Alone in the Dark (1992)

[UnknDoomer]

Before Resident Evil, before Heretic and ever Doom there was such terrifying title:

 

 

I've played it back in the day when was a kid. I hadn’t heard of Lovecraft, RE series and many other things back to. The combination of early 3D with a beautiful painted picture in combo of sounds and unusual and unexpected attacking monsters did their job of the creating an eerie atmosphere.

 

From somewhere I painted a guide into a notebook (paper one) by a brown felt-tip pen - the game seemed extremely difficult. There were still mostly pre modern internet days...

 

Did you play this title? What you think about it?

[DSC]

Very ahead of its time. Survival horror wouldn't exist as it does today without it.

 

 

Although unfortunatly whenever I think of this game nowadays I can't not remember that Uwe Boll has touched it with his filthy hands. Haven't seen his movie, but I know I'm better off that way.

[UnknDoomer]

Quote

Haven't seen his movie, but I know I'm better off that way.

@DSC, didn't watch it too, but as I've heard it's +/- based on Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare (2001), which is by itself non canon one title.

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/259170/Alone_in_the_Dark/

 

That's remind me another story. When another game come in 2008 from back from dead Atari (which was mostly nothing reffering to old one), sort a reboot, which have had it's atmosphere, but was terrible in case of controls/gameplay, developers run an a challange. Users send "happy e-mails" to 5-10 folks to continue the line of torches. If time expire and not enough folks join - you lost the fire and positions in raiting. So it required to "spam" a lot. Main prize was a travel to New-York or something.

 

At the end I've give up mostly, but got a little prize after all - a green t-shirt with a yellow picture of a park, that, by a strange coincidence, arrived right at my birthday...

Edited March 15, 2021 by UnknDoomer

[SilverMiner]

50 minutes ago, UnknDoomer said:

Did you play this title? What you think about it?

Very brutal. Don't waste your ammo on zombies, dude

Edited March 15, 2021 by SilverMiner

[UnknDoomer]

BTW. Did you know that in Russia, city of Murmank, there was a plan to raise an statue in honor of Cthulhu? No kidding.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCXw9hGHra0

[SilverMiner]

1 minute ago, UnknDoomer said:

No kidding.

It's "РЕН ТВ" or "REN TV" as pronounced in English, one of the few Russian TV channels funded in 90s that are meant to propagate pseudoscience

[P41R47]

Played the original trilogy many times.

First one is sublime.

Second one is not that good and gameplay is more action focused...what is bad since you still takes ages to do every action. But there was plenty of checkpoints and so it has an arcadey feel.

Third one is a mix of the two, with a really wonderfull strange western setting.

 

Alone in the Dark: The New Fear was made to bring the franchise to the modern standars of the survival horror of the times. Its pretty good, its right up there with Silent Hill, and Resident Evil: Nemesis for me.
The setting is really good, the backstory made for this game has logic to it and its pretty good, too. And you can play as two different characters as in the original, but you visit different areas. So its two games on one.

The flashlight mechanics was outstanding and it was use for puzzles all the time.

I think that it should be the direction the franchise should have taken instead of the reboot.

But probably was the Uwe Boll movie that made it had soo bad reputation, as the film is kinda base on it.

 

Then come the kinda reboot...and it was kinda bad on every sense, with the story being a big nonsense.

Then an online game appeared...another failure.

 

So we are now, again at the hands of Atari, not knowing what to do to invigorate the franchise as it should to the modern days.

 

Aside from that, i saw some really awesome technicall demos of a planned remake of the original game with still focus on the survival and puzzle aspect, with added timed sequences.

It looked cool.

[Gokuma]

Isn't there an award-winning film based on this game?

[MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai]

10 minutes ago, Gokuma said:

Isn't there an award-winning film based on this game?

Lmao award winning :D.
I mean yeah sure if you count Golden Razies as awards.

[Arnaldo.CSF]

OMG, I've played it. It's a great game... the first survival horror, if i'm not mistaken. 

[omx32x]

good game for the time and with sweet home on the nes and some other point and click horror games it helped shaping the survival horror genre

though the game aged like fine spoiled milk and is in desesperate need for a remake or a remaster with upgrades

also the sequels got really really weird... (im the fucking UNIVERSE)

[amackert]

Classic game. Played it a bunch in the '90s, then went back to it for a few playthroughs last October. Running issues aside on the PC version (the double-tap to run barely ever functions), I think it still holds up. I enjoy the simplicity of the puzzles and the abstract nature of its enemies. The atmosphere and sound design is great. It's got gameplay quirks that you have to adjust to, but it's fun overall. Doesn't take long to run through either when you know the solutions to every room.

