Saying "before spoony went off the deep end" is weirdly mean-spirited. He didn't actually do anything that warrents hate nor the high amount of harassment he received. Real talk: he retired, it's not that complicated.
Sometimes it feels like the only reason AitD is still alive as a franchise is because of how many lists and videos over the years have mentioned that it inspired the first Resident Evil.
Which doesn't mean that there's no space for a good AitD Game. The setting can be unsettling, just look at RE7. Developers either don't get it right or don't have the finances needed.
The best part of Alone in the Dark 2008 comes from the "episodic" nature of it, after the reveal that you're playing as the same Edward Carnby from the original Alone in the Dark. The camera pans up as Carnby delivers a dramatic line. The line? "I'm... Over a hundred years old." Then, title card cliffhanger. And then you start the next chapter.
@DRlSE sorry but this is the internet, loose up a little and have some fun, don't be a stiff Boomer that doesn't know any joy or in the meaning of encouraging someone, complimenting them 🙃👌
One thing I just love about the 2024 game is how the health item ia a flask of booze, and everyone in the cutscenes is always drinking and smoking. It amuses me to no end watching Edward or Emily hitting a flask in the midst of fighting monsters.
1:06:42 that's actually not fault of the game but of some weird "audio enhancements" that Windows 11 does that can be disabled in the settings, doing that fixes the voices and makes them hearable
Re Stuart Copeland composing the end track for The New Nightmare: He's also the composer for the original Spyro the Dragon. He was so involved that Insomniac would give him beta copies so he could compose as he played the game!
Alone in the Dark 2008 reminds me a bit of the first Soul Reaver in the way you need to exploit enemies vulnerabilities, more games could have that instead of bullet sponges. Even the foul mouthed protagonist is ahead of it's time, 10 years later and all RE characters now swear like a sailor. The combat reminds me of an indie rpg exanima, which is physics based. This game is like playing Half Life 2, but without the gravity gun.
Exanima... that in turn reminds me a bit of the Zeno Clash games. First-person beat-em-ups in a bizarre primitive, colorful monster world with ragdoll physics. Stuff like ramming your knee in a dazed primordial Hell Pig person three times before uppercutting them into someone else and all that. Had a cool prequel in 2023 called Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. Can warmly recommend that one.
36:44 dude ive been watching so many Better Call Saul clips recently, specifically all the Lalo stuff. seeing this was a real mind f lol. awesome vid never stop king
28:51 Metal Gear 1987 100% had "forced stealth" sections. I put it in quotes because it's not an instant failure if you don't, technically using a TAS and frame perfect movement you can play the whole game loud, but there are spots intentionally made basically impossible with the amount of enemies on screen and how fast they rush you, so as a normal person playing you MUST use stealth
@Red-nl4lk I mean fair enough, I was just making the point that 10 years before Ocarina of Time forced stealth was a thing. There are probably other earlier examples in other genres as well
1:18:51 even without much of the context of this scene, it is quite funny. Im not even sure what it is. Its just absurd in the way is shot and voice acted. Happy to see you enjoyed yourself a lot making this video
Thank you for a great retrospect on a series that was a large part of my life. I remember being a child in the early 90s and too scared to play Alone 1. I remember being super excited for Alone 2008 when I had grown up.
Boulder punch speaking of the inventory system i think someone online said that the system is weight based not slot based! So if you’re carrying a lot of items up to 20 it means you’re carrying a lot of light items hope this helps!
@ one example i can think of the system being weight based is one item you pick up called a very heavy statuette which is used against the knight at the front door!
Still upset the most recent remake didn't sell too well and got the developers canned. It had a great foundation and I absolutely would have loved to see them do a remake of 2 and 3 in the same style.
It's a pity many gamers seem to consider AitD 2024 merely as a knock-off of modern Resident Evil games with poorly done combat when it's actually more of a classic adventure game with some obligatory action elements attached to it. Despite the games' obvious shortcomings, the characters and storylines are so much better written and believable than in most AAA games these days.
Seeing how this modern videogame industry is, I bet the team would've been canned anyway and plans for sequels cancelled even if the game sold gangbusters.
@SolidSnake240 You're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree. The game has its strengths and weaknesses, and whether you like it or not strongly depends on individual preferences.
I will always have a soft spot for Alone in the Dark 2008. It was so ambitious! It had so many little mechanics and tried so hard to make them all work in harmony. In the end, it didn't quite pull it off, but the potential is there. In the end, its legacy is a cool inventory screen that more games should do, as well as these two quotes: "I don't have your stone, and fuck you anyway!" and "I'm the Lightbringer! I'm the fucking universe!" What I wouldn't give for a well-renown and competent studio to remake that game properly.
How tf does this not have more views? I’ve seen multiple people in real life mention this channel and that never happens unless the channel has millions of followers
Fun fact about Alone 3, there's another version with different voice acting for some parts like Carnby in the intro, or "The rifle man" note. The credits song is also better in that version as you can actually hear what is being sung.
god, i just kinda love David Harbour? like, i just like his voice and tone. Most of his roles are basically Jim from ST, but I like it. I play the new game just to play as his character. there is something about his performance. ... i like it
I've played some "Alone In the Dark", but I can't help but sing "Alone In the Dark" by Orden Ogan. Has nothing to do with the genre of game, but I can't help it. "I am alone in the dark Still, my heart is beating somehow We're light years apart We had our choice We made it alone in the dark So, we drew the curtains 'Cause now we know for certain There'll be no day after the night And, you'll see that there is Nothing deep in the abyss So, we gave up, and stopped to fight"
the "Lovecraft in the Bayou" setting of 2024 reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (both the original and last year's remake), which is worth a shot if you're into adventure games
Great wrap up. The franchise has been part of my entire "gaming life" but its been one I've been interested in but almost morbidly curious. Feels like they can never get it quite right, just like with most Lovecraftian games (though most of AitD ain't that).
