take the role of detective Edward Carnby, one of the two main characters in the original Alone in the Dark. Carnby is now called upon to investigate a bootlegger named One Eyed Jack after an old detective colleague named Stryker attributes Jack to the kidnapping of young Grace Saunders. Stryker attempts to infiltrate Jack's dilapidated mansion of Hell's Kitchen and rescue the girl, only to disappear himself. That's where Carnby comes in.

Carnby soon learns that Jack and his gangsters are really 15th-century pirates who gained immortality after Jack joined forces with Elizabeth Jarret, a Voodoo witch. However, the dark magic which keeps them immortal also requires Jack and his crew to regularly make human sacrifices (which explains Grace's kidnapping).

Now Carnby must battle his way through Hell's Kitchen and Jack's army of Tommy-gun-wielding gangsters, searching for a way to break the spell and make them stay dead.

Alone in the Dark 2 is an action-adventure game, similar to the original Alone in the Dark. Like its predecessor, the game uses hybrid 2D-3D graphics. Completing the game requires you to solve a lot of puzzles while fighting zombie pirates along the way. Some enemies can be killed with the numerous weapons at your disposal, while others need to be defeated via trickery.

Apart from Edward Carnby, the game also includes a short section (two sections in the CD-ROM version) where you play as the little Grace Saunders. Grace obviously cannot fight, and thus the sections featuring her are all about fast reflexes and wits to evade and outsmart the enemies.

Spellings

  • アローン・イン・ザ・ダーク 2 - Japanese spelling
  • 鬼屋魔影2 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

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Credits (DOS version)

35 People (27 developers, 8 thanks) · View all

Produced by
Directed by
First Assistant
Screenplay
Production Design
Technical Assistant
Cutting
3D Modelling & Animations
Set Designers
Designers
Illustrations
Flashback
Roughman
Screenplay Adapted by
Original Score & Sound Effects
Additional Music
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 75% (based on 47 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 106 ratings with 8 reviews)

Not a patch on the original, but fun nevertheless....

The Good

I own the PlayStation version, and it is one of my favourite games. It is hard to come by now, so if you can find a copy....

Alone in the Dark 2 isn't really a horror game. It is horror like in that there's another big mansion with a creepy feel to it, but the enemies in this game act just like normal pirates, and the emphasis is focused more on action than horror.

The controls are very annoying. You have to press different keys at once, and you also have to do a lot of running. If you get cornered by a pirate armed with a Tommy gun, it usually signals the end of your game unless you can find a way to get past this problem.

The story involves the kidnapping of a young child, and the subsequent attempts to rescue her from the clutches of a fearsome pirate gangster. You play as Edward Carnby, the same detective from the original Alone in the Dark game (although it is almost impossible to compare the two since they are so different).

Anything can be used as a weapon against the pirate goons: Frying pans, guns, swords or even your own fists and feet. This is quite clever in my view. The numerous notes you find barely serve a purpose, but they do add a background story to many of the strange foes you encounter.

Playing as Little Grace Saunders is a lot of fun. But sadly, it is not to last as you will quickly resume gameplay as Edward Carnby shortly there after. Hearing Grace make baby like noises as she attempts to ascend a ladder on the pirate's ship is quite cute, and it is strangely challenging having to control a character who has many childish restrictions.

There are loads of environments to explore and the notes are narrated by voice actors, which is quite exciting.



The Bad
Awkward controls, outdated graphics and an emphasis on shooting rather than puzzles make Alone in the Dark 2 a major disappointment to fans of the H.P. Lovecraft-esque original. If you can look past the flaws, then you have a fun game to play through.

The Bottom Line
It might be a sequel to a horror game, but fans of the original may be let down by this very different sequel.

PlayStation · by Melvin Raeynes (22) · 2007

Great game marred by fatal flaws.

The Good
The MIDI music is truly exceptional; some of it borders on "composition". The voice acting, while cheesy at times, was overall extremely good, and definitely added to the game. Sound effects were phenomenal and very effectively utilized.

Camera action was novel for the time; kudos to the people who wrote the engine.

The puzzles were appropriate. Some were a bit outlandish (every adventure has a FEW...), but overall, this would be a good game for beginner-intermediate adventure lovers.

