If Alone in the Dark is the first survival horror game, then Alone in the Dark 2 is the first survival horror sequel to take a more action-oriented approach. The difference is immediately evident in how each game begins. In Alone in the Dark, you’re in an attic, there are things from outside trying to get in, and you have to race to block the windows off before they break through and drag you away. In Alone in the Dark 2 you’re plonked right next to a zombie with a gun and you have to karate chop him to death before he shoots you. While the intro for Alone in the Dark eased you into exploring the mansion, Alone in the Dark 2 gives way to… what almost feels like an action setpiece, rushing down the driveway to the mansion and trying to push a statue out of the way before the guards can shoot you. If Alone in the Dark’s first major area gave you an indication of the ins and outs of combat and how the game wasn’t afraid of being cheap with traps and ambushes, the hedge maze that begins Alone in the Dark 2 tells you three key things: every space you go through is going to be rather tight. Enemies are constant. If you want to get past, and get through, you’re going to have to engage with the game’s combat.
y’know
the combat
the really good combat
…
In my review for the first Alone in the Dark, I talked about how the combat system was fairly easily the worst part of the game. You’re beholden to this system where you have to learn your weapon’s moveset and learn the timings and windups all while enemies can just walk up to you and stunlock you to death, and it becomes really clear really quick that unless you want to spend a lot of health and resources for diminishing returns you need to run from and past enemies whenever possible. For Alone in the Dark 2, it’s back, and even worse. Not because combat is now the only thing you ever really do, but because instead of enemies needing to close the gap (giving you your one opportunity to safely stunlock them), now they all have guns. All the melee weapons you get are functionally useless (except for the endgame, where they’re still useless but also you can’t use any of your guns) because trying to close the gap and use them will get you shot, which then forces you into using your own guns, which are just as bad. You need to figure out where to point so that you’re pointing at the enemy, which the cinematic fixed camera angles don’t help with. This is something the AI never has to worry about, so oftentimes you lose health trying to orient your gun so that it’s actually aimed in the correct direction. It says something that the best way to go through things is to cheese the enemies into shooting a wall between you and them, instead.
And it’s required. Not just necessarily “the door will only open once the enemy is dead” but in more subtle ways, like an item needed for progression only dropping once you kill a specific enemy. Problem is, you don’t know what enemies are the ones that drop the things you need, or, even if they do drop something, whether the thing you get will actually take you in a direction that progresses you through the game or whether it just leads to more lore or a “”””””””better””””””” weapon. This is even worse when you consider resource scarcity. More specifically, ammo scarcity: your constant need for ammo because guns are the only thing worth using far eclipses the ammo the game gives you. You’re perpetually running low, a problem that’s made even worse by how you’re always going to miss at least one or two shots because the perspective is so fucked. Oftentimes it feels like you need to savescum just to see if you can get through a fight using slightly less ammo, or losing slightly less health, or losing significantly more health because you were forced to use melee, which… even when you’re meant to use it it’s still so clunky and rough to deal with. There’s more than one segment where there are tendrils guarding things that’ll damage you if you get close, that can only be hurt by melee attacks… which usually move you forward as you do so, putting you into the damage zone with the oftentimes borked fixed camera perspective making it unclear whether you managed to land a hit on the tendrils or not. The endgame is meant to be a series of swordfights, but it’s more like a series of you using the same move over and over again to lock the opponent in place, spamming it for what feels like minutes until the enemy finally forgets to block, with absolutely no indication as to whether something was a hit or how much HP your opponent has left. Overall the combat is baaaaaaad. Bad bad bad, and the increased focus on it in this game honestly singlehandedly tanks it.
Which is a bit of a shame, because I like a good deal of what this game is attempting. I love the setting: the cloudy, early evening sky, the hedge maze, how you get to run around (and climb) a pirate ship, the fact that this game, of all games, is set during Christmas (and you spend a significant amount of it in a Santa suit)… oftentimes I feel like survival horror games tend to lean onto the same kinds of settings — primarily, those popularized by genre codifiers like Resident Evil or Silent Hill — so it’s really neat to see how even just set dressing can make what’s otherwise a fairly archetypical setting (a mansion) feel so fresh and unique compared to other takes. I like the focus on the background lore — the pirates, their curse, how that informs both the gameplay and sets the story in motion — but even regardless I’m kind of into the shift into having a bit of an active plot: characters you meet along the way, a focus on what’s happening over what happened fifty years ago. There’s also a stealth section that I liked well enough, and not necessarily just because it does away with combat for a merciful, brief moment in time and instead focuses on direct helplessness, needing to stay out of the sight of enemies, impede them when they come after you, and take them out with indirect means. It’s fun, and it does a fun job at repurposing the areas you’ve otherwise fought your way through the rest of the game, transplanting them into a different context and showcasing a little bit of versatility in how they’re designed.
