And now we close the book on a classic PC game trilogy, but can we really call it all classic? Probably not, as I can not claim to have even really liked the previous title. Still the first absolutely was amazing, and I walked into this hoping to get close to those highs again... Well, I'm not sure we did that, but we definitely moved in the right direction for it.
Story: It's now been some time since our last adventure with the "Supernatural Private Eye" and Edward Carnby's reputation as such has only gotten stronger. Unfortunately for him, these kind of cases are not the most common, so he is still stuck with his old apartment with a cheapskate landlord who just won't fix anything. Fortunately, however, when you are THE guy to call, you can also name your price. This is proven true for Edward during the phone call you will hear during the opening cutscene. And the man in question has a new case to solve. Today, he's going to the Mojave Desert in California to investigate the disappearance of a movie crew and an old "friend" from the original game: Emily Hartwood.
On arrival, Edward finds the place apparently abandoned, at least until he crosses the one bridge into town... and a ghoul of some sort blows the thing up. leaving him as trapped here as any survivors who were filming. It will now be up to him to find and rescue anyone still alive (especially Emily if he can), and get back out in one piece... a feat that will be easier said then done. This is a Western ghost story, and as such you will be up against an as of yet unnamed gang of ghoulish cowboys who are hellbent on keeping you out of their business. What that business is, the stakes at risk from them and even who they are will be revealed as you play, so I would rather not ruin the surprise. This is one of those games that pioneered the idea of the environment telling the story as much as anything and as such, there is very little in the way of cutscenes as you play, letting you find things like old newspapers and films to show you what happened or wanted posters to hint at just who you are dealing with. It is very well done.
If anything, my only complaints here are red herrings that seem made to try to connect this game to the previous game and the "cougar" part of the game. Really outside of the game staring Edward Carnby and having Emily Hartwood in the plot, it doesn't really tie to the first game at all but at least those connections seem natural. In the second half of the game, you find a picture of one of the locations in Alone in the Dark 2 and a note from One-Eyed Jack, the villain of the same game, swearing revenge on Carnby, but these details have absolutely nothing to do with anything the best I can tell. It just seems they were thrown in there for no other reason then to remind you of the the old game and then be forgotten. And considering how I felt about that title, I kinda wish even they didn't bother.
The cougar requires a little more explanation and a little bit of spoiler, unfortunately so... as always in my reviews, if you wish to skip what I can't not avoid spoiling, skip past the following indented and italicized section:
Late in the game, the main villain WILL kill Carnby. You do not have a choice, it is a plot point. However, he does not stay dead. A Native American spirit who seemed to help Carnby earlier on resurrects him, but not as a human being. Rather he is stuck in the spirit form of a cougar until he retrieves an eagle statue that until this moment had not been mentioned. This part is small, but seems thrown in to lengthen the game and give the devs an excuse to reset Carnby and everything you've collected for him rather than an important plot point it is played off as.
Still overall, this is a very satisfying story to play and the plot-beats make sense outside the above complaints. It's simple, perhaps, but sometimes horror doesn't need to get too complicated. True, I still like the original better, but I will admit to a bias to the cosmic horror themes that game plays with where this one clearly does not.
7/10
Graphics: If you've played the first two games, you already know how this one is going to look give or take. The entire trilogy is made up of still shots of the various rooms and locations you are in with characters and interactive objects made of 3D polygons. While in the world you will find the scenes themselves look great. Each one is given the loving care to be drawn and painted up brilliantly, showing cracks in the walls, deteriorated floorboards, and frankly for the limited resolution of the day (this is an MS-DOS game, after all), shows a surprising amount of detail! This goes exceptionally well in this case due to all this care going into the depiction of a dilapidated and abandoned mining ghost town with all the cowboy themed spookiness that this should entail. True the game will vary your location a little more then this suggests, but not by a ton. Add to this some great angles to disorientate you and the world itself really does look amazing for the time.
Carnby and those who he shares this location with, however, and almost by tradition of the franchise, do not fair as well. Like the previous games, there really isn't a lot of bitmap work for their models, leaving most enemies and Carnby himself to look incredibly primitive, especially for when this game came out. When away from the camera these can look anywhere from pretty good to fairly awkward, but almost none of them look great when up close and in focus of your view (as the camera view will do from time to time). It's simply incredibly dated, and while this was really good for 1992 when the first game came out and no one had done anything like it yet, it was clear this engine needed some updates pretty badly by the time this sequel rolled around. It just doesn't live up to the standards of it's day in this regard. Thankfully the world itself pulls enough attention most of the time that this lack of detail kinda falls into the background outside of cutscenes. So it sort of evens out between amazing and starting to look really bad.
