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Hey! Nice review. Dev here. Soo, MIRRORS. Why were they good back in the day? Because they were not mirrors at all, it was a fake effect, basically a secondary camera projecting back the image as seen mirrored from the players camera point along the mirror's axis (more a screen than a mirror). This technique is still used in certain situations, but it is more expensive with today's level of detail, incompatible with deferred rendering, and it requires more setup from the level designers. So Why is it worse now? In full raytraced games, mirrors work pretty well, although often in lower resolution/ framerate. However, most games are not FULLY raytraced, specially not ray traced reflections. Many engines and games mostly use ray tracing for shadows and ambient occlusion for a good quality / performance tradeoff. The artifacting you are referring to though, is caused by SSR or screen space reflections. basically the engine automatically calculates reflections, but ONLY from the image that is rendered on screen (which is why the outline of the character is reflected but the face is occluded/blurry) This is a more universal and performant solution that gives decent enough simulated reflections for many situations BUT it has very big drawbacks. For one, anything off screen is not seen in reflections, so it simply doesn't work when looking at the mirror surfaces head on. This is much more convincing when used on things like floor puddles. Anyhow, that's my 2 cents.

I said several times, Survival Horror got diluted to a dangerous degree, people call anything with scary monsters a "survival horror" and its just sad.

The story about the syringe is really sad to hear. I'm sorry. People are cruel.

If only Alone in the Dark is an actual survival horror and not leaning into action-horror, with tighter corridors, I guess it would have been better. Shame since I really like the map designs a lot, like, damn, if there is a survival horror setting that recreates the OG of the OG, Spencer mansion, this is it, except there's no dread in every corner since enemies only appear in specific sections and when you get past or kill them, they're gone. For anyone looking to play horror with melee as core combat principle, I really recommend Condemned: Criminal Origins, it has good scares, rather competent AI. And for a psychological horror and not specifically survival, it does give the player a lot more moment to moment decision making within and out of enemy encounters.

I enjoyed the game but I wouldn't consider it a survival horror. It is more of a mystery thriller.

I was fully invested in that bear coming to life and killing you... Another great video Mayo

I beat the game this weekend. I had a very good time with it. I think it may be hard to recommend at full price but thankfully in my region the price is much fairer. I would just like to add a counter perspective to your take on survival horror backtracking, etc. As a huge fan myself, I value atmosphere much more so than the challenge. To each its own thing, of course, but I thought it would be nice to share. I did enjoy exploring the mansion without monster breathing down my neck every minute.

Great video! 28:27 Before Deferred Rendering, DX9 era games and before, mirrors were easy to render and not too performance heavy. Just rerendering the scene from the point of view of the mirror plane into a Texture/Render Target then texturing the mirror surface with it. Now most games using Deferred Renderer and it would be really heavy on performance to do it the same way, like almost halving the framerate. In Alone In The Dark which uses Unreal Engine, they're just using super cheap Screen Space Reflections which do not include objects not in the player's view. UE5 games will be better with Lumen Reflections. (It is possible to do much better mirrors in UE4 as well though.) Sorry for being so technical. I wasn't planning on writing that much xD

They had a chance to stand out from the competition with classic fixed camera and less emphasis on action, but they blew it. At this point I'm convinced that classic survival horror will never come back.

If you never played Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare from 2001 you missed out on one of the best survival horror games of all time. It's available on Steam, and it did a much better job with the two player scenario than even the original Resident Evil 2.

I fucking lost it at 2:37 when you pulled the "wow"-joke again. I might be tired, but the suspense music afterwards is hilarious. Excellent executed joke 😂

Most developers really don't understand what "Old school" or "Classic" difficulties mean.

I also think the clour palette didn't help to achieve the horror atmosphere. Sure the og. Resi 1 was also colorful, but they made the remake less saturated for a reason

The original Alone in The Dark had a limited inventory system in which you had to drop items in the environment (similar to Resident Evil Zero). You are the first person I've seen mention the lack of inventory management - surely that is a major part of the strategic gameplay of survival horror, not action horror? This reboot is action horror, but in the setting of the original survival horror game. Feels like they played it too safe to me. It's okay, not terrible, not great.

Better than resident evil 3 remake tbf

Despite it's glaring flaws, I still see Alone in the Dark 2024 a successful and much needed revival to this badly mismanaged series of 30+ years. This new game is already cult status material with solid gameplay, engaging story, characters and creepy atmosphere. It will gain an audience in due time and be an ideal ENTRY point for newcomers to the series, something the series has long lacked. The 1992 original (plus trilogy) is too old for most gamers to get into. New Nightmare is an underrated classic, but is also too old for most new gamers to get into and the 2008 game is a jumbled mess of mixed styles and ideas much worse than RE6.