None of that really makes up for how rouuuuuugh the rest of the game feels to play, though. Entirely because of how action-focused this game is: you're saddled with awful combat from the moment you start, and aside from one brief, merciful segment where the game doesn’t allow you to fight back, it never gets better. Only worse, once it becomes fully clear just how clunky the mechanics are. The original Alone in the Dark, despite suffering from the exact same issue, did well to nearly turn that into a strength, the sense of fight or flight, that question of whether entering combat is actually worth it directly inspiring the games that define survival horror today. It’s… certainly not the best game in the world, sure, but it’s still solid, and still worth taking a look at, both on its own merits and as the progenitor of the genre. Alone in the Dark 2, on the other hand, aside from some quirks, and the novelty of its setting… I feel is best left forgotten. 3/10.
y’know
the combat
the really good combat
…
In my review for the first Alone in the Dark, I talked about how the combat system was fairly easily the worst part of the game. You’re beholden to this system where you have to learn your weapon’s moveset and learn the timings and windups all while enemies can just walk up to you and stunlock you to death, and it becomes really clear really quick that unless you want to spend a lot of health and resources for diminishing returns you need to run from and past enemies whenever possible. For Alone in the Dark 2, it’s back, and even worse. Not because combat is now the only thing you ever really do, but because instead of enemies needing to close the gap (giving you your one opportunity to safely stunlock them), now they all have guns. All the melee weapons you get are functionally useless (except for the endgame, where they’re still useless but also you can’t use any of your guns) because trying to close the gap and use them will get you shot, which then forces you into using your own guns, which are just as bad. You need to figure out where to point so that you’re pointing at the enemy, which the cinematic fixed camera angles don’t help with. This is something the AI never has to worry about, so oftentimes you lose health trying to orient your gun so that it’s actually aimed in the correct direction. It says something that the best way to go through things is to cheese the enemies into shooting a wall between you and them, instead.
And it’s required. Not just necessarily “the door will only open once the enemy is dead” but in more subtle ways, like an item needed for progression only dropping once you kill a specific enemy. Problem is, you don’t know what enemies are the ones that drop the things you need, or, even if they do drop something, whether the thing you get will actually take you in a direction that progresses you through the game or whether it just leads to more lore or a “”””””””better””””””” weapon. This is even worse when you consider resource scarcity. More specifically, ammo scarcity: your constant need for ammo because guns are the only thing worth using far eclipses the ammo the game gives you. You’re perpetually running low, a problem that’s made even worse by how you’re always going to miss at least one or two shots because the perspective is so fucked. Oftentimes it feels like you need to savescum just to see if you can get through a fight using slightly less ammo, or losing slightly less health, or losing significantly more health because you were forced to use melee, which… even when you’re meant to use it it’s still so clunky and rough to deal with. There’s more than one segment where there are tendrils guarding things that’ll damage you if you get close, that can only be hurt by melee attacks… which usually move you forward as you do so, putting you into the damage zone with the oftentimes borked fixed camera perspective making it unclear whether you managed to land a hit on the tendrils or not. The endgame is meant to be a series of swordfights, but it’s more like a series of you using the same move over and over again to lock the opponent in place, spamming it for what feels like minutes until the enemy finally forgets to block, with absolutely no indication as to whether something was a hit or how much HP your opponent has left. Overall the combat is baaaaaaad. Bad bad bad, and the increased focus on it in this game honestly singlehandedly tanks it.
Which is a bit of a shame, because I like a good deal of what this game is attempting. I love the setting: the cloudy, early evening sky, the hedge maze, how you get to run around (and climb) a pirate ship, the fact that this game, of all games, is set during Christmas (and you spend a significant amount of it in a Santa suit)… oftentimes I feel like survival horror games tend to lean onto the same kinds of settings — primarily, those popularized by genre codifiers like Resident Evil or Silent Hill — so it’s really neat to see how even just set dressing can make what’s otherwise a fairly archetypical setting (a mansion) feel so fresh and unique compared to other takes. I like the focus on the background lore — the pirates, their curse, how that informs both the gameplay and sets the story in motion — but even regardless I’m kind of into the shift into having a bit of an active plot: characters you meet along the way, a focus on what’s happening over what happened fifty years ago. There’s also a stealth section that I liked well enough, and not necessarily just because it does away with combat for a merciful, brief moment in time and instead focuses on direct helplessness, needing to stay out of the sight of enemies, impede them when they come after you, and take them out with indirect means. It’s fun, and it does a fun job at repurposing the areas you’ve otherwise fought your way through the rest of the game, transplanting them into a different context and showcasing a little bit of versatility in how they’re designed.
None of that really makes up for how rouuuuuugh the rest of the game feels to play, though. Entirely because of how action-focused this game is: you're saddled with awful combat from the moment you start, and aside from one brief, merciful segment where the game doesn’t allow you to fight back, it never gets better. Only worse, once it becomes fully clear just how clunky the mechanics are. The original Alone in the Dark, despite suffering from the exact same issue, did well to nearly turn that into a strength, the sense of fight or flight, that question of whether entering combat is actually worth it directly inspiring the games that define survival horror today. It’s… certainly not the best game in the world, sure, but it’s still solid, and still worth taking a look at, both on its own merits and as the progenitor of the genre. Alone in the Dark 2, on the other hand, aside from some quirks, and the novelty of its setting… I feel is best left forgotten. 3/10.