I Went Insane Playing Alone in the Dark

when I think of survival horror I think of games like Resident Evil the forest and subnautica nowadays these are perceived as gorgeous looking games with terrifying monsters however it wasn't always like this the genre had to start somewhere right even the original Resident Evil games don't hold up all that well in the visual department but we aren't here to talk about that we're going even further back four years before the original Resident Evil hit store shelves today we're taking a look at alone in the dark alone in the dark holds an official world record for being the first ever 3D survival horror game and is highly regarded as a pioneer of the genre it uses the old school method of rendering 3D character models over pre-rendered backgrounds I love old video games but I've never played an MS-DOS game so I'm not entirely sure what to expect I certainly wasn't expecting the game to be less than 6 megabytes let's see if it holds up over three decades later you start by being given a choice between two characters Edward carnby or Emily Heartwood I chose carnb so we'll be focusing on his story the year is 1924 carnb is a private detective tasked with finding an antique piano in the loft of a building called darcetto previously owned by the recently deceased Jeremy Heartwood as carnb arrives at the Mansion he quickly starts to realize that the rumors of darsetto being haunted aren't as far-fetched as most would believe as an older game you control carnb using tank controls hitting enter opens the menu allowing you to use items and take actions you can fight open our search close and push the one piece of advice I was given before starting was to use push to cover the window and trapdoor in the first room this prevents two enemies from breaking in and allows you to get your bearings and adjust other controls instead of immediately being murdered the controls are a far cry from what we're used to today to move forward you use the arrow keys and to run you hit the forward button twice in Rapid succession for it to work you have to fully compress the key which I could not for the life of me pull off consistently you take actions by selecting them in the menu and using the space bar to fight hold space and use the arrow keys for different attacks to inspect walk up and use space for every you take you need to hold the space bar until the animation is fully complete which greatly hinders the gameplay you find a rifle a lamp and an old Indian cover in this room before heading downstairs I said heading downstairs heading downstairs why the hell can't I go downstairs well fourth time's the charm I guess you pick up a bow as well as an oil can used for filling your lamp moving into the next room you walk down the hall oh this is one of those games that's right in alone in the dark doing absolutely normal and innocent things will get you murdered want to walk down a hallway nope maybe inspect an odd statue nah open a door bye-bye I was saving after every single action in order to not lose progress from absurd stuff like that thankfully it lets you choose dumb names for the save file so I started having fun with it you head to the room to the left this time grabbing a key from a desk and unlocking the chest in the corner to find a sword this quickly comes in handy when you're attacked by a zombie across the hall you beat the snot out of another zombie in pickup of Oz [Music] ah okay so that didn't go all that well but we're prepared This Time come on Bird get over here put him up we're gonna do fists with your name on them okay new plan that worked far better you find a key in the vas and use it to unlock a dresser containing two small mirrors quick game design note if you get hit while holding these mirrors they break in the game as soft locked why great question there's a bathroom nearby containing a first aid kit with a flask in it flasks heal you but they have an unusual effect you start with 20 hit points but that's not your limit if you find Healing items you can just use them all right away and your health will continue to increase at the end of the haul there are two demons they don't seem to be doing anything so you just throw the mirrors onto the nearby pedestals ah that certainly got a rise out of it but it still isn't walking towards you so it's not really a threat you place the other mirror down and both demons disappear you head down the now unobstructed staircase and moved to a room with some kind of Specter in it it doesn't seem hostile so you snag a gramophone and a box of matches here's where I tried to enter a seemingly innocuous door and got instantly killed by whatever the heck that thing is nearby is another bathroom this one has a monster in the bathtub so you snag a first aid kit and a jug before booking it you move into a pitch dark room turning on your lamp with the matches and grabbing a heavy statuette as well as some ammunition you throw the heavy statuette at a suit of armor and take its sword in a nearby room you find a statue with some arrows take the arrows get bodied by spiders reload walk to a different side of the statue take the arrows and moonwalk out of there as fast as possible like a true gamer next up is the kitchen there's a pot of human stew and a key as well as some oil and a barrel full of water you can fill your jug with also a gun for some extra pupil Times by this point I was walking around with a completely full inventory and I had no idea what was important so I was dropping off items and Corners to come back for them later if need be that's really worrying because there are multiple ways you can soft block the game if you don't have the correct items so putting anything down is quite risky you head into a room full of zombies at a dinner table I thought hey maybe they'd like some human flesh stew so I put it on the table none of them went for the stew well whatever only one of them seems to be attacking so I'll just stab him what so apparently the stew idea Works he just really wanted to take a seat like the other zombies why not be next to this too great question I'm sure by now you understand you're probably not getting answers because I don't have them there's an ashtray in the Next Room that fills the room with smoke and Deals a ton of damage to you I eventually figured out that you can just put whatever is still