Alone in the Dark Is Actually Pretty Good...

we hey guys this video is sponsored by Nvidia and MSI so make sure to stick around until the end of the video for a breakdown on their new top tier MSI Titan 18 HX a4v laptop when it comes to survival horror the first series that most people are probably going to think of is undoubtedly going to be Resident Evil and with good reason I mean capcom's original 1996 Masterpiece inspired a whole genre of games for decades to come but a lot of what Resident Evil did was first achieved years prior on the PC with infograms alone in the dark a 1992 PC game which also featured puzzle solving fixed camera angles not to mention a whole spooky Mansion to explore plus it also featured love crafty and law before that stuff was overused and obnoxious it went on to create an entire franchise of its own to mixed results with the last game made being so crappy that it more or less killed off the series that is until now because here we are in 2024 and there's finally another new entry with the simply titled alone in the dark a reboot or reimagining I guess developed by pieces interactive cool whose only other real claim to fame is a couple of expansion packs for Titan Quest me and you'd be forgiven for having low expectations when you go into this one I mean I know I sure did but what pleasantly surprised me is that I soon realized those concerns were misguided on account of alonein the dark actually being pretty damn good I mean it's not amazing or Flawless and definitely not on the same caliber or scale as the recent Resident Evil remakes but this just feels like a game that knows exactly what it is along with what its limitations are and it never tries to do more than it can handle and despite a few hiccups here and there it was a mostly solid experience from beginning to end that I more or less played through in a couple of sittings oh on that case have a seat let me make you a drink the story again focuses on those original two main characters Emily Hartwood and Edward Ki the story is that Emily and Edward are heading to a mental institution named desero Mana to check up on Emily's Uncle Jeremy who's had a long history of mental illness Jeremy is convinced he's possessed by a figure called the Darkman not to be confused with the Sam Ry film with the same name take it now take it take the [ __ ] and he sent Emily a letter which appears to be a veiled cry for help and look if survival horror has taught me anything it's that you're better off just ignoring letters you receive from loved ones I got a letter anyway much like the setto Mana was in the original game this is a large ominous structure surrounded by the Wilderness and when Emily and Edward arrived the entire Place appears to be deserted let's just find him first however after breaking in and snooping around for a bit they run into the many residents all who act a bit weird into this is private property you can't just barge in here not in like a creepy or an evil way but just that kind of offbeat disconnected personalities you'd expect to see in a mental health facility who is your uncle darling Jeremy am I right soon turns out that Jeremy's gone missing and the staff don't know where he is and after going through his room and his belongings it appears there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye taking a supernatural turn soon after oh wow that's striking and it's all kind of similar to the original game with the backdrop of deetto and Jeremy's character being core components to the story I mean the little girl named Grace was also a key figure in the sequel alone in the dark too and the ending even kind of hints that we might be seeing a bit more of a character if a sequel for this remake is ever developed there's even one scene later on where it uses the fixed camera placement from the original game and if you've got the deluxe edition you can turn on the same character models from the original $1 1992 version as well also much like the original game you're again given the option to play as either Emily or Edward though on the grand schem of things this really doesn't change all that much Edward acts like your typical hardboiled liquor soaked private investigator smoking cigarettes and swilling Boo and he more or less interrogates everyone he comes into contact with what can you tell me about Jeremy I wouldn't want to go into details about his condition whereas Emily seems is much more distant and less inclined to open up good evening Miss Harwood either way though you'll still experience most of the same cinematics just with different results God I'm I'm glad to see you I was afraid you had left me you're the one who just disappeared detective Cary how did you where did you go I was just talking to Dr Gray you disappeared I mean during that arrival to desetto for instance after you first run into the maid if you're playing as Edward he basically just forces himself up the stairs so he can investigate Jeremy's room excellent thank you madam whereas if you're playing as Emily the maid is a bit more receptive to their inquiries and then they're even more or less just let right in soon after by Grace follow me but regardless of which one you've gone with you still end up searching through his belongings in his room minutes later so that overall outcome is still going to be the same and even the puzzles and more importantly the puzzle solutions are the exact same