Alone in the Dark Review: Best left in the dark

Turn out the lights on your way out.

I was initially very excited for THQ Nordic’s Alone in the Dark reboot, and even more so when it was announced that Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer and Stranger Things’ David Harbour would be playing its protagonists. Then, a Resident Evil 7-inspired playable demo all but destroyed that excitement.

At the time, I said the trial “was an underwhelming affair” that felt as if “it was trying to set a tone much like Resident Evil 7‘s first demo, but instead came across as boring and lacking context.”

Despite the chance for improvement after delays, this remains a good way to summarise Alone in the Dark overall. It has lofty aspirations but falls far short of its goals.

Those big RE7 vibes extended from the demo into the main game proper almost immediately, right down to an almost scene-for-scene overhead shot of a car driving into a sleepy, swampy town. It’s here we’re first introduced to Comer and Harbour as Emily Hartwood and Detective Edward Carnby, respectively. A ton of detail has been put into these characters, and sadly that shows when they’re compared to other non-playable characters and environments. It’s a chalk and cheese situation.

It’s also at this point where you’re asked to pick which character you’d like to play as, mirroring Resident Evil 2’s powerful narrative: which character do you play as first and, correspondingly, which perspective do you first understand the situation through?

It sadly doesn’t matter, because you’re playing through the same narrative no matter which character you choose. Either iteration of Resident Evil 2 encourages you to play through multiple scenarios because they’re separate; they do a wonderful job of mixing up puzzles and presenting gameplay and perspectives that are different, then combined to present a total package. Alone in the Dark merely swaps characters as if they were skins for the most part.

Mirroring the demo, too much actual narrative is relegated to in-game texts rather than from gameplay or cutscenes. Frankly, I wasn’t invested enough to stop and read everything to fill these gaps myself. This is paired with huge, inconsistent tonal shifts; you’d go from hectic, frantic, and effectively scary action pieces to a cutscene where Comer is calm, cool, and collected — even puffing on a cigarette to Twin Peaks-inspired cruisy jazz. I was following the plot, but I daresay I understood its relevance.

The ending mirrors this chaos, randomly throwing a curveball that makes little sense and carries even less weight. Worse yet, I wasn’t invested in any character to care about their plight.

Multiple bites of the apple are encouraged by collectibles called Lagniappes. They’re tied to a super special ending – which I believe is acquired by playing as both Hartwood and Carnby, and collecting everything – but I can’t confirm that. Despite being told that Lagniappes collected in one playthrough carry over into a second, this wasn’t the case in my experience. I’d completed 7 of 15 sets as Hartwood, and playing a new game as Carnby reset my count. With little incentive to actually play through twice, that bug killed any will I had to see things through.

Looping back around, it’s an understatement to call Alone in the Dark derivative. The title has an overall narrative that feels like Layers of Fear mixed with sudden shifts in time and space straight out of Silent Hill. Randomly, there’s a sequence near the end in which Alone in the Dark (2024) adopts fixed camera angles right out of… well, technically, out of Alone in the Dark (1992).

In writing that sentence, I can’t help but acknowledge the idea that I – and certainly most of us – would attribute that specific stylised-but-required choice to 1996’s Resident Evil. Therein lies the problem: other franchises have done it better, and random callbacks like this merely show the player that there are better alternatives, either current or retro.

I’m admittedly far more familiar with any of the franchises I’ve named over Alone in the Dark, but nevertheless, the entire experience has a feeling of “been there, done that,” and unfortunately, it’s been better in most other instances. That’s avoiding the issue of this being Alone in the Dark’s second full reboot since its inception.

While they’re admittedly improving day by day, I encountered so very many bugs playing Alone in the Dark on Xbox Series X. Every single time I fired a weapon, I experienced a two to three second delay between the firing animation and the sound of the gun being fired. That same sound bug extended into things I presume Pieces Interactive meant to be jump scares… but sadly, a disconnected audio visual experience simply removes any sense of dread.

Combat is incredibly clunky without the audio bug — as is traversal — with your character generally feeling like they’re moving through molasses. On top of this, I frequently experienced agonising frame drops and pop-in. While I’ve noticed things improving in the two (admittedly generous) weeks I’ve had to review, patch notes weren’t made available to confirm what’s going on under the hood.

Alone in the Dark is so incredibly poorly optimised that looking through something as innocuous as a telescope caused my Xbox Series X fan to kick into hyperdrive; I have never heard it make that much noise in all the time I’ve owned it. It made a louder noise than my PS4 towards the end of its lifespan, and that’s saying something.

Whilst not a bug, here’s the thing that annoyed me the most: Alone in the Dark‘s map just needs a single directional marker so you can figure out where actually are within its map. It’s such a small detail, but one that would have vastly improved the experience. That sentiment, sadly, goes for most things about the survival horror title.

While true fans of the franchise might get a kick out of seeing a new take on an old story, Alone in the Dark is a tonal and functional mess that frustrates more than it entertains.

Alone in the Dark heads to Windows PC via Steam, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PS5 on 20 March.

Alone in the Dark was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox Series X, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.

Alone in the Dark 20 March 2024 PC PS5 Xbox Series S & X   Buy on Windows PC: Steam Buy on Xbox: Microsoft Store, Amazon Buy on PlayStation: Amazon