Alone in the Dark

Bu oyunu övsen övülmez, sövsen sövülmez. Öyle bir oyun bu. Sövülecek bir oyun çünkü oynanış ve animasyonlar leş gibi. Övülecek bir oyun çünkü bölümler ve korku ögeleri gayet iyi. Ünlü oyunculara ciddi para akıtmışlar ve ellerinde para kalmamış gibi hissettim. Çıktığım dönem epey iyi korku oyunları çıkmıştı ve bu oyunu kimse konuşmamıştı o dönem nedenini daha da iyi anladım. Korku oyunu seviyorsanız oynamanızı tavsiye ederim zaten kısa sürüyor. Korku sevmiyorsanız hiç bu oyunla vakit kaybetmeyin.

Honestly, I really wanted to like this game. I had such high expectations for some reason. I did not like it, the story is confusing and makes like no sense. There's questions left unanswered when completing the game. The only good thing about this game was the graphics. The art looks great and the scenery was nice. I was excited about this being a psychological horror / thriller but was pretty disappointed. Like I said, I really wanted to like it but the story just wasn't it.

Bardzo dobra gra

Gak ada jumpscare murahan muncul di layar, puzzle lumayan menantang, cerita rada kurang, bug senjata melee mulau ngaco di bab 4, overall masih mantap

