Alone in the Dark is one of those franchises I've always been fond of, but it always seems to struggle to find its place. The original game was basically Resident Evil before Resident Evil, and it never managed to find the success of Capcom's franchise. It's been quite some time since we've seen the franchise, and 2024's new Alone in the Dark serves as a potential reboot for the franchise — almost akin to the Resident Evil remakes.

Alone in the Dark follows the story of private detective Edward Carnby (played by David Harbour) and his client Emily Hartwood (Jodie Comer.) The two travel together to Derceto Manor where Jeremy Hartwood, Emily's uncle, is recovering from a mental illness that runs in the Hartwood family. They soon discover that something is amiss. Jeremy is missing, a mysterious Dark Man has been haunting the place, and opening the wrong door can take you to another time and place seemingly plucked right from Jeremy's memory. The duo must find Jeremy and discover the source of the supernatural dangers that are threatening Derceto Manor.

Alone in the Dark is an interesting plot, but it's told in a disjointed manner. Maybe it's because I started with Emily, but the plot felt like it jumped from place to place, and characters acted in inconsistent ways. It's possible to make that work, of course — just look at something like Alan Wake 2 — but Alone in the Dark felt strange. For example, early in the game, Emily stumbles out of an alternate dimension and into the doctor's office. She acts like she had walked in from the hallway, and she doesn't seem shaken up, even though she had just shot a monster in the alternate dimension.

It's also difficult to get around the fact that Alone in the Dark isn't scary. The surreal supernatural horror element of the game is neat, but there's no sense of fear or tension in most of it. Everything is too bright and too natural. I'm usually someone who falls easily into the tension of a horror game, and Alone in the Dark never hit the mark.

Alone in the Dark tends to shift between the main Derceto Manor and the various memories you'll venture through. Derceto Manor is a safer space in that it is populated by actual people, and it tends to follow the rules of physics. Meanwhile, the memories tend to be more dreamlike and populated by scary monsters. Of course, Derceto Manor isn't really a safe spot, and the deeper you venture into its mysteries, the more dangerous the place becomes. This means the general flow of the game is that you'll explore Derceto to find clues, solve puzzles, and encounter side characters, and that leads up to a clue to travel to another place, which can range from deserted streets to burning oil fields or ancient ruins. The memory-places you visit tend to be more involved and action-packed, while Derceto is heavier on the puzzles and mystery.

There's a good amount of mystery and puzzles to solve. Derceto might be a normal manor, but it's still an implausible one where you need to solve block puzzles to open doors, find obscure artifacts to enter secret areas, and puzzle out the solutions to mysteries based on vague clues. Sometimes the clue might be a single line in a note, and other times, it might be a faint marking on a wall. It can sometimes depend on the player being able to recognize somewhat obscure things.

This is not a hardcore puzzle game; it's perhaps in line with the older Resident Evil or Silent Hill titles. However, a nice element of the game is that you can customize how much information it gives you, ranging from highlighting important phrases in notes to providing more overt instructions about the next goal. Modern mode keeps these on by default, while Classic mode keeps them turned off, but you can also manually customize the various options to fit your play style.

For the most part, Alone in the Dark is going for the old-school style of vaguely implausible survival-horror puzzles, and for the most part, it's a welcome return to the old days. Is there any real reason that someone would hide an important item behind an astrology-themed lock and then scatter clues all around? No, of course not, but it makes it genuinely enjoyable to poke around and solve the increasingly convoluted puzzles.

Unfortunately, one area of Alone in the Dark that doesn't really work is the monsters. The monsters are kind of unmemorable, and the game doesn't give them the expected gravitas. The first monster I encountered randomly appeared around a corner, and my protagonist barely seemed to recognize they had just killed a weird monster. The monsters rarely seem to have the expected impact, either in terms of danger or presentation.

It doesn't help that combat is by-the-book. You can engage enemies directly with the standard selection of weapons like a pistol or shotgun, and you shoot them in their weak spots until they fall over. You can also find melee weapons that hit harder but require you to be in close range. The melee weapons also break so quickly that you'd think you were in Breath of the Wild. You can also find and throw items in the environment to damage enemies or distract them long enough for you to sneak past.

In true survival-horror fashion, you have limited ammunition and healing items, but the game forgoes a standard inventory system in favor of giving you small limits on how much you can hold. Even if you find a bunch of pistol ammo, you'll only be able to carry a small amount. This seemed geared toward encouraging players to sneak stealthily past enemies, but unless you know you won't be back, it's better to take down foes. Having to keep dodging a burrowing worm-thing is more annoying than wasting half of your ammo on it.

Alone in the Dark's combat runs into that awkward area where it isn't quite intense enough to be terrifying on its own and isn't quite fun enough to be engaging on its own. The result is that any time a monster showed up, I felt more bored than engaged, and any time the world shifted to a more combat-heavy area, I wanted to rush through it so I could get back to the fun puzzle-solving.

The game does have two separate campaigns, one for Edward and one for Emily, and while they overlap, they also have their own distinct segments, encouraging you to play both characters. The ending is more or less the same for both, but the journey is a touch different. Scattered throughout the game are Lagniappes, collectible items that come in sets. Collecting these items can grant items or reveal lore, but some are locked to either Emily or Edward's campaign, so you can't complete the sets without playing both, and doing so is necessary to see the game's true ending. It's a nice way to add extra value to the experience, but I wasn't chomping at the bit to do a second playthrough.

Alone in the Dark is a relatively nice-looking game, if inconsistently so. The environments and backdrops look great, but the NPCs are a mixed bag. Emily and Edward look fantastic, but some of the other characters look like plastic. The title looks great when the graphics are good, but it can be very distracting when they aren't. The same inconsistency goes for the voice acting. Harbor and Comer do an excellent job, while the rest of the cast veers between quite good to absurdly cheesy overacting, and it can drain the tension from scenes.

Alone in the Dark is a perfectly fun survival-horror game that doesn't manage to stick the landing. Fun puzzle-solving struggles with awkward combat, and a lack of tension keeps the horror feeling limited. It's an interesting reboot of the franchise, and I could easily see it becoming something better in sequels, but the first outing feels unexceptional.

Score: 7.5/10