[Eurisko]

What a classic! the comparison to Resident Evil is obvious but i believe that Resident Evil 1 was originally going to be an FPS.

[MadeMan]

I Still Have The GOG Version.

[Cherno]

 

[Gez]

23 hours ago, P41R47 said:

Second one is not that good and gameplay is more action focused...what is bad since you still takes ages to do every action. But there was plenty of checkpoints and so it has an arcadey feel. 

My most vivid recollection of AitD2 is standing in a corridor right at a door with a washboard, and beating on pirate zombies until they die.

 

A zombie pirate comes up right in my character's face, aims his gun right over my shoulder and keeps firing behind me. Yay 3D games with true 3D points of origin for enemy attacks! Behind him, other massed zombies are pushing. My washboard is a true close-quarter weapon, so I can kill the zombie, then the next one takes its place, and repeat until all of them are no more.

 

It was hilarious but completely ruined the spookiness.

 

 

Many years later, going to a friend's house, I see them playing Resident Evil. The first game of the series, I believe. I was struck by how everything in it, from the way the camera changes to even minor details of the interface were taken straight from AitD.

[SilverMiner]

1 hour ago, Cherno said:

 

How did you manage to extract these?

[Gokuma]

On 3/15/2021 at 5:07 PM, MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai said:

Lmao award winning :D.
I mean yeah sure if you count Golden Razies as awards.

 

The director has said that prostitutes were cheaper to hire than actresses.  (But that's regarding BloodRayne 1 which actually used real prostitutes for a scene with Meatloaf).

 

The trivia about moves on imdb.com is hilarious to read.   Reviews can be funny too.

[Ankha]

In that game (or was it in the first one), you could get killed by rats (like 1 or 2 rats) in the cellar, or by an ash-tray...

Still, I really enjoyed the atmosphere.

[MadeMan]

Does Anyone Know That Alone In The Dark Games Use The PAK File Format For Game Data Like Quake? There Exists A Tool For Those PAK Files. https://forum.magicball.net/showthread.php?t=18152

[Solmyr]

I only played the first one, enjoyed the atmosphere but hated the combat. My favorite parts were puting a stew pot of human flesh on a table in order to make the zombies in the dining room ignore you and sit down as if they were expecting to be served, and also reading the "Vermis Miisteris" and other occult books in the library and seeing either Carnby or Hartwood twist, inflate and warp to death.

[Cherno]

8 hours ago, MadeMan said:

Does Anyone Know That Alone In The Dark Games Use The PAK File Format For Game Data Like Quake? There Exists A Tool For Those PAK Files. https://forum.magicball.net/showthread.php?t=18152

There is a Unity project that allows importing models and rooms into the Unity editor. I believe it's called Alone in the Dark Model Viewer or something like that. The "texture", however, is just a palette-like bitmap file of 256 colors, similar to the one in Doom, and all model surfaces are set to one of the colors (since the AitD model surfaces are either mono-colored, noise, or fake reflection.

 

8 hours ago, MadeMan said:

Does Anyone Know That Alone In The Dark Games Use The PAK File Format For Game Data Like Quake? There Exists A Tool For Those PAK Files. https://forum.magicball.net/showthread.php?t=18152

 

I'm pretty sure that AitD's PAK format has nothing to do with the one used for Quake.

[MadeMan]

You're Making A AITD Themed Mod Or TC? @Cherno

[kristus]

I played the demo of this over and over. (just one room) Never got my hands on the full game.

[Cherno]

5 hours ago, MadeMan said:

You're Making A AITD Themed Mod Or TC? @Cherno 

I started one about two years ago. My plan was to take the general gameplay and scenarios of the boardgame Mansion of Madness and put it into GZDoom using AitD assets. This was before I got the experience with model in GZoom I have now, so I abandoned it eventually because I was not happy with how things looked and worked. I would like to get back to it eventually, but there are always so many projects I am working on and so little time... ;)

[MadeMan]

Gonna Continue And Finish It One Day?

 

[Cherno]

I would like to, if I find the time.