Alone in the Dark 2 - Final Rating

Written by Andy Panthro

I started this game knowing that the first one is a classic of the genre, and helped define what we would later call “survival horror”. A sequel, especially with quite a short development time, was always going to be a challenge. There was definitely more of an action focus this time, with a desire to make something a bit more exciting and cinematic than the first game.

I think it’s fair to say if you’ve played this, or read my posts, it doesn’t quite live up to either the expectations generated from the first game nor does it provide the action-packed experience that seemed to be the goal.

Unfortunately this is in part due to the nature of the game itself, the design of the game gives you quite limited movement options and doesn’t lend itself to quick movement or combat. There were too many sections of this game that became quite frustrating as you can become very easily stun-locked by enemies, as their attack cycles were too fast. As for attacking yourself, the fixed camera angles and tank controls mean aiming is a tricky procedure and it can often be difficult to get the right angle to attack.

At times this really does stretch the limits of what you might consider an “adventure game”, but there are items to use, puzzles to solve and places to search. Certainly as the series progresses, future games will continue to move towards action rather than adventure, and outside of the remit of this blog.

Puzzles and Solvability

The sections with Grace had perhaps the most puzzles, as she could not fight her way out. There were a few good ones, like using the pepper pot and the toy cannon to defeat a zombie pirate, or the classic puzzle to get a key from the other side of the door. In general though the puzzles were a bit mixed, a lot of the time either the items were given to you immediately before you needed them, or solutions were really awkward to get to. 

Items and interactable objects were similarly mixed, sometimes very obvious due to being a 3D environment object, and other times part of the background that was not clear. There are times when the game will give you a bit of a hint, that an item is used elsewhere or that you’re on the wrong side.

There was an early moment where you could knock a zombie out of a window into the sea, which I liked, although it’s not the most complex puzzle, it just required a bit of timing and positioning. There’s a couple of times where you can drop an item and avoid a combat, a couple of times for Carnby and then again in a more Home Alone sense with Grace.

The bad ones are just frustrating. The shooting gallery to open a secret door that requires you to hit some card-themed pillars in a weird way to get them to turn properly was a particular annoyance. I also struggled to understand the logic of some parts, for example how you were supposed to know that jingling a coin bag would get someone to open a door, or what the deal with the clown puppet and the pompoms was supposed to be about.

Score: 4

Interface and Inventory

The interface is basically the same as Alone in the Dark 1, although in some parts (particularly the Grace parts) even simpler than that. Picking up items and often opening doors are all done automatically. There are very few objects that require you to move them, so the push command (especially for Grace) is very under-used. The charm of the 3D items remains, showing them spin around for you, but there’s not really anything new here.

The biggest issue with the interface is the struggles I had with fighting, where the sluggishness of the controls was most evident. The bad guys attack quickly, and so every wasted shot or time taken to change your angle of attack means another opportunity for them to stun-lock you and kill you.

With Grace, her movement speed was slower and her ability to interact was greatly reduced. While she gets some good puzzles, there were also sections where you have to run and hide, and those often became trial and error as the sight lines were unclear.

Because of the greater emphasis on combat, and the reduced amount of interactive objects, this has to get a lower score.

Score: 5

Story and Setting

The game begins with another detective trying and failing to rescue Grace from the mansion and  Edward Carnby is called in to take over when he goes missing. You get little to go on at first, the game dropping you into a maze puzzle and a mixture of gangsters, pirates and ghosts within the first hour. It’s also notably set at Christmastime, but more on that later.

As with the first game, most of the detail you get on the setting and story is relayed to you via books and narration. Early on, this is mainly a few disconnected stories about One-Eyed Jack’s pirate crew, that give you hints on how to defeat them. The full story is not revealed to you until quite a bit later on, through two lengthy cutscenes involving a lot of very well drawn scenes. You find out about Jack and Elizabeth, and their pact to live forever that requires a sacrifice every 100 years.