The early Alone games have so much campy charm, I’m sad they added so much edge thinking that would make them modern. Aesthetically wise I’m actually reminded of Nocturne when looking at the earlier entries, I think that game has all the edge without losing the cool supernatural plots, I wish we had more stuff like that.
(seems like my initial comment didn't get through, my apologies if you get this one repeated) Mainly clicked on this video to see if Eden Games would be mentioned. They do have a predecessor in terms of making "not many games like it" - a PS2-exclusive game called Kya: Dark Lineage. It is generally described as a 3D platformer with an art direction like Rayman 2 or 3. But it has a lot under the hood beyond jumping, climbiing and running. There's light stealth and puzzles, board sliding, skydiving, wind gliding, animal riding and a combat system like a solid mini-Tekken. At least, i've seen people describe it as such. Kya started out as a racing game named Riders, about different tribes/cultures in a broken world of floating islands sending out champions who ride winged creatures of myth as the "vehicles". Wind currents would have played a big part. Eden Games wanted to work more towards a cartoony direction and general action/adventure games. Riders would be a transitionary project before they decided to take the step in full. From there, they began on something with fairy tales as a jumping-off point. Stories about a witch named Karaboss, with magic and werewolves and what-have-you. The wind elements returned in the final project that would become Kya: Dark Lineage, in aforementioned wind gliding and skydiving. You can jump onto a halfpipe course, a wind tunnel, a deep pit or on an animal's back quickly and you're good to go. Only one or two different inputs to keep in mind: - Board sliding has you move left and right, pull backwards to slow down, push forward to accelerate, and press X to jump - Wind gliding has you press X to move downwards, and you can stabilize by pumping the button. You can move around just fine too. - Skydiving is similar. By pressing X Kya narrows her body to fall down quicker - Likewise for the rideable animal, just move around and press X to jump. There's an option too where you can stand on its back while it's running by holding a shoulder button as you push forward. (And there's two different varieties, one that jumps well and one that runs well) Quite a few different things, but the controls always stay easy to get the hang of. You can end up from one situation in the next quite smoothly. The combat is like a pretty soid 3D platformer. Enemies of different types and subtypes will defend more against particular attacks, "learning" at different speeds. So you have to find ways around their defenses. Won't do to just keep punching. Likewise, it won't do to keep on blocking. Grabs are a hard counter to blocking, and enemies will perform grabs of their own if you turtle up all the time Higher types/subtypes of enemies will have access to some more moves, some of which are unblockable, or their moveset will be different if they're wielding a weapon or not. Kya was almost like Ape Escape in that the enemies are the collectables. Knock out a Wolfun, exorcise them, and the more tresholds of rescued Nativs you reach, the more shops are built which offer more combat options. A bracelet for expanded kick combos, bracelet for grab moves, bracelet for expanded mobility, and some more. There's even moves to jump over an enemy, or stay on their shoulders to make them ram into something. Or grab their tail to use them as a meat shield/kick them into something/swing them around like a flail. The lategame enemies, the Kronos, have short-range teleportation and chopped off their own tails, eliminating the Jumpover and Back Grab options, forcing you to more mechanically engage with them. Dodge to their sides as they attack forward, hit them in their windup, change up your combos all the time. It's kind of like Ratchet and Clank in a way too. The shops sell tools that expand your arsenal in notable ways. As melee moves instead of guns. I'm sharing this to spread the word on Kya -because I love it a lot- and to illustrate that there is precedence for Eden Games making a game that does quite a number of different things at once. But in a better game, which I would recommend looking into. Hope this was interesting!
RIP Spoony's sanity. I was on his forums back in the day and actually made friends there, friends that I still talk to to this day. The golden age of Spoony was a good time to be alive.
dude retired and yet still gets obsessive hate, what? almost a decade later? He didn't actually do anything that warrents hate nor the weird high amount of harassment he received.
@@AL-lh2htit's not hate to remark (correctly) that Spoony got crazier as time went on. And while he never did anything exceptionally terrible, to my knowledge, he did rip a lot of his fans off.
@@patrickbateman312 He suffered from mostly untreated bipolar disorder. He didn’t get crazier, he has an illness and did not receive the help he needed.
The tree in the 2024 game being a dark young is so brilliant and I can’t believe I didn’t realize that’s what it would be after seeing the tree. I run games of Call of cthulhu and if I described a tree like that, all my players would immediately know what it was and stay far away from it.
I played both versions of Alone in the Dark 2008 and the PS3 version Inferno, which is the best version of the bunch. King of the jank those games are, and FU anyway.
@@BoulderPunch Speaking of trainwreck, the PS3 features an boss that you fight in a train, that is quite awesome. Maybe you could just load the chapter and see for yourself, they also made driving less annoying which is a plus.
