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.
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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 with a handgun before collecting more firepower as you go. Some of the creatures you’ll be fighting are very creepily designed, although you could argue that they never feel properly threatening (with the exception being the spooky overarching figure that seems to be pulling strings in the background). Blasting them to smithereens is good fun, though.
There are a handful of moments when the game gates your progress, and this does feel ever so slightly frustrating. It makes it feel like corners may have been cut or ideas were maybe scaled back during development. For example, when you first find the shotgun, there’s no way to pick it up. Later, when the story wants you to pick it up, the button prompt appears — there’s no key to unlock it, or anything story-tied like that, the game just didn’t want you to have the shotgun too early.
In a similar way, sometimes the puzzle solutions are really cleverly hidden, while at other points there are just written on a wall nearby. In one case, a puzzle seems to have been cut altogether and your Talisman gadget somehow just inputs the answer automatically. Again, it feels like a beat has been skipped for some reason.
All in all, the game is mostly a very enjoyable experience. The level design and the creepy score combine with a swathe of great performances (Comer particularly shines with her amazing emotional range feeding into the experience really well) and impressive graphics, not to mention a fab musical score, to create a winningly unsettling atmosphere and a properly intriguing story.
The game is quite short and doesn’t outstay its welcome. We finished our first playthough in nine hours, and it left us wanting more. And in the age where some big games can feel really bloated with busy work, that was actually really refreshing.
Alone in the Dark launches on Wednesday 20th March for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. We reviewed on PS5. You can order your copy from Amazon.
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