producing the smoke out with your water jug you head to a long hallway where a painting throws auto-am access at you and stun locks you in place they could have at least made it a One-Shot kill instead of forcing you to sit there unable to do anything but that would make too much sense this time you throw that old Indian cover on top of the painting so it can't see anything and move down the hallway there's another dangerous painting down there but you can use the power of a bow and arrow oh boy oh boy good thing they chose only one camera angle so it's incredibly difficult to aim in the Next Room there's a weird fake book and a clock that won't shut up I tried to push it over and break it so it would stop and it actually moved out of the way revealing a hidden compartment hiding a key next you head into the library and and it's dark gotta use the lamp what in God's name is that you throw the fake book in a nearby shelf and open a secret passageway to help run away from that thing inside there are a ton of books and daggers so I kind of just grabbed one and got to stabbing it seemed to work I assumed there was a puzzle there but by this point it feels like I've been playing for something like three hours and I'm getting a little bit sick of the old game design uh sorry what okay so I have only been playing for an hour and a half this is gonna suck you move to The Cellar grab some ammo get spooked by some rats and run away next you return to the smoking room and unlock the double doors there's a sword and a shield on the wall matching the first one you found so you place yours in the open slot revealing a hidden passageway before we head down there there are still a few locations we haven't been to and I really don't want to soft lock the game and start all over you head across the hall with a sword fighter dude it's boring nearby there's a room full of people that look like they were frozen in place mid dance you play a tune for them on your gramophone and they get straight to boogieing you Slither your way in between them grabbing a key from the mantle as far as I know we've explored everything now so let's head down that hidden passageway and make a secondary save just in case oh so I was under the impression that naming your file something different will create a new one that is not the case you in fact have to use the arrow keys to move downwards to a new slot not that there's a visual indicator of there being any other slots this means I just saved over my only save and cannot return to the rest of the Mansion I really hope I got everything I needed up next is a falling bridge if you walk over it you die so you need to run as you probably recall I was unable to pull off sprinting earlier meaning this is going to be unpleasant after three minutes straight of pressing the up Arrow key a million times I finally get to activate the Sprint and get over the bridge further down the hall there's a massive monster following you you outmaneuver it find another bird monster shoot it in the face and move through some more of the caverns here you find some wooden docks next to some water with a monster in using the power of being bad at sprinting it only takes six attempts to get across you've unlocked a new action called jumping now it's relatively selfish explanatory look in the direction you want to jump and hold space to do so in the Next Room there's a spider rat hybrid thing that you shoot in the face a couple of times next up is parkour with a demon bird trying to murder you it's honestly not that bad you move further into the caverns and find another set of docks you flail your way around until reaching the end and opening a chest with a key from the dancing room to get a gem you push a big old rock out of the way and move deeper into the cave it's a maze where you can't see anything well better hope your lantern oil doesn't run out you finally reach the end and use your gem to unlock the door to the final boss room that's right we're playing Minecraft now time to punch a tree unfortunately this tree shoots fireballs and you're still being chased by that water monster you maneuver your way over to the altar in front of the tree and find a hook before throwing down that gemstone from the chest finally you throw your Lantern at the tree setting it on fire and causing the location to start collapsing it's an unintuitive mess to get out of here you can somehow use the hook to open up these massive Stone doors but when you get through there's no way to know how to exit I wandered around for ages until I finally stumbled into the correct location and got back to the house Through The Wine Cellar this time you can actually leave through the front door without instantly dying the final nail in this confusing game design coffin foreign [Music] so look I like old games if you grew up with this game and have the power of nostalgia to be your guide I understand being a fan I however as a 19 year old in 2023 as of recording this will never be touching this game again it's cool to see the roots of the survival horror genre but the old game design is frequently really poorly done the controls are awful and the action menu is so clunky having a limited inventory space makes solving puzzles of pain because you have to drop items realize you need them later and then walk to the other side of the Mansion to get them again the combat is clunky the story was only expounded upon in the books and you can die way too easily with no warning as to having done anything wrong the most interesting part of the 3D models is the fact that your character is absolutely Caked Up it glitches frequently with sound effects for Monsters appearing when you're sitting in a room alone and most of the chosen camera angles make maneuvering in absolute pain this is probably my least favorite experience from the trial and error era of gameplay alone in the dark is definitely a product of its time but there's also a remake in the works that will hopefully translate an interesting idea into a plausible modern gaming experience Resident Evil 2 did it wonderfully so I'm sure there's hope for alone in the dark I hope to see you all again have a great rest of your day foreign [Music]

Channel: Ben Again

Views: 167,499

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Id: BKFIzpyuEo8

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023