Alone in the Dark 2 is as devoid of atmosphere and tension as it is in fun.
What you'd end up with would be a series of games livened up by a gang of developers who felt that in order to make a series memorable and scary they have to riddle each poor excuse of a sequel with bad game design choices, horrible game play decisions, interesting but miniscule plot twists, laughable enemies and above all an evident lack of atmosphere established by the original. This example has in fact happened with the Alone in the Dark series.
Originally, the first game was only going to be one game, but because it was so successful for its time, a sequel had been planned against the will of the original's creator. Said creator, Frederick Raynal, got into an argument over the issue that won in the favor of those who wanted to make the sequel, resulting in Raynal taking a long walk into developer obscurity leaving the series in the hands of a bunch of idiots who took them almost eight years to make an adequate horror-adventure game and even that one had huge, inexcusable game flaws.
Sounds unfair? Of course it does. But if you're Hindu or believe in the powers of Karma in general, then you'll discover the true unfairness of it all when you play the unholy sequel that was spawned: Alone in the Dark 2: One-Eyed Jack's Revenge (or Jack is Back as it was called in Japan, which makes my mouth water because it reminds me of Jack in the Box for some reason).
The story takes a pretty big departure from the first game in that the only resemblance to the original is the main character Edward 'The Reptile' Carnby, who has abandoned his detective nickname and role of detective in general to turn into some kind of super-spy hero du jour. The game starts off in December of 192? where an old detective of sorts by the name of Ted Stryker attempts to sneak into an old house at the edge of a cliff overlooking a precipice supposedly to rescue what appears to be a hideous looking troll-child only to be mystically strangled by a woman residing in the house.
We then learn from there on that the hideously deformed troll child named Grace Saunders is Carnby's niece and that she was captured by the dangerous occupants of the house for an unknown reason and upon not hearing from Ted, Carnby decides to go to the house and literally blow the gates down and storm the place by force.
What you'll notice right away is that the game is dedicated almost entirely to action. You encounter enemies that are armed to the teeth with 45. Thompsons and 12ga. shotguns that never seem to be reloaded and evading them once you've entered their sights is like evading a Wood Tick embedded in your skin.
The enemies you face are rather strange as they're all green-skinned people that happily greet you with a slurred and audible "'Morning, sir!" before trying to blow your head off. The detail on your enemies is quite laughable to say the least as they all seem to have puckered lips and when they aren't dressed as a rag-tag of 1920's boot-blackers they're dressed up as pirates with striped and speckled shirts that all look straight out of Hawaii.
Your enemies do come in varieties, but all of them cease to be scary due to the fact that all of them are borderline ridiculous as you face a fat guy with a gun in his peg-leg, a musician with a gun in his accordion and a somersaulting gymnast in his long-johns.
As much of this increases the action of the game, the execution is a very bland and painful experience because there seems to be some sort of weird collision detection working against your shotgun as a shot at a given enemy will either hit the one tiny spot on them you can hit, or bypass them completely. Your only means of firearm defense is to shoot them at point-blank range.
Of course the aforementioned tenacity of your enemies makes navigation a horrid chore as they will fire ceaselessly at without end forcing you to run (or in this matter scoot) as far away from them as you can. And having a game filled with gun totting zombie clowns is extremely detrimental to the atmosphere because attempting to make gunfights scary in games is about as successful as a Kleenex being glued with Elmer's glue to a straw and calling it an umbrella. In a tsunami.
Of course being an Alone in the Dark game, you can have Edward beat enemies to death by holding the aim button down and holding either of the directional buttons to unleash some surprisingly effective punches and head-butts. You also get a variety of melee weapons, some of which degrade after awhile, but much like the punching and kicking is actually a bit more effective than the gunplay. I should also add that the melee weapons expand that of your average melee weapon line-up in such a way that almost makes The Room's variety of melee weapons look bad. How many games allow you to efficiently beat enemies to death with a spanking-paddle?
