Alone in the Dark review: not quite Resident Evil

I have essentially no attachment to the original Alone in the Dark, beyond being vaguely aware of its existence through gaming magazines in my youth, so I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this remake. I knew it was a survival horror game with a big focus on puzzles, but beyond that, I was completely, erm, in the dark. What I found was a game that seemed torn between two identities, entirely unsure of what it wanted to be. The premise of Alone in the Dark is, apparently, very similar to its original iteration. Two people, a young woman named Emily and private detective Edward Carnby, set off to investigate an apparently haunted mansion, and you, as the player, have to pick one to play as while you investigate, escape, and survive the expedition. The remake does change things up a bit, but the gist of it is that you’re looking for the woman’s uncle, who’s apparently gone mad in his old age and is now missing. There are a lot of things I like about this as a story setup. It’s very easy to get on board with