The Bad
The fighting was awful. The AI is simply too good and controls are too bad. Ammo is too scarce. The enemies are too lethal. The fighting aspect of the game is completely out of balance, and ruined what would otherwise be a top-notch adventure.

The graphics were weak for the time, considering that this game is a contemporary of Doom and System Shock. Even moreso when you consider it came out one year before Quake. Although the graphics weren't really up to snuff for its day, I don't think that's what the game designers really had in mind for this game anyway.

Movement could be wonky. The engine didn't always "register" the edge of a wall or corner correctly. This made moving around a little frustrating.

The Bottom Line
One thing this game got right all the way is mood. The whole game is about mood, and it was brilliantly done. The whole game is creepy. The people who wrote this game did so masterfully. The plot and scripting were brilliant. The music may be something you'd listen to on your CD player.

Unfortunately, the game is unplayable for two reasons.

First, as mentioned before, the fighting aspect is just ridiculous. Had they left out the fighting, this game might have been a classic.

Second, being a DOS game, you'll have trouble with it:

There are actions which cannot be performed unless you play this game under a DOS emulator like dosbox or dosemu under Linux, or use an application to slow down your CPU like "turbo". If you can't make Carnby run, you need to slow down your processor (or install Linux, which is always a good idea).

But even worse, the game will crash at various points if you try to play it under Windows. Various calls to routines to open certain files will fail with a "file not found" error. The "fix" is to either play the game under real DOS or a DOS emulator like dosemu.

Lastly, sound most likely won't work unless you're in real DOS or a DOS emulator or with an application like VDMS.

What the game has right, it has very right. And what the game has wrong, it has very wrong.

DOS · by null-geodesic (106) · 2005

I want the 4 hours of my life back

The Good
Nothing. I thought it was going to be like the first. Suspenseful, a little spooky, etc. Far from it. VERY far from it.

The Bad
The game was OK as I started playing, but about an hour and a half into it, PIRATE and MOBSTER references started getting involved. This was not the same type of suspenseful / scary / puzzle game like the first Alone In the Dark.

The Bottom Line
Words cannot describe how I feel about this game. I personally feel like I wasted about 4 hours of my life and I RARELY would say that with ANY game. It surprises me as the first one was great. This game was atrocious. Even the camera angles are worse than the first game and the first game wasn't that bad as far as camera angles were concerned.

3DO · by Eric Szumski (1) · 2018

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

Controversy

In the UK, some moral guardians were shocked by Alone In The Dark 2's content. Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Burdis from South Yorkshire CID called for the game to be banned from sale to children, saying, "It's sick. It can terrify them, damage their thought processes and make them insecure for life." Prompted by this, the Sheffield Star newspaper ran the headline, "Ban Kids From This Computer Sickness".

(info sourced from: PC Format magazine)

Music

When Carnby dies, the haunting music that plays in the background is "Vesti la Giubba" from the opera "I Pagliacci".

Processor speed

In order to not give spoilers, I will try to talk very generally.

There are various actions you're supposed to do within the game that are now impossible. The problem is that they rely on special timing within the AITD2 code. Modern computers are so fast that the timing routines no longer work, and these actions are not doable by computers that use a processor faster than a Pentium II. Therefore, you can not finish the game on a modern computer without resorting to slowing down your processor.

There are various utilities you can obtain via Google to slow down your processor.

Datapoint: On an AMD 1.3GHz Athlon, I had to slow my CPU down to about 40% before the actions became doable. One of the very first puzzles in the game is one of the undoable ones, so you should know right away whether you'll be able to finish the game or not without slowing down your CPU.

Awards

  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/1995 - Most Annoying Copy Protection in 1994

Information also contributed by Artful Gamer, null-geodesic

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  • MobyGames ID: 907
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

FM Towns, PC-98 added by Terok Nor. Macintosh added by Scaryfun. 3DO added by Indra was here. SEGA Saturn added by CheshireCat. PlayStation added by Matthew Bailey.

Additional contributors: xroox, Matthew Bailey, Brolin Empey, Unicorn Lynx, Alaka, Freeman, ケヴィン, Patrick Bregger.

Game added February 25, 2000. Last modified March 16, 2024.