The New Nightmare is the eagerly awaited fourth installment in the Alone In The Dark Series. A franchise praised by many fans as one of the best in the action/adventure horror genre. Alone 4 offers a contemporary spin on the old tale of a madman trying to harness the power of darkness. Edward Carnby agrees to travel to Shadow Island to investigate the death of his friend Charles Fiske. It becomes apparent that Carnby seeks revenge, not a solution to his friend's mysterious death. Aline Cedrac; a young scholar joins the expedition as a liaison to translate ancient Indian tablets. The real reason is because she is led to believe the scientist on the island could be her long lost father.

You can play as either Carnby or Aline through the entire story. Each character has their own goals which plays like two completely different games. While this may add to replay value to some, it just adds to my frustration level. The Aline version of Alone 4 is more puzzle orientated with less shooting by using her flashlight to thwart off the ugly baddies from hell. She does not even start off with a real weapon. Carnby on the other hand is hell-bent for dishing out death to the creatures of darkness that inhabit the island. There are lots of monsters to avoid or kill when you play as him.

I realize that keeping ammunition scarce adds to the realism of a situation, but when enemies respawn this scarcity just sucks. Many times the enemies are upon you before you can even react. Once you run out of ammo that's pretty much it. There is no hand-to-hand combat mode. Run if you can I guess, but that strategy doesn't work for very long. The first portion of the game is like a bug hunt for keys. You must kill zombies find a key, then kill the zombies again because they just respawn. So I just ran around a creepy looking manor searching for keys. Then I found more keys. This is not fun, or scary just boring and frustrating.

Suspense is what makes movies and games scary. Alone 4 is seriously lacking this important attribute. There were a few moments where I jumped, but this was due more to the cheap thrill factor than anything else. For instance a loud crack of thunder from out of nowhere followed by a shrill scream. Perhaps a silhouette of a creature will appear suddenly. Sometimes a big purple bug would jump on your head when you least expect it. The music doesn't help either as it sounds like a quirky organ version of those old pinball machines from the eighties. Instead of creating a true horror atmosphere this all just reminds me of those silly sound effect cassette tapes we used to buy at Halloween.

The control is so awkward I couldn't believe it at first. I thought I was doing something wrong. Before you even play you must re-map the keys or you won't last long. Even this doesn't help much. I finally plugged in my Gravis Exterminator and mapped everything to the gamepad. Once that was done I could finally play with some confidence. That confidence soon evaporated when the collision detection reared its ugly head. You must position the character in precise locations to accomplish certain actions as simple as walking through a doorway. In the main lobby of the manor it took me a good five minutes just to get a statue to move maybe five feet.

The story unfolds through radio transmissions with the character you are not playing. There are also a series of biographies and journal entries located throughout. Some of these are upwards of thirty pages long, and they just aren't interesting. Remember how the personal log entries in System Shock 2 added a thick blanket of suspense to gameplay as well as providing character development and story progression. Well there is none of that here. Is Shadow Island the best name they could think of to name this island? It's just not very scary.

The flashlight graphics provide a neat lighting effect. The rest of the graphics are sub-par for computer standards. Maybe this is good for Playstation, but not the PC. The FMV appears like pixelated grease was smeared on the camera. The in-game engine is better, but backgrounds tend to be 2D and rather blurry. The characters mouth does not even move. The dialogue is not quite as bad as the voice acting. The save option requires you to collect charms of saving, and requires you to repeat any actions inside the room you just saved in. There are only four slots provided to save with, and you are not able to type a description. I like to save where, when, and however I want. That's why I play on the best video game system there is. The PC. It appears Alone 4 was intended first and foremost for PSX. That is fine I've heard good things about that version, but this port transfer is evident in the PC version. I'm sorry to say that I am disappointed.  

Install:  Easy
During the install process different screenshots of previous Alone In The Dark games are shown in a sort of slide show. Jedi Knight did that; it doesn't take much and adds to the experience.

Gameplay:  6
Terrible control, respawning enemies with very little ammunition, bad pre-set camera angles, and key hunting all make for poor gameplay. The save features are just unforgivable. If you want to play two different games with each character, you cannot use the quicksave feature. It will erase previous games, and the limited four slots you get to save do not even offer a place to type a short description. For instance Aline game 1. Or Carnby game 2. Just unforgivable.

Graphics: 7 
The flashlight effect was cool I'll admit, but the FMV was mysteriously smudgy. Each screen that you advance to takes a couple of seconds to load. It should be a smooth transition from screen to screen in this day and age.

Sound: 7
Poor dialogue supported by mediocre voice talent. Lips move in FMV's but not with in the game sequences. The music sounds like it's from a low budget horror film. The thunder was loud though.

Difficulty: 8
Key searching is just not as fun as it used to be years ago. Very little ammo and respawning enemies is a sad way to add to excitement, and difficulty.

Concept: 6
Mad scientist would like to harness the powers of darkness for his own diabolical plans, yada, yada, yada...

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 7
This one just missed the boat folks. However I did like the theme song that Stewart Copeland wrote for the end.