for each playthrough there are some unique cinematics for each character and even a whole unique sequence they each get which unveils a bit of their backstory before they came to dto but it's definitely not quite in the same vein as the kind of thing we got in the Resident Evil 2 remake you know where you got to play as either Leon or CLA welcome to the mad house Detective still though there is still a good reason to play through both stories because along the way you're always collecting these unique items some of which can be only found in that character's campaign and a few of which actually unlock hidden endings aside from that though there's also so minor gameplay differences for instance Emily gets an automatic pistol whereas Edward has a revolver and she does seem to be slightly faster than he does when sprinting but yeah dog like where that main story is concerned you're still getting the exact same experience regardless of who you're playing as and either way it doesn't take too long before that Supernatural [ __ ] hits the fan because it seems old Jeremy's gone and got himself locked away in some kind of alternate reality I mean yeah what a dumbass this can't be it is kind of cool on that way too how the game has this habit of randomly shifting things up as you suddenly teleport into this frightening nightmarish version of the real world and the way that the other characters seem aware of the whole thing but also a bit aloof keeps that whole premise really interesting you know surprising things can't kind of reminds me a lot of Silent Hill to where everyone you talk to seems to be lost in their own little world like they know something that you don't and they're not willing to share it huh are you blind or something another big part of why I enjoyed playing through this so much is because unlike a certain other recent third person horror game I played this one actually has consideration for the play time and it doesn't bog you down with constant cinematics and Exposition you're left to your own devices for lengthy periods of time to explore the Mana and look for all the clues and important items now what do we got here you'll eventually find shortcuts to lessen the amount of time spent backtracking along with just exploring rooms and areas you previously couldn't access and I found that that kind of thing made it impossible to put down because feel like every time I was about to stop playing and take a break I'd find some new key or item that just kept me engaged I'm sure you understand you can also tailor just how easy or hard you want to make the puzzles as well being able to turn things on like visual clues or icons on the map to help you out but then you can also just turn all of this stuff off if you want to figure the whole thing out for yourself oh yeah and I got to say too how I love how they've included a pair of bolt cutters and I'm absolutely convinced at this point that there's like some kind of Unwritten Law between all these game devs that dictates that if you're making a survival horror game you have to have a pair of bolt cutters I would just say though if you're going to turn off all those assistance features well then you also might want to keep a pen and paper handy because some of the puzzles are incredibly complex and confusing in fact off the back of that like there is a bit of inconsistency in that regard and I found that the puzzles were often absurdly easy you know to the point where like the item you need to get past something is literally and arms length away from the object itself but then on the other hand certain puzzles are so incredibly vague and the solution even more obscure that when I ended up solving them I was kind of dumbfounded that what I tried actually worked I'll just say too that if you don't like trying to figure out safe combinations you know four or five times well this ain't the game for you either visually too alone in the dark has a lot of fantastic moments there's some really creepy imagery here and there throughout the campaign making good use of the lighting and the sound designed to heighten the Moon [Music] the whole running theme is that using this Talisman to unlock portals which let you explore all these different memories and this has let them have a lot of variety to the environments I mean outside of the matter itself you've got the dimly lit streets of New orans you've got a swamp a cemetery underground Crips an otherworldly library and a dockyard drenched in thick fog should be worth noting too though that this is not a big budget AAA experience and you'll definitely notice a few weaker aspects to the presentation like the mirrors for instance which is the absolute litmus test for figuring out if a game is using the Unreal Engine the biggest one though is how all of the character models look uh yeah I guess so I mean you're not wrong now I me it's no big secret that Edward is modeled after David Harbor and Emily is modeled after jod comr and what this means is that these two characters look like actual people because obviously their likeness has been scanned across everyone else though looks like a video game character and they're not at all to the same level of detail and consistency now this is not an overall bad thing but it is just the expected outcome I guess when you've only got the budget to properly scan two people into your game that's unacceptable there is also a bit of tonal