Alone in the Dark 2 - Shot to the Heart

Written by Andy Panthro

What if I just left?

I’m finally back! Apologies for the delay in properly starting this. After quite a long gap from the introduction post, I finally found the time and energy to resume playing this game. Hopefully my progression should be swift, although I had to refamiliarise myself with the controls, which are as awkward as ever. I can never get the hang of the proper tapping of a direction to run with any regularity. 

Ah, that’s why.

Anyway, apropos of nothing, the first thing I thought to consider was what happens if you just leave? Hit the bricks! After all, perhaps a tommy gun toting zombie is a sign that this is a bit beyond you, even if you did defeat an evil eldritch tree in the previous game. So, I turned myself around and headed back out of the gates.

A later game area I’m sure, as my body is carried away

Turns out if you walk back out of the gate, a car pulls up and you get unceremoniously shot to death, before being carried through the mansion and dumped into the ocean. Well that answers that question I suppose. No chance of cowardice for Carnby here, and that means no chance of cowardice for me either. Together we must push forward!

You can just about see the dark smudge of Carnby falling in the middle there

Back to the actual game, I try and check the little guard post. The door is seemingly not able to be interacted with, I was hoping I could enter but I guess this is just background. I am slightly worried that my choice of actions in the menu are only “fight” and “push”. A lack of interactive actions is a poor sign that this sequel is anything like its predecessor. Ahead lies a path to the mansion, surrounded on each side by tall hedgerows.

Taking the path directly forward, I run into some more tommy-gun zombies, who make short work of me. I feel like this is going to be a recurring theme. I try this multiple times, I’m not really sure if you’re supposed to kill them all or not. There are two with tommy guns, and two with pistols closer to the mansion entrance.

This game makes for a terrible third person shooter

Of course, in the first game, there would be some sort of puzzle to get past them or something. But then the first game didn’t give you machine guns in the opening seconds of the game either. Is this game a more action focused one? Yes. Is that a good thing? I don’t think so. Especially when aiming a gun in this game is criminally bad. The melee combat is bad enough, trying to find the right angle to shoot a zombie before he shoots me is not fun at all.

The first two zombies walk towards you and can shoot from off screen, so it can be best to lure them near the gap in the hedgerow. Upon killing them, I had the choice to push an anchor statue out of the way to pass through the hedge or continue on. I decided to deal with the other two zombies, dressed in more elaborate clothing. They both had pistols, which made them slightly less dangerous, and I was eventually able to kill them with the remainder of my ammunition. Hopefully the game has plenty more!

The seemingly uninteresting and vacant side of the house, with grey slab/grate to the upper left

On one attempt after killing all four zombies, I moved to the western side of the mansion entrance. There’s a few cracks in the walls, some windows that don’t look openable, and some sort of slab or grate on the floor. With no “search” button I pushed myself against the walls, and when I was in the corner near the weird slab, I suddenly was raised up into the sky, and found myself deposited underground? My guns fell down into the deep, and my inventory was replaced with a notebook, a book and a page from a newspaper.

My knowledge of this game is rather minor, but I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be here yet. Is this how you’re supposed to get further into the game? It really feels like that shouldn’t be the case. After reading the notes (one from Striker, the friend who asked for my help, one telling of the ship's surgeon on the Jolly Roger, and a newspaper clipping that for some reason it wouldn’t let me use).

Yet again beneath a house, weird tree roots with faces, inexplicable stone structures… This at least is very Alone in the Dark

Further on we see Striker himself, lying dead on the stone floor. He has another notebook and a pipe cleaner on him. Next to him is a locked door. I’m going to save at this point, and perhaps come back in a bit, but I really feel like I should check the rest of the mansion grounds first, and perhaps have done some other things before I get here. I don’t want to risk skipping ahead causing me more problems.

So, restoring to the point where I killed the zombies outside the mansion. I manage to kill the other two pistol zombies and still have a little ammo left, so I’m doing better. However, I now think I wasn’t supposed to do this, as for some reason I cannot enter the front door (literally won’t let me up the steps, despite the front door looking like a 3D interactable object). To the east side of the mansion entrance is a large gate that is guarded by another tommy gun zombie. This zombie does not react to me, or my futile attempts to open or in any way interact with the gate.

Being watched from a window is also very good, can’t fault the art team

I walk back to the gap in the hedge, push the anchor statue out of the way, and make my way into the hedge maze. I hear a digitized voice say “morning sir” before I am gunned down by a shotgun wielding zombie. Well, that about sums up this little episode, I think. This may seem like I’ve basically made no progress, and you’d be right. However, I am back in the saddle so to speak, so there won’t be such a big gap to the next post.