Still the menu for your inventory, choosing your actions, or even just viewing your health still looks great with all the embellishments and much more detailed models of the objects you are working with, so there is that I guess.
6/10
Sound: When you first boot up this game, the promise of what your ears will get is straight up amazing as the electricity shorts out and Edward Carnby receives a call from Greg Saunders to accept this case you are about to play. You hear every bit of frustration and sarcasm in the character that being a grizzled detective down on his luck should have and why most people probably wouldn't like the guy as both actors deliver their lines perfectly. It is really a masterstroke of genius for how these two interact... but sadly it is just a tease.
Once you are in the game, there is very little actual voice-work and Edward will never speak again. Instead what you get are incredibly hammy lines read to you whenever you find things like notes or wanted posters, assumed to be said by the one who wrote it. It just does not compare to what you just heard, and while enough of them exist to be blend into the world, you really don't get the same level or volume of voice work after this you would hope a CD-ROM only based game would have offered.
Nor is the music going to endear you to the game this time. In fact the main tune you will hear in Slaughter Gulch is straight up annoying as they did their best to emulate a southern tune of a spring instrument and a single plucked guitar backed by a few other midi instruments. It's one of those tunes you are thankful can sometimes simply stop (which it does... frequently). Other tunes fair better, but more in that "melds into the background while you play" kinda way. This is not gonna be a good one on the ears. Rather what you will find the music here mainly good at alerting you when something happened you should probably pay attention.
Nor are the sounds gonna be particularly great here either. Not that they are bad. In fact things like liquid sloshing or footsteps sound shockingly real for the time and likely bitrate available for them. They just are nothing special by today's standards, so they will likely just be acknowledgements something happened and you might want to pay attention.
6/10
Gameplay: Once again if you have played the first two games, you already have a good idea of how this one is going to play too. You will wander around the town of Slaughter Gulch in the role of Carnby as he proceeds to try to find the fate of Emily and the filming crew who disappeared here, and it doesn't take long before it's obvious why they called in the "Supernatural Private Eye" for the job. You will face off with zombies, ghouls, and an undead gang of outlaws before too long, but do not expect the game to make the same mistakes as Alone in the Dark 2 and become an action game with controls that don't support it. Yes you will spend a descent amount of time fighting enemies... in fact more then I like for the control system this series has used so far, but at least they planned it right this time, giving you plenty of ways to control the situation and in most cases camera placement to make aiming a reasonable affair, so it's rare you will find yourself held back due to this until late game.
Rather what will hold you back are the puzzles. This is one of those games that mixes environmental clues and moon logic to leave you scratching your head as often as not. Most of the time if you get stuck the answer is either something you've collected but haven't thought to use, something you missed collecting, or some detail you could easily see but forgot. For example there are several clues in the wanted posters you can make Carnby read and you will be doing yourself a favor to note anything written as you play: it will likely be important even if it doesn't seem so.
But supporting all of this is the same old control scheme of the last two games: you will basically play with the equivalent of an old school Nintendo Entertainment System controller: arrow keys to move, one button to open a menu to decide what action to do and/or item to do it with and a second button once back in the game to do it. If you are attacking, holding this action key with an arrow will decide how you attack, giving you some variety trading different speeds, strengths, and ranges to suit your need (at least when fighting with a melee weapon or fists). The system still works in general thanks to the game balancing this far better then the last game. But to say it's smooth would be a lie. As always the result is functional but clunky. I'm just thankful that, as noted above, the game seems a lot more balanced for it's control limits then the last one, making it a much more playable experience, if one that doesn't quite live up to the original.
7/10
Bugs: Overall this is another title that ran great with few bugs... but it wasn't completely big free, unfortunately.
- Is that in front of or behind? Much like the first two games, there are occasional places where the game seems to have trouble understanding where someone or something should be in front of or behind objects painted into some of the scenes. In this case I can't think of any specific point as I really only saw it when Carnby's body disappeared while fighting a midget around the corner of a doorway to conserve ammo, and a large chunk of his body would just cease to be. There may be others, but I didn't see them.
Digital Rights Management: According to the source I read for these, any modern way to play this game will either boil down to using Steam or GOG to play, both of which are DRM free. As for the original release, it was a CD-ROM based game acting as DRM that way.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Score: While I can not call this game on par with the original, it was definitely a running leap in the right direction after Alone in the Dark 2. It carries a lot of the flaws of time from the previous titles and maybe is a bit combat heavy compared to the first title, but it carries it well, and the game overall is enjoyable to play. Just don't expect it to reach the heights of the original title. That, so far, appears to have been lightning in a bottle.
7/10
System Requirements:
- Any CPU running at 1.8 Ghz or better
- 2 GB RAM
- Any GPU that supports Direct X 9.0c
- Windows 10
- 379 MB Hard Drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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