Alone in the Dark... for survival horror fans, the franchise needs no introduction; it's indeed the grandfather of the genre, predating the rise of Resident Evil by four years. The earlier games, namely the initial trilogy, are completely bare bones by today's standards, but they're still considered some of the best survival horror experiences to date. Alone in the Dark: Illumination is the sixth release in the series, and it brings with it a new approach in terms of gameplay.
Moving away from the general structure of a survival horror game, Alone in the Dark: Illumination instead focuses on co-op and multiplayer gameplay in the same vein as Left 4 Dead and any other wave-based survival shooter. You have your choice of four characters, the witch, the priest, the engineer, and the hunter; each possess their own skill sets and special items that can be used. There's also a leveling system, and for each level some skill points are earned to further develop the multiple skill trees of each class. Even the four levels are set up in a Left 4 Dead style fashion, with each being split into four sections for an easier time with co-op in case your friend has to bolt; which they will, after playing this heaping mound of maggot infested donkey bile.
For a wave-based survival shooter, this title sure is lacking enemies. During the first level you will encounter a handful of Spiderman-in-the-Venom-suit looking foes, and by the time you reach the end, if you've dispatched every single bad guy, you'll have 21 kills. This persists through every single part of every single level, though only getting worse as time goes by. There are no random spawns, only pre-designated allotments of enemies after certain events unfold, such as blasting a path to the next area or opening the door to the end of the level. This leaves all of the environments entirely empty, and without anything to do save for the base objectives of getting from point A to point B by finding batteries, explosives, electrical wire, etc.
There's little to no music, very little ambience, and many of the sound effects are missing. For example, when blowing away a huge boulder using dynamite there was absolutely no explosion sound effect. There are also no footstep sounds, save for when you jump, and if you find yourself waist-deep in water, there's no splashing or water movement effects. This title also has horrid optimization, with framerates constantly fluctuating from 160 FPS down to 70 FPS with all settings on max while running on an i7 6700k/GTX 1080 system. Now that's not unplayable by any means, but for lower-end rigs it is going to present a much larger problem.
It's as if the developer accidentally released the alpha, not even the beta, version of Alone in the Dark: Illumination. The biggest, and most unforgivable factor here being the absurd lack of enemies and the terrible AI of the ones that do show up. I was able to stand right in front of many foes, to which they just teeter and stare back at me, doing nothing. Some will follow you, some may even try to attack you eventually, but if you attempt to lure them into the light they'll stand just outside of its radius and stare some more. Mind you, I was also playing on the highest difficulty available, which is a laughable skip through the park. I've played a lot of really awful games in my day, but this one takes the cake, and I'm truly sorry for any unfortunate individual that pre-ordered or paid full price for this absolute scam.
Rating: 0.5/5.0 - Abysmal, avoid it like the plague.The Horror Network
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