I was very disappointed by this retrospective. Boulder bunch claims that New Nightmare has problems but doesn’t substantiate this at all beyond his claim of “regurgitation puzzles” which I wholeheartedly disagree with. This is pretty shoddy scripting and a worse argument. There’s a lot the New Nightmare pushed forward in terms of Survival Horror gameplay and rendering technology. The dual protagonists with complementing elements, the light and shadow use in combat, the audio scares as a primary aspect of the horror, the use of the VMU in the Dreamcast version. I’m pretty disappointed he didn’t take the time to do any research beyond cliff notes
Looking forward to watching this when i get time, i'm just dropping in to say my friend and i, despite having not played any of the games in the franchise, both regularly tell each other that "i don't have your stone and f*** you anyway". Also they should remaster The New Nightmare.
I think the inventory system in the first game is weight based. Hence why sometimes you get 19 and others 21. Each item has a certain weight and each character has a max carry. What do things weight and how much can each character carry? Good question.
Wait a second, that doppelganger puzzle from AitD3 at 38:34 is exactly the same as the one from the original Prince of Persia. Right down to you merging together with your double.
Alone in the Dark's legacy reminds me a lot of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the first TCM is generally considered the first slasher flick, the first extreme/modern horror film, but almost all of its sequels have been shitty reboots.
The dark man is an avatar of another old one. It's the very Lovecraft idea of one evil entity obstructing another. Boulder mention it feels like him and the black goat are getting in each other's way and that is exactly what they are doing. It is an element of the story most miss.
I was six or seven when Alone in the Dark released and my parents thought it was perfectly fine for me to play because it’s just like Mario, obviously.
I had A New Nightmare. I didn't play it for reasons I can't remember. I think I bought it used and it was too scratched up to get past a certain point in the beginning. I also remember my friend trying to trade me his 3do, all of his games, weights and a fish tank for my ps1. Alone in the Dark was the game he showed me to try to sell me on it. I got Resident Evil at home vibes from it. Seemed more like a game of memory/trial and error than an actual game. Still remember him try to help me get out of the attic and convince me it was good.
The Wii version of 2008’s Alone in the Dark looks pretty cool! I love it when devs create an entirely different version for lesser consoles. I.e. SplinterCell double agent.
From what i understood of the story in the 2024 AITD game, the Dark Pharoah is real. Theres a note that explains to stop an evil you have to use another evil to "POISON" it or something. Jeremy plan to sacrifice himself in return of the Pharoah stopping the tree enitiy would of worked if the contract wasn't broken.
2008 alone in the dark looks like its begging to be a VR game. All those mechanics would be very cool with motion controls but I can't imagine them being fluid with standard game pads.
I actually genuinely enjoyed the 2024 remake. I loved the more noir tone of the game, just how weird everything was, the combat was kind of meh sure but I appreciated the melee combat being being an option. I also think if there was any actor that would do Edward Carnby justice it would be David Harbor, his voice and cadence while speaking feels like a really good match for the OG. It sucks that the studio got shut down....Story of the series, but unfortunately its story of the gaming industry nowadays too. We'll miss you Dead Space 2 remake...
If theres one alone in the dark game I want to play the most it’s the first one because of its similarities to resident evil and it has more horror in it!
Strange that how Alone In The Dark has influenced Shinji Mikami to make Resident Evil, but because of that game's success. Alone In The Dark couldn't compete Capcom's survival horror game. Not even the 2024 Alone In The Dark Reboot game make a proper comeback, and they themselves were trying to copy Resident Evil 4's gameplay with its 2008's Alone In The Dark. Don't know what future will hold for this forgotten franchise, but I think that it'll stay in the dark forever.
AITD2024 is genuinely a banger and imo superior to Silent Hill 2 remake in pretty much every way, including its combat (although Silent Hill and other nerd cred approved survival horror games usually get the "it's supposed to be bad actually" pass for their bad combat, weirdly enough). I think a lot of people bounce off of its narrative because we've all been conditioned not to give a shit about documents we find while playing these games, but unfortunately AITD2024 made the decision to tell much of its story through these, and if you haven't been following along reading them, the plot developments in the third act can feel like they come absolutely out of nowhere. If AITD2024's studio wasn't shuttered within days of its release I would've really liked to see a remake of or sequel to Eternal Darkness made by them. I also think that it came out adjacent to a lot of indie survival horror games that are simply better, so it's kind of easy to overlook. It is really weird to see others praising SH2make, which is sort of just a bad combat gauntlet most of the time, but dismissing AITD2024, which has all of the same problems. Sort of like how only people really into the genre seem to be talking about Signalis, Crow Country and Lost in Vivo, despite those games being genuinely amazing.
The Alone In The Dark Series is one of the most underrated games that pioneered the survival horror genre of video games, without it Resident Evil wouldn’t even be a thing… Its funny that fans of resident evil are ridiculing Alone In The Dark for being a copycat or a RE clone, well in fact is the other way around… People might not be amaze with the 2024 remake/reboot of Alone in the Dark, I however enjoy every moment of it. I sincerely believe that it’s a better and a much superior game than Alan Wake 2 since it’s not WOKE/Sweet Baby Inc. In addition to that, a better game technically compared to Conscript since you can actually rebind the Arrow Keys for movement and other rebind options are available. Conscript, for a game that has accessibility support for the disable somehow lacks a decent keyboard rebind functionality. How odd…. In other words, The Alone In The Dark is still one of the best survival horror game out there is! Many thanks for uploading videos like this! It ensures the legacy of The Alone In The Dark in gaming history lives on! Its one of your best videos ever on the channel!