Although I don't want to spoil too much for you, I have to mention that there is a moment in the game where you can avoid detection by slipping on a Santa Claus costume and you get to take enemies out when no one's looking which is an option I liked, despite it once again being laugh inducing.
There are also various puzzles, some of which are definite brain teasers such as forcing a key out of a lock and retrieving it or fooling enemies to chase a toy by tossing it in the opposite direction when they aren't looking. Of course all of this has a certain linearity to it that raises a different problem, that being having only one of a certain key item that you can't progress with if it's spent.
For example, there's a part in the game where you need to bribe a man at a door with a full bottle of wine, but if you manage to drink the wine (and get completely drunk off it I might add) then consider the door inaccessible and yourself permanently stuck because there isn't another bottle available. Of course the whole one-shot puzzles have always been a part of the original AitD, so it's hard to berate. Hell, why do you think you can save anywhere you like?
Of course now that I mention it, the saving in OEJR is VERY unfriendly. Unless you have one memory card lying around that's completely empty, your progress will be hard to save and progressing through the game alone is almost as big and ground breaking an event as it was in Martian Gothic but without the good story telling to keep us involved.
The adventuring aspect goes on for a while and at times I'll admit it feels like it fits, especially when you're not constantly trying to out-gun enemies left and right and when you finally get out of that monotonous hedge maze. That is of course until you claim control of another character and the adventuring stops for what feels like an eternity.
This bad aspect is the infamous formula of anti-fun the Forced Stealth section and representing this aspect of dour game play is the previously mentioned walking horror that is Grace Saunders.
Before I continue to describe this choice of bad game play, let me make a quick shout-out and counter point: I'd like to make a shout-out to everyone's least favorite playable child character in a Horror-Adventure game Sherry Birkin of Resident Evil 2 fame.
Forgiving the fact I'm probably one of the few people who actually appreciated Sherry for who she was and having a surprisingly good voice actress, I have to say that despite her unnaturally slow running speed and apparent inability to even so much as push zombies away from her, she WAS NOT bad to play as or be around. Sure she stopped and huddled when you were running around, but she was supposed to; she's a 12 year old girl whose parents ignore her and her home town is filled with flesh eating zombies, what do you expect!
And before everyone who did hate the moments they had to play as or protect Sherry start marking me down for admitting this, I want you to imagine the following:
1. Imagine a playable version of Sherry with a squished trollish face, mushroom like hair and the ability to make goofy faces at your enemies while making horrifying demonic noises.
2. Imagine taking this korrigan-like version of Sherry and individually adding thick layers of quick-drying cement on her feet and elbows.
3. Imagine being forced to play as this little creature while going undetected by your enemies.
4. Now imagine being forced to play as this slow, demonized version of Sherry going undetected for TWENTY-MINUTES STRAIGHT. Or at least what FEELs like twenty minutes straight, forgiving the fact that the experience always seems to add up every time you play it.
And if that isn't enough to take back what everyone hates about Sherry, then I don't know what will, but comparing this to the moments we were forced to play as or be around Sherry in Resident Evil 2 look absolutely GOLDEN. I'm serious, having to play as Grace Saunders is like being forced to endure some sort of horrible, inhumane punishment you never committed!
Grace's movement can hardly be considered realistic, her idiot excuse for running makes a land shark look like about as fast as Jessie Owens. And trying to evade adult enemies that move faster than a child is about as believable as saying World War II just ended today. If it wasn't bad enough for her to be slower than a squid out of water, her in general movements are so criminally slow that trying to climb a ladder becomes an effort that you could time and get a world record in slow motor skill execution.
Forcing the player into unavoidable stealth sections has never been fun, but in this case it's almost insulting. You will constantly find yourself reloading your last save point, constantly trying to get past the same goddamn enemies who seem to have eyes littering the back, sides, top and bottom of their heads with unintuitive camera angles that hardly give you a f***ing idea of whether or not you've found a safe hiding spot and are trying constantly to avoid detection because the moment you do get spotted enemies will run over to you faster than you can even think about escaping and it's Game Over the second they get within three feet of you.