It all fits rather awkwardly together, and I struggle to make sense of it all when it’s all laid out. It suggests the pirates became cowboy outlaws and gangsters, but you find a real mixture of henchmen throughout that seem from every possible time period. Elizabeth seems like she should be more pivotal as an antagonist, but aside from her cutscene you know nothing about her or why she keeps hanging around with Jack’s crew. Her magic is supposed to keep them all alive, but once she’s killed it doesn’t really seem to cause them any noticeable problems.

While the ship and the house are somehow connected via dumb waiter (the ship does seem to be crashed into the rocks beneath the house, but it’s a long way down!), they feel like such different locations and have such different vibes that it seems amazing that they manage to maintain the modern 1920s mansion on top of this 17th century pirate ship.

It all feels like it’s just enough to string the puzzles together, without being compelling enough to want to explore. The game doesn’t seem interested enough in its characters, so I struggle to be interested either. Perhaps some more notes or diaries might have been better, instead of giving you a minor backstory you could get a bit more recent information about what these characters were doing.

Score: 3

Sound and Graphics

The graphics are the star of the show here, and perhaps if you’re looking at this with modern eyes you might be wondering what I could possibly mean, but it was very impressive to do this level of detail for 3D models at this time. They unfortunately haven’t aged well at all, but you can tell when you see a pirate versus a gangster, or a clown versus a chef.

Carnby in particular is very well modelled and animated, and Elizabeth has a very spooky Addams Family vibe. Some of the other characters are less detailed and less interesting, but the range of characters is impressive, and a step up in animation from the likes of the generic zombies from the first game.

The background art is comparable to the first game, but less interesting. A lot of the locations in the mansion are quite bland, and the cramped wooden confines of the pirate ship leave a lot to be desired. The angles chosen in some scenes are often poorly designed, with the shape and size of certain areas being difficult to get your head around. It made the maze particularly frustrating, as enemies could easily be hidden and mapping it was tricky, but thankfully it wasn’t too large. Some objects in the backgrounds seemed interesting but were entirely there as set dressing and not interactable nor had any effect on the game.

Where it does excel compared to its predecessor is the animated scenes, it reminded me a lot of the little animated scenes in Monkey Island 2, and while they maybe weren’t quite at that level they were still excellent. A lot of the longer cutscenes relied on static artworks though, which were often well drawn but didn’t otherwise stand out, especially the ones that were largely sepia coloured.

The sound effects were pretty good for the most part, with a few digitised voices in there too. There’s not a lot of variety though, mainly it's footsteps and gunshots. The music is a downgrade from the first game, the repetitive tunes were often quite jaunty and seemed to distract from any potential horror or tension in a scene. 

Score: 6

Environment and Atmosphere

Again, the sequel drops down a bit here. For every point where it’s trying to give you a taste of Haitian Voodoo or swashbuckling pirate adventures, it undercuts this with something that’s silly or out of place. The game being set at Christmas makes almost no impression on the heart of the story, but instead allows for them to display a Christmas tree in one room, and in one sequence Edward Carnby can wear a Santa suit.

For all the talk of dark magics and evil pirates, the mansion house is quite plain, and the pirate ship unremarkable. I mentioned this in the section about graphics, but the environment here leans towards the realistic, and this could have worked if the design was stronger and each location was more interesting. Locations like Elizabeth’s room in the mansion stand out because it’s one of the few places where there’s skulls on the table, strange flasks of coloured liquids and strange sigils and paintings.

Not that you see much in the way of magic, Carnby is captured twice with magic, once turned into somewhat of a trance state and walked from the mansion to the pirate ship, and the other time he is stunned and floated into the air for a short time. We’re told that Grace is being held for a sacrifice, but it is unclear where this sacrifice will happen and there’s no obvious preparation for it.

The pirate story is told in a few fragments, with Jack stealing and becoming captain of a ship, but the former captain remains a pivotal figure as far as the gameplay is concerned. The previous captain’s sword and cane are both key items as you progress to the end, and there’s still a statue of that captain in his old room on the ship. Jack ends up being the final boss, but we see so little of him, his one main appearance before the final battle being a villain monologue during one of Carnby’s times being captured.