Personally I loved the remake. I'm actually playing through the ps2 version right now. Not because it's good my dear friends, but because of the jank. The ps2 version is also the most buggy and therefore hilarious.
Man, reboot is the game I remember fondly as great and immersive and impressive but I really really don’t want to replay it for some subconscious reason. I remember dialogues being hilariously on point tho, Carnby reacts the way human being should react.
The 2008 game was really ambitious and ahead of its time. It's too bad the result feels like an unfinished mess lacking polish and coherent vision. The episodic storytelling and real-time crafting became an industry standard a few years later. The trench coat inventory, physics-based combat and fire physics are mechanics I'd love to see used in other games. I wonder what the game would've looked like had it stayed in the oven for another year, but chances are we'd just end up with more disjointed mechanics.
I don't know if this really counts as physics-based combat in the way you mean, but the PS2 game Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy has fun opportunities for messing around with chucking folks about using telekinesis. Which, fortunately, is one of the first powers you learn.
Harbour sounds so much like Harrison Ford, is crazy. He has the look and the voice down for the detective persona. Shame he kinda shit talked the game before release
Saying "before spoony went off the deep end" is weirdly mean-spirited. He didn't actually do anything that warrents hate nor the high amount of harassment he received. Real talk: he retired, it's not that complicated.
Have you ever played the X Files game that is a big Resi clone? Would love to see your thoughts on the X Files games as I remember them being a bit strange! Love your videos.
As much as I detest Uwe Boll, I feel that I have to admit that, wretched as it is, I can't bring myself to hate the Alone in the Dark movie. Don't get me wrong, it is abysmal, with the actors who aren't (understandably) phoning it in being terribly miscast, to say nothing of the script, such as it is. It has as much to do with the games as it does with the Care Bears. But it did one thing for tiny little me when I first saw it. The ending credits featured the song "Wish I had an Angel" by Finnish symphonic rock band Nightwish, and that got me hooked. That one song is leagues beyond anything Boll has ever done, and it eventually led me to the wild, wacky world of powermetal, which more than made up for that one sucky movie.
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• GDC talk on Alone in the Dark: ua-cam.com/video/c2lgEyNaop4/v-deo.html&pp=ygUVZ2RjIGFsb25lIGluIHRoZSBkYXJr
Saying "before spoony went off the deep end" is weirdly mean-spirited. He didn't actually do anything that warrents hate nor the high amount of harassment he received. Real talk: he retired, it's not that complicated.
@@AL-lh2ht what are you talking about?
Sometimes it feels like the only reason AitD is still alive as a franchise is because of how many lists and videos over the years have mentioned that it inspired the first Resident Evil.
I think it's all about his status of being a pioneer of the genre and most developers known his existence.
Which doesn't mean that there's no space for a good AitD Game. The setting can be unsettling, just look at RE7. Developers either don't get it right or don't have the finances needed.
The best part of Alone in the Dark 2008 comes from the "episodic" nature of it, after the reveal that you're playing as the same Edward Carnby from the original Alone in the Dark.
The camera pans up as Carnby delivers a dramatic line. The line?
"I'm...
Over a hundred years old."
Then, title card cliffhanger. And then you start the next chapter.
They resulted in plenty of hilarious moments.
08:04 - Emily, facing the unknown, shouts; "I don't know you!"
That's my purse!
That one special channel that stays Cooking.
Not a cooking channel
@DRlSE I think you missed the point of what I meant bud but alright.
@@danteshollowedgroundsBoulder Punch cooking mama review incoming
@@danteshollowedgrounds no I understand what you meant it’s like lame using kids slang
@DRlSE sorry but this is the internet, loose up a little and have some fun, don't be a stiff Boomer that doesn't know any joy or in the meaning of encouraging someone, complimenting them 🙃👌
When you compare the graphics of other releases in 1992, the original Alone in the Dark looks incredible
Really was ahead of its time.
One thing I just love about the 2024 game is how the health item ia a flask of booze, and everyone in the cutscenes is always drinking and smoking. It amuses me to no end watching Edward or Emily hitting a flask in the midst of fighting monsters.
I mean, laudanum is a bit of a staple as a mental health item in many cosmic horror games.
And that's alcohol and opium mixed together.
So we want a hedgemaze with monsters. - A hedgemaze with mobsters? You got it!
1:06:42 that's actually not fault of the game but of some weird "audio enhancements" that Windows 11 does that can be disabled in the settings, doing that fixes the voices and makes them hearable
Huh...never came across that when tweaking it for PC. Good to know!
Re Stuart Copeland composing the end track for The New Nightmare: He's also the composer for the original Spyro the Dragon. He was so involved that Insomniac would give him beta copies so he could compose as he played the game!
Great drummer.
Alone in the Dark 2008 reminds me a bit of the first Soul Reaver in the way you need to exploit enemies vulnerabilities, more games could have that instead of bullet sponges. Even the foul mouthed protagonist is ahead of it's time, 10 years later and all RE characters now swear like a sailor. The combat reminds me of an indie rpg exanima, which is physics based. This game is like playing Half Life 2, but without the gravity gun.
Exanima... that in turn reminds me a bit of the Zeno Clash games. First-person beat-em-ups in a bizarre primitive, colorful monster world with ragdoll physics. Stuff like ramming your knee in a dazed primordial Hell Pig person three times before uppercutting them into someone else and all that.