Alone in the Dark is a game that I enjoyed and found interesting, but a lot of that interest is from examining it’s flaws and comparing it to the better games it is taking inspiration from. It is a pretty serviceable 7/10 ish survival horror and puzzle game, but it has a number of flaws that prevent it from achieving greatness. The game also flopped massively on release, and I don’t get the impression it’s been a huge sleeper hit since then. There’s a bitter irony that a game that looked like it would be a slam dunk on paper should cause the death of the development company instead. It had a recognisable name with pedigree, great looking graphics with tons of atmosphere, a story by the writer of SOMA, and two pretty major hollywood starts, Jodie Comer and David Harbour, headlining as it’s leads. Going in depth into the game reveals a number of issues, including with those elements that would seem to make it a good bet, to actually be majorly flawed. Starting with the good though, because I will spend a lot of time griping, as mentioned in general the game is solid. The graphics are great, there’s no ray tracing, but that just meant the game ran 120 frames in 4K native, yet it has fantastic lighting and in no small part contributes to the atmosphere that the game has in spades. From the dank nightmare swamps to the creepy old manor, it sucked me in on all levels and has a really good variety of locations as well, that keeps things interesting and moving. Character models are excellent, and animation is really good for the most part. Sound design is also pretty good. The voice acting is decent, and there’s some great sound effects, including the creepy sounds of monsters. Weapons I think vary depending on the environment, and could occasionally sound a bit tinny, but in many of the combat environments have a very good bark. The music is fine, though not that memorable. In terms of gameplay, the combat is serviceable, while the puzzles, with a few exceptions discussed below, are really excellent, being both challenging but not impossible, and with an absence of moon logic. The game gives options regarding how many hints or assistance you want, and for my first play through I turned all of these off and found great enjoyment in working things out for myself. The plot becomes convoluted, but sets up a pretty entertaining lovecraftian tale that sucked me in and generally whizzed along interacting with creepy characters, the unsettling house and lurking monsters. The amount of minor issues that I can nitpick however, are large. Starting with the most visible ones, David Harbour and Jodie Comer weren’t worth the money. While both their performances were fine and didn’t break my immersion, neither were they any better than what you might find from regular voice actors in Resident Evil for example. The budget that went to them would have been better spent on a Q&A team, because even a couple of years after release, there are still bugs in the game. No crashes, but a couple of times I became stuck on geometry, meanwhile rooms on the map would still show as having items in, despite being thoroughly searched, or in a couple of cases, just because of a dropped melee weapon. The combat is serviceable as mentioned, but again does not hold a candle to other survival horror like recent Resident Evil or the Evil Within 2. Enemies are bullet sponges unless on easy, and don’t react much to bullets until they drop dead. The movement feels somewhat clunky as well. The game hides at least some of it’s lore behind collectibles, which is not the end of the world for me, but some of them are really very easy to miss, which is frustrating. There are several safe puzzles which are very annoying, because it’s not clear when you have selected a number, and when you have not. The enemy design, with a couple of exceptions, isn’t that great, being rather generic and not really tying into the themes of the game that much. Enemies also feel in many place like they were inserted because it was expected, rather than making sense in the world. There’s very few set pieces that really show off or make them memorable either. My major nitpick is with the story, however, and this is where there will be major spoilers. What is at first very intriguing, with a lot of links into Cthulhu mythos lore, gets very convoluted. There are hints throughout the game that the story is actually being manipulated in a very meta fashion by authors or entities, in an Alan Wake style. Unlike those games however, this is not really developed in an interesting way, more just dangled as an excuse for narration and as a mystery that is never expanded on. I have read some interesting analysis online which makes sense that the plot is very much an in universe manipulation of the original games, which is interesting an all, but the main plot of the game suffers in the latter half, having set up a bunch of stuff, feeling undeveloped and overly convoluted, as well as possibly having some elements not built upon for budget reasons. This extends to the characters themselves, outside of the two leads. They are set up as creepy mysterious but never given as much full development as they deserve, and then abruptly written out at the end. The end boss and the endings need sone complaining as well. The end boss is dreadful, a big monster that decides for some reason to sit in the middle of the mansion in a confined space so you can conveniently shoot it’s weak points and bring it down, however it’s in a tiny space and spawns tons of mob enemies at you, so the slow considered tactics that you may have used up to that point in the game just don’t work. Eventually I just turned the difficulty down to easy and cheesed through it. After that come the endings, of which there are several depending on choices and finding hidden items, all of which are abrupt. The main endings for the two main characters basically have them shrug their shoulders, say they are glad it’s all over and then set off home. There’s none of the impact there should be of them going through one of the most nightmarish experiences ever, with shattered minds from the horrors they have witnessed. Though on the subject of horror, it’s not that scary. As mentioned it’s got a really good creepy atmosphere, but lacks any moments that really come across as terrifying. The gore is really weak as well, being mostly lazy blood pools around enemies with some splatter, until a couple of good scripted moments at the end of the game. Finally, to get the full context you have to play both main characters, however unlike Resident Evil 2, for example, the campaign is the same for both with some smallish exception towards the end of the game. Only the cutscenes are actually different, with most combat, puzzles and locations being the same. I cheesed through a play through of Emily on Easy, having already finished as Carnby, and while I got a bit more lore, not enough that really made the second play through feel worthwhile. Overall, despite the griping, I got the game for £11.50 and it did provide me a good 12 hours of pretty slick fun before it started to run thin. If you are a survival horror enthusiast, it can be an interesting purchase, if nothing else to see how an imitation manages to fail to meet the high standards that Resident Evil puts out.

The first playthrough was great. Combat is clunky and there were several parts where I just thought, "well, that was poorly built." But it was still fun. NG+ is just a pain. You can't even get through the first combat zone. I don't know how they could consider it balanced in any way. Even if you land every shot, use every consumable, and land perfect melee hits, there just isn't enough ammo to survive.

Not a hard game, but a little tedious in the things that need to be done. Overall, 5/7; achievement grind is worth it. The game can be completed in two playthroughs, and will probably take a weekend or two. Most of the game's puzzles are intuitive, but will require running from one end of the mansion to the other, seemingly to draw out play time. The collectibles are mostly on the main character path, while occaisonally needing to stray off the main path for a few odd collectibles. Two characters play mostly the same other than different optional dialogues/interactions with NPC's. There is a speed-run achievement, however, the cutscenes add into the play-time, so skipping them will significantly decrease play-time. Cinematic game, with a few supernatural twists, and some spooky cult bugs, and some spooky cult dimensions, and some spookyt occult-cult stuff; 5/7.