Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare

If you love older resident evil style games then you should love this.

Not necessarily the original but plays the most like a Resident Evil and not like its awkward first 3 outings, which while charming, were a true test of patience. For a breakdown of New Nightmare and the rest of the series including the films, check out my review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH02NK1l6j0&

With great atmosphere, in my opinion splendid visuals (the lightning effects in this game were something else back in 2001 and they still look great) and good sound design, eventhough the PC port suffers from compression. The writing is of course cheesy, no one should go into this game expecting Silent Hill 2 level of script, but the story is interesting enough for you to want to uncover its secrets. There are puzzles, there is a big, classy, spooky mansion and the monsters aren't your typical zombies or ghosts either. A solid survival horror game of its time, and in a couple of ways, for me, timeless. BUT the GOG copy is hardly fixed. Running on Win 10 x64 and experiencing every possible issue described on every possible forum. I've spent, I think, more than 6 hours now digging around, implementing patches and files provided by different people on different websites and there's no winning. The game just runs poorly (the famous blackscreen FMVs for example). I would really, really love GOG to look into it and maybe finally provide a fully playable version of the game, we all know they can do that. All the best!

Somehow, they managed to fix the problem. Just edit the shortcut application's properties and in the "Target" box in the 'shortcut' tab, look for 'launcher.exe' at the end of the address line and change it to 'alone4.exe', then save the changes and copy the shortcut application to the desktop and doubleclick on it. It will work! Enjoy the game!

游戏全流程下来一共用了二十小时。整体的氛围营造还是不错的，特别考虑到这是2001年发行的游戏。双主角的不同流程但又相互呼应，这种叙事手法即拉长了游戏流程，又让故事的结构更显饱满。游戏中有一个重要的机制就是光照系统。因为整个主题就是围绕光明与黑暗的斗争展开的。所以双主角都被安排了一个手电筒，这个手电筒发出的光线能驱散部分黑暗生物，能在没有光的场景突出显示可互动的场景元素以及道具，还有基于光照系统设计的解谜。特别是初期的庄园流程里，光照机制是利用最频繁的游戏部分。也算是点题了。 男女主的庄园部分流程也最饱满。离开庄园后的男主沼泽部分和女主城堡部分中规中矩，双主角最后的地下洞窟则能看出很明显的赶工痕迹，解谜设计几乎消失，大量重生的怪和无限能量枪使玩家陷入机械麻木的战斗循环中。 可惜，这游戏的战斗设计并不让人感到快乐。前期提供了紧张的生存恐怖体验：弹药紧缺，无法预判的怪物刷新，都给足了压力。中期流程弹药管理就开始逐渐失去意义，后期更是直接甩给玩家一把可以无限捡取能量水晶的能量枪。然后地下洞窟安排无限刷新的怪物。每个主角的武器一共有七种，只有手枪有区分，其他六种通用。但大部分时间有三种武器没有存在意义。手枪的威力到后期也完全鸡肋。游戏后期子弹更是只提供能量水晶，其它武器连子弹都不给了。。。所以游戏基本上前期靠霰弹枪，中期靠榴弹枪，后期靠能量枪。 游戏的剧情比较好理解，通过游戏中提供大量CG，文本和对话能了解个七七八八。不过对话部分往往令人感到困惑，男女主角的性格在不同阶段似乎有不同的表现，而且有时候前言不搭后语，多次发生逻辑不通的对话，甚至语气语调和说话内容都有不相符合的现象发生。 游戏还有一些细节问题比如物品无法拾取，穿模，影子显示不正常等。不过游戏的场景设计还真是有一定水准的，仅仅通过贴图场景就充分营造了游戏中各个流程的氛围。不同场景的路面还提供了不同的走路音效，所以说这个游戏的氛围营造是用心了的。 整体来说游戏的质量仅仅达到及格，但也推荐给一小部分爱好克苏鲁文化和生存恐怖的玩家。