Had a cool prequel in 2023 called Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. Can warmly recommend that one.
19:37 holy crap lois
Nice catch.
Hi, Peter.
36:44 dude ive been watching so many Better Call Saul clips recently, specifically all the Lalo stuff. seeing this was a real mind f lol.
awesome vid never stop king
1:05:21 I can only think of Scp containment breach as a game where blinking is a mechanic
First one I thought of.
Nice catch.
28:51 Metal Gear 1987 100% had "forced stealth" sections. I put it in quotes because it's not an instant failure if you don't, technically using a TAS and frame perfect movement you can play the whole game loud, but there are spots intentionally made basically impossible with the amount of enemies on screen and how fast they rush you, so as a normal person playing you MUST use stealth
Metal gear is a stealth game. Of course you should be using stealth.
@Red-nl4lk I mean fair enough, I was just making the point that 10 years before Ocarina of Time forced stealth was a thing. There are probably other earlier examples in other genres as well
1:18:51 even without much of the context of this scene, it is quite funny. Im not even sure what it is. Its just absurd in the way is shot and voice acted. Happy to see you enjoyed yourself a lot making this video
This whole franchise has so much potential. As the OG survival horror that everyone copies it irks my soul that it does so poorly.
8:57 Hey Lois, remember the time I was a zombie in Alone in the Dark (1992)?
Lmao, I thought the same thing 🤣
Amazing work as always. Not only a great retrospective, but so elegantly presented! Bravo!
Thanks!
Brilliant video, thank you for all the hard work.
I remember playing the original on my 486 PC and being amazed. Good times 🙂
I would've loved to have played this on OG hardware.
Thank you for a great retrospect on a series that was a large part of my life. I remember being a child in the early 90s and too scared to play Alone 1. I remember being super excited for Alone 2008 when I had grown up.
Boulder punch speaking of the inventory system i think someone online said that the system is weight based not slot based! So if you’re carrying a lot of items up to 20 it means you’re carrying a lot of light items hope this helps!
I saw that as well, but it was never 100% clear to me.
@ one example i can think of the system being weight based is one item you pick up called a very heavy statuette which is used against the knight at the front door!
Boulder Punch, Dungeon Chill, Josh Strife Plays, and Grimbeard, the holy quartet of interesting content to fall asleep to
Alone in The Dark is one of the most important, and at the same time, one of the goofiest franchises ever made.
I love it and I hate it.
I like the first one. The othrs were unneccessary.
Great way of describing it.
Still upset the most recent remake didn't sell too well and got the developers canned.
It had a great foundation and I absolutely would have loved to see them do a remake of 2 and 3 in the same style.
Story of the franchise.
It's a pity many gamers seem to consider AitD 2024 merely as a knock-off of modern Resident Evil games with poorly done combat when it's actually more of a classic adventure game with some obligatory action elements attached to it.
Despite the games' obvious shortcomings, the characters and storylines are so much better written and believable than in most AAA games these days.
Seeing how this modern videogame industry is, I bet the team would've been canned anyway and plans for sequels cancelled even if the game sold gangbusters.
@@maltehenryk1409 the game just isn't that good.
@SolidSnake240 You're entitled to your opinion, but I disagree.
The game has its strengths and weaknesses, and whether you like it or not strongly depends on individual preferences.
Alone in the Dark 2 music would fit well in Donkey Kong 2 and it’s own pirate theme.
DK2 is one of the best soundtracks around.
I will always have a soft spot for Alone in the Dark 2008. It was so ambitious! It had so many little mechanics and tried so hard to make them all work in harmony. In the end, it didn't quite pull it off, but the potential is there. In the end, its legacy is a cool inventory screen that more games should do, as well as these two quotes: "I don't have your stone, and fuck you anyway!" and "I'm the Lightbringer! I'm the fucking universe!" What I wouldn't give for a well-renown and competent studio to remake that game properly.
Ambition is always commendable, whether its hit or miss. I do think they were a little too proud of their physics engine though.
Yippie! I’m very thankful!!!
Fortnite und coca-cola, yippie!
18:54 That clown has a surprisingly expressive 3D face, what the hell
Those are the exact words I speak out loud every time I look at myself in the mirror
How tf does this not have more views?
I’ve seen multiple people in real life mention this channel and that never happens unless the channel has millions of followers
Fun fact about Alone 3, there's another version with different voice acting for some parts like Carnby in the intro, or "The rifle man" note. The credits song is also better in that version as you can actually hear what is being sung.
1:21:49 There's only 1 Light Bringer.
THERE HE IS
@@BoulderPunch Get him out of here, get him the hell out of here!
god, i just kinda love David Harbour? like, i just like his voice and tone. Most of his roles are basically Jim from ST, but I like it.
I play the new game just to play as his character.
there is something about his performance. ... i like it
He makes for a great everyman.
I'll always have fond memories of watching my father playing the first 3 games on a crappy computer, good times.
I've played some "Alone In the Dark", but I can't help but sing "Alone In the Dark" by Orden Ogan. Has nothing to do with the genre of game, but I can't help it.
