Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

The Good
In a way, The New Nightmare closes a full circle. The original 1992 Alone in the Dark game developed by Infogrames for DOS was a major source of inspiration for Resident Evil, the 1996 PlayStation game that defined and popularized survival horror. By that time Infogrames had already squandered their potential with two rather bad AotD sequels and didn't seem particularly interested in revisiting the franchise. When they eventually did, they outsourced the console-oriented reboot (developed for the Dreamcast and PlayStation) to Darkworks, a relatively new studio which decided to base it on... Resident Evil games.

The similarities are obvious - while the very idea of a predetermined, cinematic camera system was an innovation of the original AotD, The New Nightmare definitely looks and feels more like the first four Resident Evil games (the last of which, called Code: Veronica, was released just 1 year earlier, also for the SEGA Dreamcast). To make the Capcom inspirations even clearer, TNN opens with an RE- or DMC-style intro movie and the game's title being read by an evil-voiced narrator. It's worth noting that Darkworks would later go on to rip-off Resident Evil to much better results with Cold Fear, released in 2005 as Ubisoft's answer to RE 4.

Overall, the Resident Evil influences combined with more experience of the action-adventure genre as a whole definitely do AotD 4 some good. The game looks really good, controls a bit better than the original PC trilogy, it doesn't allow you to softlock yourself or require you to leave items on the floor for the lack of inventory space (then again, it doesn't limit your inventory at all, which goes against the spirit of survival horror).

The Bad
Unfortunately, The New Nightmare is much sloppier and less polished than classic Resident Evil. Interactable objects usually require you to stand at a very specific angle to activate them, the hitboxes of both background objects and enemies are very awkward, as is the aiming system. The puzzles, while not quite as unintuitive as in the original trilogy, can still be pretty cryptic and leave a lot to be desired. In many areas enemies are either located just in front of the entrance or spawn right next to the player character, which is simply unfair.

Alone in the Dark 4 brings back the idea of two protagonists from the original game, except this time - like in Resident Evil 2 - both characters' routes are actually different, although they do share a majority of locations. It's an okay way to pad the game's length without becoming too repetitive, but unfortunately the two paths are pretty uneven. You can tell that a lot of the visual and atmospheric creativity was kept for Edward's playthrough, while Aline's is not only less impressive, but also more unpolished, with more technical hiccups, an annoying timed section, and an absolutely terrible final boss fight.

Plot-wise, Darkworks bring back two classic Alone in the Dark themes - Lovecraftian horror of the first game and Native American magic from the third one - and pits them against each other. On the one hand, the themes of fascination with otherworldly shadow creatures and trying to use them to improve humanity work really well, but on the other hand, the worldbuilding in the game is rather shoddy. Native American deities having names clearly taken from Greek, Latin, and Mesopotamian cultures is an especially blatant blunder.

The Bottom Line
The New Nightmare, borrowing a lot from the Resident Evil series, ends up being an improvement over Alone in the Dark 2 and 3, but it's a still an uneven and unpolished experience that leaves a lot to be desired. 5/10

[played in an emulator]