Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare is fourth installment in this series of classic, horror-themed, action adventure games. Set in the 1920s, Carnby's best friend, Charles Fiske has been found dead off a mysterious island off the coast of Maine, Shadow Island. Carnby's investigation quickly leads him to Fred Johnson who informs him of Fiske's search for the three ancient tablets which, when placed in a specific location, will unlock an incredible and dangerous power. Johnson pleads with Carnby to pick up where Fiske left off and reopen the investigation in order to recover the tablets. Carnby accepts the mission to find and destroy the murderer of Fiske and avenge his death.
The game is in true traditional style, similar to Resident Evil the screens are static with the action on a per screen basis where you can run about looking and picking up items you will need. Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare features over a 100 locations including a haunted house. You can choose between playing Carnby himself, or his assistant, a woman named Aline (hehe she is pretty stupid chick, so no wonder she doesn't even start out with a weapon :P, but I really liked her voice and dialogs) Each character has a separate path through the game adding replayability to the game. But I don't think you will try to play it more than two times. The gameplay mixes exploration, interaction with NPCs, some puzzle-solving and certainly combat (however with the auto-aim trick from Resident Evil). The game graphics are really good - that mean better than Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. There is no doubt that artwork very well recreates a spook house atmosphere in nearly every area. The corners are really pretty shadowy and pitch-black rooms that can be illuminated solely by your flashlight. The lighting effects from the flashlight deserve a mention as they are true real-time and that doesn't happen in a lot of games. Only the monsters could be done better, they are not very scary - consisting mostly of long-legged creatures in the shape of large crustaceans, which would have been more effective had they come in waves. Although they aren't very scary, they will scare you anyway, because you will never know, when some monster will try to kill you. The intro movies are short and to the point and set the scene perfectly depending on which person you choose. In-game sounds are creepy and often quite surprising. Also the music is cool, I really enjoyed the bizarre industrial beats! :)
Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare is very good playable, that mean the game isn't the most difficult game around. There are no difficulty levels to choose from. As you play you will understand that the difficulty is "unbalanced". The controls are quite fine, but it's more comfortable to play the game with game pad instead regular keyboard and mouse. Alone In The Dark: The New Nightmare is definitely well done survival horror game, if you like "classic" survival horrors, buy it. However if you are really into scary games, you will probably rather spend your time with Clive Barker`s Undying. Anyway, try this playable demo (83MB),mirror1, mirror2 and you will see.