"I am alone in the dark
Still, my heart is beating somehow
We're light years apart
We had our choice
We made it alone in the dark
So, we drew the curtains
'Cause now we know for certain
There'll be no day after the night
And, you'll see that there is
Nothing deep in the abyss
So, we gave up, and stopped to fight"
NGL I was kinda in love with the Playstation version of Alone in the Dark 2 as a teenager.
the "Lovecraft in the Bayou" setting of 2024 reminds me a lot of Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (both the original and last year's remake), which is worth a shot if you're into adventure games
a thanksgiving treat! thanks boulder punch!
Great wrap up. The franchise has been part of my entire "gaming life" but its been one I've been interested in but almost morbidly curious. Feels like they can never get it quite right, just like with most Lovecraftian games (though most of AitD ain't that).
The early Alone games have so much campy charm, I’m sad they added so much edge thinking that would make them modern. Aesthetically wise I’m actually reminded of Nocturne when looking at the earlier entries, I think that game has all the edge without losing the cool supernatural plots, I wish we had more stuff like that.
(seems like my initial comment didn't get through, my apologies if you get this one repeated)
Mainly clicked on this video to see if Eden Games would be mentioned. They do have a predecessor in terms of making "not many games like it" - a PS2-exclusive game called Kya: Dark Lineage.
It is generally described as a 3D platformer with an art direction like Rayman 2 or 3. But it has a lot under the hood beyond jumping, climbiing and running. There's light stealth and puzzles, board sliding, skydiving, wind gliding, animal riding and a combat system like a solid mini-Tekken. At least, i've seen people describe it as such.
Kya started out as a racing game named Riders, about different tribes/cultures in a broken world of floating islands sending out champions who ride winged creatures of myth as the "vehicles". Wind currents would have played a big part.
Eden Games wanted to work more towards a cartoony direction and general action/adventure games. Riders would be a transitionary project before they decided to take the step in full.
From there, they began on something with fairy tales as a jumping-off point. Stories about a witch named Karaboss, with magic and werewolves and what-have-you.
The wind elements returned in the final project that would become Kya: Dark Lineage, in aforementioned wind gliding and skydiving. You can jump onto a halfpipe course, a wind tunnel, a deep pit or on an animal's back quickly and you're good to go. Only one or two different inputs to keep in mind:
- Board sliding has you move left and right, pull backwards to slow down, push forward to accelerate, and press X to jump
- Wind gliding has you press X to move downwards, and you can stabilize by pumping the button. You can move around just fine too.
- Skydiving is similar. By pressing X Kya narrows her body to fall down quicker
- Likewise for the rideable animal, just move around and press X to jump. There's an option too where you can stand on its back while it's running by holding a shoulder button as you push forward.
(And there's two different varieties, one that jumps well and one that runs well)
Quite a few different things, but the controls always stay easy to get the hang of. You can end up from one situation in the next quite smoothly.
The combat is like a pretty soid 3D platformer. Enemies of different types and subtypes will defend more against particular attacks, "learning" at different speeds. So you have to find ways around their defenses. Won't do to just keep punching.
Likewise, it won't do to keep on blocking. Grabs are a hard counter to blocking, and enemies will perform grabs of their own if you turtle up all the time
Higher types/subtypes of enemies will have access to some more moves, some of which are unblockable, or their moveset will be different if they're wielding a weapon or not.
Kya was almost like Ape Escape in that the enemies are the collectables. Knock out a Wolfun, exorcise them, and the more tresholds of rescued Nativs you reach, the more shops are built which offer more combat options. A bracelet for expanded kick combos, bracelet for grab moves, bracelet for expanded mobility, and some more.
There's even moves to jump over an enemy, or stay on their shoulders to make them ram into something. Or grab their tail to use them as a meat shield/kick them into something/swing them around like a flail.
The lategame enemies, the Kronos, have short-range teleportation and chopped off their own tails, eliminating the Jumpover and Back Grab options, forcing you to more mechanically engage with them. Dodge to their sides as they attack forward, hit them in their windup, change up your combos all the time.
It's kind of like Ratchet and Clank in a way too. The shops sell tools that expand your arsenal in notable ways. As melee moves instead of guns.
I'm sharing this to spread the word on Kya -because I love it a lot- and to illustrate that there is precedence for Eden Games making a game that does quite a number of different things at once. But in a better game, which I would recommend looking into.
Hope this was interesting!
Thanks for sharing!
I did look into the game a bit while working on the video, although nothing about it ended up in the script.
holy crap the lipgloss on Edward in the 2008 game >_>
RIP Spoony's sanity. I was on his forums back in the day and actually made friends there, friends that I still talk to to this day. The golden age of Spoony was a good time to be alive.
dude retired and yet still gets obsessive hate, what? almost a decade later? He didn't actually do anything that warrents hate nor the weird high amount of harassment he received.
@@AL-lh2ht agreed, never understood the years long hate. love the vids to this day
@@AL-lh2htit's not hate to remark (correctly) that Spoony got crazier as time went on. And while he never did anything exceptionally terrible, to my knowledge, he did rip a lot of his fans off.
@@patrickbateman312 He suffered from mostly untreated bipolar disorder. He didn’t get crazier, he has an illness and did not receive the help he needed.
The tree in the 2024 game being a dark young is so brilliant and I can’t believe I didn’t realize that’s what it would be after seeing the tree. I run games of Call of cthulhu and if I described a tree like that, all my players would immediately know what it was and stay far away from it.
"I can't think of another game where you have a dedicated blink button"
SCP Containment Breach says hi.