Nothing about the situation is particularly menacing, it doesn’t feel like there’s a particular time pressure or drive forward. You get captured, escape, and then later get captured again. Most of the time this seems to entirely just be done to have an easier way to transition to the pirate ship without having to show exactly how you would get between locations.

They tried their best with the final battle, and were let down by the nature of the game engine. It’s hard to have an interesting duel when the combat system is so awkward. The wider view in those scenes make the characters smaller and the interactable objects smaller, so any details become harder to discern.

Another problem for me was the multiple places where there was a combat challenge, or Grace had a sneaking challenge, where reloading several times in a short time was necessary to get through, as it often requires a lot of trial and error to figure out your best route or how best to deal with the enemies in that zone. A section that might take a few minutes if you know what you’re doing can take so much longer due to reloading all the time, and while this extends the play time it’s not entertaining for the person playing.

Score: 4

Dialogue and Acting

This is comparable to the first game, the vast majority of acting here is the voice acting of the books and notes, and a handful of enemy lines. The quality of the digitised voices is pretty good, especially for the era, and brings a touch of extra life to the material. The quality of the actual text is mostly fine, the best parts are the backstories for Jack and Elizabeth, the worst are some of the incidental crew member books which exist only to provide a hint about how to deal with them. 

As we’re not just dealing with demons and undead, we do get some characters talking this time, but it’s not conversations and it’s very limited. It would have been nice to see some dialogue between Carnby and Grace, or perhaps Elizabeth and Grace, or even Elizabeth and Jack. This might have given the game a bit of a boost to the story, and helped to reinforce the stakes.

Score: 3

Final Score

4 + 5 + 3 + 6 + 4 + 3 = 25 / 0.6 = 42

The closest to guess was LeftHanded Matt, who guessed 44.

A notably lower score than the first game, caused mainly by my disinterest in the story and characters, and also the increased amount of combat challenge, which includes a lot of getting shot at and regularly having to save and reload.

My initial impressions from the introduction and opening section were good, but that quickly became soured by the maze, where gun toting gangsters hid around every corner. I think if the developers hadn’t pushed this in a more action-oriented way, there could have been a better game here. Carnby in this game doesn’t feel like a detective, he barely feels like a character at all. He’s become a generic action hero and that just doesn’t work for me.

I’m also very curious about the choice of California for the setting, other than channeling The Goonies with the hidden pirate ship in a cave (although that was set in Oregon rather than California), it would have made far more sense for this to be set somewhere in The South, especially with the nods towards Haitian Voodoo. One wonders how the pirate ship got there, was it a good location for piracy? Did they sail it around long after the Age of Sail, via South America to take advantage of the Gold Rush?

I do feel kind of bad giving it what turned out to be quite a mediocre score, there are some small improvements on the first game, with higher detail 3D models and some more detailed cutscene work, but unfortunately it’s in service of a much weaker game.

So what do you think? Have I been far too harsh, or do you agree that there’s just too many rough edges and it deserves the score? Let me know in the comments!

CAP Distribution

100 CAPs to Andy Panthro

• A Nightmare Before Christmas Award - 100 CAPs - for playing Alone in the Dark 2 for our enjoyment

20 CAPs to LeftHanded Matt

• Psychic Warrior Award - 20 CAPs - for having the closest guess for the final rating of Alone in the Dark 2

20 CAPs to Alex Romanov

• True Companion Award - 20 CAPs - for co-blogging in the comments along with Andy's playthrough

15 CAPs to Busca

• Giving Love a Bad Name Award - 10 CAPs - for identifying a Bon Jovi hit from a mis-heard lyric
• Rick Grimes Memorial Award - 5 CAPs - for a very obvious but appreciated joke about zombies

10 CAPs to Ken Brubaker

• Keys to the Kingdom Award - 10 CAPs - for helping trace back the origins of a puzzle solution in video games

10 CAPs to ShaddamIVth

• Pot Belly Award - 10 CAPs - for stoking a conversation about using a stove on a ship