And when you do progress as Grace, there are moments where the game's 'think at the last nanosecond' linearity punches you in the liver when you finally get to a different room only to realize that you spent the last room running away from your enemies rather than investigating an undetailed block in the background which JUST SO HAPPENED to be a key item you NEEDED to progress out of the room you had just DROPPED into and you have no means of going back for it.
Of course as antagonistic as Grace is, the developers thought it a good idea to make her a source of comic relief much like your enemies beyond just making faces or hopping back and forth. If she falls from a ladder, she'll immediately equip a little umbrella with a cartoon noise following it that allows her to float safely down, while also allowing enemies to wait patiently for her to be caught (and you wonder why I hated Blue Stinger so much).
The sounds are surprisingly good in most cases as foot steps (even Grace's, the no-necked little monster) sound authentic and more importantly audible. Other times, the sound consists of these weird thunderstorm sounds that occur when you defeat an enemy or do something good and every time you hit an enemy they make a weird popping/snapping noise.
The music fulfills the goal of making One-Eyed Jack's Revenge about as kooky and unscary as it looks between the opening credits roll which plays a Western version of Jingle Bells, similar to that of the long forgotten sixties nightmare that was "I'm a Lonely Cowboy Santa" minus the goofy lyrics ("instead of Christmas carols, a yoddle-dee-ah-day"). The hedge maze segment in the beginning seems to have all of the games songs lined up that play constantly, some of which continuing the weird Western theme with a spice of kookiness to it. From then on however, the soundtrack plays a series of some oddly relaxing pirate galley music as if it was played from an accordion.
The graphics are pretty good in certain aspects as Edward actually has a human face rather than two ping-pong balls and a red pipe cleaner for a mustache. This much can't be said about the enemies of course what with almost each one looking like they popped out of a Kirchnir self-portrait and the only adult female in the game looking just a little too scrawny and unproportionate to even resemble a human.
If anything, the best part of the graphics lies in the classic Alone in the Dark aspect of featuring hand-drawn backgrounds with small animated bits such as mice running under rugs and snakes sliding through hedges. Of course some of the backgrounds look a little bland with Genesis-esque color palettes and of course the game has the goofy/kooky aspect invading this department with stupid paintings and background items like pictures of human skulls drawn by a Kindergardener.
Between the game's aesthetics and game design, the experience is ultimately painful to endure. The game itself could hardly even be categorized as horror! There are so few moments of dread or fear that I found myself putting this game next to Countdown Vampires and Blue Stinger in my 'Adventure Game Only' pile, which in this case doubles as my 'Next to Unplayable Games' pile and still in this case triples as my 'Wait Till' it Goes up in Price and Obscurity before Selling on Ebay' pile.
The few moments the game tries to be scary are the moments where you're wandering through a hedge maze and a small part of the hedge in one of the shots will transform into a demonic face and back into a hedge. When this happens of course, the kooky heroic Sergio Leone Western music is playing. Attempting to call a game scary because of ONE or a series of LITTLE visual treats like that and only those is like balancing yourself on a pin claiming it's tiny shape is enough to support your weight.
Alone in the Dark 2 was not a fun game for me and I can understand someone finding an unfair adventure into cartoon action land fun (well, okay, I can't, not in this game's case, but 'each to their own' is all I'm saying), but trying to consider it scary or even calling the game horrific lacks complete credibility because the game hardly even tries to be scary, creepy or frightening in the slightest. The only frightening aspect about the game are the clunky controls and the forced stealth section.
Now that I think about it, I'm sure that if the lethargic, avid movie renters and dullards responsible for Silent Hill 4 made their own version of One-Eyed Jack's Revenge, I'm sure it would hit the original Alone in the Dark target closer than it would've in this game.
So if you like a game that'll take you almost half a year to finish, much less find any semblance of fun from it, then Alone in the Dark 2 is your game. Of course if you're a curious gamer who wants to dig into the old and forgotten, then I suggest you either get this game for free or avoid it completely.