I played both versions of Alone in the Dark 2008 and the PS3 version Inferno, which is the best version of the bunch. King of the jank those games are, and FU anyway.
I did have it on an emulator, but had some technical issues. PC version was OK for the most part.
@@BoulderPunch Speaking of trainwreck, the PS3 features an boss that you fight in a train, that is quite awesome. Maybe you could just load the chapter and see for yourself, they also made driving less annoying which is a plus.
seeing this dude repeatedly line up at the edge of a gap before jumping even though he's overshooting the jump was painful lol
Thanksgiving Surprise! Alone...in Central Park!!
I was very disappointed by this retrospective. Boulder bunch claims that New Nightmare has problems but doesn’t substantiate this at all beyond his claim of “regurgitation puzzles” which I wholeheartedly disagree with. This is pretty shoddy scripting and a worse argument. There’s a lot the New Nightmare pushed forward in terms of Survival Horror gameplay and rendering technology. The dual protagonists with complementing elements, the light and shadow use in combat, the audio scares as a primary aspect of the horror, the use of the VMU in the Dreamcast version. I’m pretty disappointed he didn’t take the time to do any research beyond cliff notes
Looking forward to watching this when i get time, i'm just dropping in to say my friend and i, despite having not played any of the games in the franchise, both regularly tell each other that "i don't have your stone and f*** you anyway".
Also they should remaster The New Nightmare.
I think the inventory system in the first game is weight based. Hence why sometimes you get 19 and others 21. Each item has a certain weight and each character has a max carry. What do things weight and how much can each character carry? Good question.
Wait a second, that doppelganger puzzle from AitD3 at 38:34 is exactly the same as the one from the original Prince of Persia. Right down to you merging together with your double.
I must be getting all my YT subscriptions mixed. I could have sworn you did an Alone in the Dark retrospective already. No matter, I watch anyway.
I did stream Alone 2008.
Alone in the Dark's legacy reminds me a lot of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the first TCM is generally considered the first slasher flick, the first extreme/modern horror film, but almost all of its sequels have been shitty reboots.
I thought that the dark man was not real and was just part of jeremy's mental psychosis.
The dark man is an avatar of another old one. It's the very Lovecraft idea of one evil entity obstructing another.
Boulder mention it feels like him and the black goat are getting in each other's way and that is exactly what they are doing. It is an element of the story most miss.
@Quandry1 thank you for this insight. I will admit the game was hard to follow at times.
@@johnsummers2943 the game doesn't entirely clear it up but that is when knowledge of the mythos helps.
I've desperately wanted a game to bring back the hobo jacket invatory and combination and set it in a game like condemed. Such a neat idea
The Luis jump scare got me good
Great video, thanks man
I watched the alone in the dark movie in the theater when it came out. Huge mistake. I'm not epileptic but the museum scene was.....a lot.
I was six or seven when Alone in the Dark released and my parents thought it was perfectly fine for me to play because it’s just like Mario, obviously.
Amazing video!
I had A New Nightmare. I didn't play it for reasons I can't remember. I think I bought it used and it was too scratched up to get past a certain point in the beginning.
I also remember my friend trying to trade me his 3do, all of his games, weights and a fish tank for my ps1. Alone in the Dark was the game he showed me to try to sell me on it. I got Resident Evil at home vibes from it. Seemed more like a game of memory/trial and error than an actual game. Still remember him try to help me get out of the attic and convince me it was good.
The Wii version of 2008’s Alone in the Dark looks pretty cool! I love it when devs create an entirely different version for lesser consoles. I.e. SplinterCell double agent.
I played the OG Xbox Double Agent back in the day. Great game.
I can still remember when you first got on UA-cam and didn’t add alone in the dark to Resident evil influences. Lol man how time flys.
Does anyone know what game that is at 6:05?
Alisa!
From what i understood of the story in the 2024 AITD game, the Dark Pharoah is real. Theres a note that explains to stop an evil you have to use another evil to "POISON" it or something. Jeremy plan to sacrifice himself in return of the Pharoah stopping the tree enitiy would of worked if the contract wasn't broken.
Thank you for a great video
2008 alone in the dark looks like its begging to be a VR game. All those mechanics would be very cool with motion controls but I can't imagine them being fluid with standard game pads.
I actually genuinely enjoyed the 2024 remake. I loved the more noir tone of the game, just how weird everything was, the combat was kind of meh sure but I appreciated the melee combat being being an option. I also think if there was any actor that would do Edward Carnby justice it would be David Harbor, his voice and cadence while speaking feels like a really good match for the OG. It sucks that the studio got shut down....Story of the series, but unfortunately its story of the gaming industry nowadays too.
We'll miss you Dead Space 2 remake...
If theres one alone in the dark game I want to play the most it’s the first one because of its similarities to resident evil and it has more horror in it!
Strange that how Alone In The Dark has influenced Shinji Mikami to make Resident Evil, but because of that game's success. Alone In The Dark couldn't compete Capcom's survival horror game. Not even the 2024 Alone In The Dark Reboot game make a proper comeback, and they themselves were trying to copy Resident Evil 4's gameplay with its 2008's Alone In The Dark. Don't know what future will hold for this forgotten franchise, but I think that it'll stay in the dark forever.