Whiplash as well in terms of the overall atmosphere because you'll often go from exploring some kind of genuinely scary environment you know being chased after by literal monsters only for the environment to then snap back to reality oops there goes gravity and suddenly you're having this bizarre ation with someone in broad daylight while this quirky jazz music plays in the background a few moments later are you sure you want to we could stay here and drink the night away what towards the end of the story it does go from day to night and things do feel a bit more Sinister but it just never seems to maintain that horror tone as much early on which is a bit of a shame because when the game is doing its best to unnerve you I got to say man it does a bang up [ __ ] job of it the good news too is that you're not going to be spending all your time just running around looking for items making small talk and reading people's Diaries and alone in the duck manages to offer up enough combat so the whole thing stayes interesting and this stuff right here is proper old school survival horror shooting controls that being you move like a slow lumbering [ __ ] where raising a weapon aiming and firing or cost precious seconds along with the reload times being just that little bit longer than you'd like all of which though is absolutely by Design and about the fastest you'll ever be moving is when you're trying to dodge where your character awkwardly kind of propels themselves around to avoid attacks and I really do feel like this kind of thing is going to make or break the experience for a lot of people but I got to say that I absolutely love this kind of approach especially in survival horror I mean you're not playing as a special forces Soldier or Navy SEAL you're just a regular person who has the advantage of knowing how to fire a gun and the speed of the combat feels like it reflects that perfectly surprise [ __ ] you don't refill your health by using medkits bandages or red potions you instead get it back by taking a squeak from your hip flask yeah like a real man or woman don't mind if I do weapons have just the right amount of impact when firing and the sound design is loud and eardrum rupturing making it feel like every shot is truly meaningful which it is which it is is it going to win any awards or leave a sticky puddle on my chair though well no but it's fun and it's functional which is really all it ever needed to be it's also a weapon lineup that's clearly gone for quality over quantity with there only being three main weapons in total you've got the pistol or the revolver the shotgun classic and then finally a Tommy Gun a Tommy Gun oh yeah now we're talking both characters start off with a pistol or revolver along with a handful of ammo and in fact you need to find three specific items before you're even able to access the shotgun in the first place and then the Tommy Gun doesn't even show up until about maybe 2/3 into the game with a dynamic Crosshair and recoil that realistically depicts just how well someone might actually shoot that thing in real life apart from that there's also an abundance of melee weapons you can use as well like Sledge hammers shovels and pipes though the melee system really is just a little more than button mashing and kind of hoping for the best and then finally there's also the option to pick up random objects from around the environment to throw at enemies what the game calls opportunities and it is a bit weird that you can't hold on to these things because once you pick them up you can't seem to put them down without throwing them but some of these are really effective like all the molotov cocktails that someone was must enough to just leave Lane around and even those bottles of alcohol can be ignited when shot at making them useful for setting traps for the enemies oh yeah speaking of the enemies the ones you come up against here are these horrific disgusting creatures that seem to just literally come out of the darkness with appendages and other gross coming out of their body making them barely recognizable and outside of these flying bat things which are beyond [ __ ] annoying they all seem well balanced and never feel outright cheap or frustrating to fight the game describes standard difficulty as the intended experience which is what I went through for my first playthrough but even on the so-called standard mode you still lose a lot of Health when enemies hit you in fact it's actually more Akin I think to what hard mode is in most other games oh [ __ ] so yeah don't get me wrong these things are still going to kick the ever loving [ __ ] out of you and it's surprisingly easy to get overwhelmed and killed and in fact it's certain instances you're outright forced to run past them entirely or even just avoid them which kind of does showcase that really crappy stealth system where your character does what wouldn't even pass as a full Squat and walks incredibly slowly to avoid detection but I found that most of the time just having General game sense along with staying mobile and timing my reloads was all I needed to get through most encounters and overall like I found the combat to be a really fun component to the experience with the speed of the movement in the Gunplay feeling just right for the kind of game it's trying to be like I said like you're not playing as Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine you're either a