AITD2024 is genuinely a banger and imo superior to Silent Hill 2 remake in pretty much every way, including its combat (although Silent Hill and other nerd cred approved survival horror games usually get the "it's supposed to be bad actually" pass for their bad combat, weirdly enough). I think a lot of people bounce off of its narrative because we've all been conditioned not to give a shit about documents we find while playing these games, but unfortunately AITD2024 made the decision to tell much of its story through these, and if you haven't been following along reading them, the plot developments in the third act can feel like they come absolutely out of nowhere. If AITD2024's studio wasn't shuttered within days of its release I would've really liked to see a remake of or sequel to Eternal Darkness made by them. I also think that it came out adjacent to a lot of indie survival horror games that are simply better, so it's kind of easy to overlook. It is really weird to see others praising SH2make, which is sort of just a bad combat gauntlet most of the time, but dismissing AITD2024, which has all of the same problems. Sort of like how only people really into the genre seem to be talking about Signalis, Crow Country and Lost in Vivo, despite those games being genuinely amazing.
The Alone In The Dark Series is one of the most underrated games that pioneered the survival horror genre of video games, without it Resident Evil wouldn’t even be a thing… Its funny that fans of resident evil are ridiculing Alone In The Dark for being a copycat or a RE clone, well in fact is the other way around…
People might not be amaze with the 2024 remake/reboot of Alone in the Dark, I however enjoy every moment of it. I sincerely believe that it’s a better and a much superior game than Alan Wake 2 since it’s not WOKE/Sweet Baby Inc.
In addition to that, a better game technically compared to Conscript since you can actually rebind the Arrow Keys for movement and other rebind options are available. Conscript, for a game that has accessibility support for the disable somehow lacks a decent keyboard rebind functionality. How odd….
In other words, The Alone In The Dark is still one of the best survival horror game out there is!
Many thanks for uploading videos like this! It ensures the legacy of The Alone In The Dark in gaming history lives on!
Its one of your best videos ever on the channel!
Oh my gosh what a treat 🤩
1:34 its times like this where i really miss spoony
*Gut zu wissen & aufgetischt :)*
I can think of a game with a dedicated blink button. The SCP Containment Breach game that was popular within the last decade?
Ah, I guess that would make sense.
@@BoulderPunch Thar ya go then XP
I love 2024. It was very good same that didn’t sell at all and that saddens me. I highly recommend. Plus it’s very cheap new physically now
I did like the batshyt crazy final act of the 2024 game.
The Linkara meme 😭
Personally I loved the remake. I'm actually playing through the ps2 version right now. Not because it's good my dear friends, but because of the jank. The ps2 version is also the most buggy and therefore hilarious.
Alone in the Dark Inferno on the PS3 is actually not bad at all. Definitely the best version of the 2008 reboot.
I was going to play that version emulated, but had some issues running it. PC more or less ran OK with a few tweaks.
Man, reboot is the game I remember fondly as great and immersive and impressive but I really really don’t want to replay it for some subconscious reason. I remember dialogues being hilariously on point tho, Carnby reacts the way human being should react.
1:05:23 scp containment breach
Bloodlines mentioned!
What happened at 33:15?
A joke?
Bonus ppoints for bringing up Spoony.
Surely you remember Jodie Comer as Rey's mother in Rise of Skywalker? No? ...
I'm watching Boulder Punch's Alone in the Dark Series Retrospective... on Shadow Island.
The 2008 game was really ambitious and ahead of its time. It's too bad the result feels like an unfinished mess lacking polish and coherent vision. The episodic storytelling and real-time crafting became an industry standard a few years later. The trench coat inventory, physics-based combat and fire physics are mechanics I'd love to see used in other games. I wonder what the game would've looked like had it stayed in the oven for another year, but chances are we'd just end up with more disjointed mechanics.
There's nothing really like it.
I don't know if this really counts as physics-based combat in the way you mean, but the PS2 game Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy has fun opportunities for messing around with chucking folks about using telekinesis. Which, fortunately, is one of the first powers you learn.
spoony used to be my fav, sad what he let himself become
29:50 Garryowen!!
Alone in the Dark 2024, you can tell its the newer game by how Emily looks.
1:34 yoooo Spoony mentioned🎉🎉🎉🎉
His ultima review series remains some of my favourite Internet content
@l0rf true, still rewatch it once a year for old time's sake
Harbour sounds so much like Harrison Ford, is crazy. He has the look and the voice down for the detective persona. Shame he kinda shit talked the game before release
Oh i didnt hear about that, what did he say?
Great work ❤😊
Saying "before spoony went off the deep end" is weirdly mean-spirited. He didn't actually do anything that warrents hate nor the high amount of harassment he received. Real talk: he retired, it's not that complicated.
Have you ever played the X Files game that is a big Resi clone? Would love to see your thoughts on the X Files games as I remember them being a bit strange!
Love your videos.
i had to double check if i were listening to Bioshock Infinite video or Alone in the Dark
As much as I detest Uwe Boll, I feel that I have to admit that, wretched as it is, I can't bring myself to hate the Alone in the Dark movie.
Don't get me wrong, it is abysmal, with the actors who aren't (understandably) phoning it in being terribly miscast, to say nothing of the script, such as it is. It has as much to do with the games as it does with the Care Bears.
But it did one thing for tiny little me when I first saw it. The ending credits featured the song "Wish I had an Angel" by Finnish symphonic rock band Nightwish, and that got me hooked.
That one song is leagues beyond anything Boll has ever done, and it eventually led me to the wild, wacky world of powermetal, which more than made up for that one sucky movie.