middle-aged alcoholic private detective or a 30s something year old woman who looks like she'd get trapped under a broom handle and if you can accept that that's the kind of combat you're going to be dealing with and appreciate it on that level well then there's a lot of tension and enjoyment that comes from that it's hard to explain the only real challenge moment I had was the final boss which isn't like impossible but it's because this fight is so much more intense than anything you've done prior it' be like playing Mike Tyson's punch out and going from taking on glass Joe to then skipping right ahead to Mike [Music] himself I should also mention too that this was a far from bug-free Affair and I experienced a whole lot of glitches and issues throughout my play time the most common one is just the amount of times I got stuck in the environment which was really annoying other bugs included not being able to swing or pick up melee weapons along with not being able to interact with the environment at all then of course there's that old Chestnut where the game just randomly crashed to desktop which annoyingly would often happen before the auto save even kicked [Music] in performance-wise there's also some serious stuttering going on as well which is incredibly noticeable and even kind of ruins some of those transitions what the hell was that but apparently the devs are supposed to be working on a fix for that so hopefully by the time most people are hearing my voice this has been resolved what the hell is going on a lot of the other stuff was also fixed anyway if I just loaded up an old safe file and thankfully too the devs were smart enough to include manual save points what exactly does that mean and look I don't know if I really need to explain the virtues of a manual save option but either way just take my word for it all up finishing Edward's campaign took me around 6 or so hours and then finishing Emily soon after took me another 3 and 1/2 I did still miss quite a few of those hidden Collectibles as well which meant I didn't get to see any of those alternate endings so there would be value going back in again and finding all that stuff speaking of endings I would absolutely love to spoil what happens here as well because it really does seem to come out of absolutely nowhere but in the best possible way all I'll say is that fans of the original along with Quake fans of all people are going to find themselves living out that Leonardo DiCaprio meme in real time overall alone in the dark it's the kind of game that doesn't do a whole heap of things but what it does it does well it never feels bloated or pretentious it doesn't bog you down with constant Exposition or take control away from the player come on I don't want to be here all night and the puzzles can be made challenging enough to actually require you to use that big pink thing in between your ears combined with a whole bunch of combat sequences where you can actually get killed quite easily if you're not careful for people aren't fans of old school survival horror I mean I can see how you'd want to spend your time better elsewhere and I mean look if you don't like that kind of thing well then that's fine too this game's just not for you and there's plenty other stuff going on anyway with March's game calendar looking more packed than your mom's is on a Saturday night but fans of the original along with people who maybe appreciated the recent Resident Evil remakes are going to find a fun game here of a similar nature excellent thank you madam nothing else though alone in the dark fans I think can finally be proud of the franchise again and this might hopefully serve as some much needed medication after [Applause] illumination right so let's check about the MSI Titan 18hx A14 V laptop as a study buddy or for creators the Titan lives up to its namesake with a lot of power to spare throw whatever work orpl software you like add it and the Titan built to keep up plus you get to enjoy the on screen results via the world's first 18in 4K mini LED display for gaming choose up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 490 laptop GPU to get the Ultimate Experience for games like Horizon forbidden West complete addition with all of the maximum settings and Horizon forbidden West complete edition is one of a bunch of games where you can get an AI assist from Nvidia use DL La at high resolutions for Max image quality or switch on dss3 to play at high frame rates and take full advantage of the 4K 120 HZ screen while dss3 UPS the frame rate andv reflex lowest system latency for SNAP year responsiveness so yeah this MSI laptop is built for maxed out solo gaming and Twitchy online multiplayer so to get more info on the MSI Titan 18 HX a14b laptop click on the link in the video [Music] description [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: GmanLives

Views: 244,254

Keywords: alone in the dark, survival horror, horror games, horror game, alone in the dark ps5, alone in the dark game, alone in the dark remake, video games, david harbour, alone in the dark review, alone in the dark 2024, thq nordic, playstation 5, alone in the dark gameplay, alone in the dark trailer, new horror games, edward carnby, jodie comer, survival horror games, horror games gameplay, alone in the dark ps5 demo, upcoming horror games, gmanlives, gggmanlives

Id: eFALcIRFrWw

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024