I get a notification for this one at 6am on a Tuesday and I have to wake up in a few hours. I guess I'm loosing 30 minutes of sleep today.

One more thing with puzzles is that if you not play in english one with safe can become unsolvable. Because for some reason in russian version(or as i heard in spanish it's same) you just don't have words with length that match 4-5-4, they are longer or shorter, so untill you google it ot look at textured doc in eng you stuck forever. And in easy mod words are highlighted, which is just f**ked. And with all this destractions you mentioned it's the most cursed puzzle i ever faced in games

23:00 ah yes, UnderTheMayo ASMR

- The scratched 454 is WHAT IS LEFT after removing the document. - It will LATER prove to be RIGHT. - But only after going through HELL will you return BACK AGAIN to the cabinet to actually see it! 😆🤣

The answer to the mirror thing is games used to cheat by copy-pasting models of the room and the player character behind the mirror so it was really just a window to an NPC copying your movement. I read that with how games now use deferred rendering and post-processing techniques they can't do that any more as doubling the models will just tank the frame rate. In theory, ray tracing will fix all this but we will have to wait for enough PCs and all consoles to have enough tech to pull off full raytracing before devs start relying on it in all games.

Had they tried to market the game at $30 or $40, the criticisms would still be there, but it'd probably garner more sales, maybe slighter higher scores, and a more positive reception. They've literally set the game up for failure, pricing it at release RE4r price- comparisons are bound to happen (and RE4r has gone down in price too!). At AITD's full price, you can instead get both RE4r AND Dead Space Remake on sale.

I liked thia game a lot. They could fucked it up in a lot of ways but they deliver a good, classic survival horror experience thay have a few flaws but is a good product overall.

Alone in the dark the new nightmare scared me as a kid before..

Any chance of playing the original even if just out of curiosity? It even has fixed camera angles

Finally, the review i was waiting for.

I love that we had the exact same preferene on puzzles. I'm writing my own script right now and hold up that Perosi room puzzle as great but the first talisman usage and the dock safe puzzle are exactly the two puzzles i'm criticizing as being either inscrutable based on the clues or in the case of the safe, totally devoid of context in the clues you've been told to reference at all times.

Hey Mayo out of curiosity have you updated your editing workflow since making that behind the scenes video last year? Your output seems to have increased significantly like I swear you upload twice as much as most reviewers while still retaining that level of quality

I also am sick of mirrors not working in modern games. I see it in independent and large studio games these days. What the hell happened?

Here's a video idea: why do Silent Hill 2 and 3 puzzles work so well? Also yeah you're not crazy talking about the puzzles that's exactly how my brain would interpret the solution.

Arrow keys are hard binded to camera movement which is just dumb. I'm left handed and play on numpads, I have sprint in games on right arrows but here I couldn't. Another bad thing is that doors are closing automatically after you open them which makes it tedious considering slow animations.

Have you ever tried the ObsCure series, Mayo? They were some of the only survival-horror styled games of the 2000's (specially the first game, the second game leaned too hard into action and linearity), but I feel like the game undermined the survival-horror gameplay too much by adding too many "QoL" features (no tank controls, for example) and the difficulty not being too high (you typically have enough resources to kill all enemies in the game , although you can unlock a hard mode after beating the game once, but it too can be made trivial if you properly use the characters' abilities). I love this series, specially the first game, and one of the main reasons is because it's very unique. They're local coop games (thankfully you can use an AI partner that is mostly good) where you get to use 5 different characters and each one has a unique ability. The first game even had a perma-death system, where if a character died, they were gone for good (although you'll probably just reload a save if that happens). Unfortunately, the second game oversimplified things, you'll see what I mean if you get around playing it.

I personally loved this game. Yeah I experienced some glitches where I got frozen in spots, but other than that, I personally loved it. Graphics were great to me along with mood, atmosphere, music, and story. I was very pleased with it. Took me 16 and a half hours to get through. I’ll agree it could be longer, but that’s not reason enough to make me greatly dislike a game. I’m playing Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare now from 2001 on my Dreamcast and loving it too. I’d love to see this franchise get the Resident Evil remake treatments. I don’t get the hate at all. It’s very unfairly underrated IMO.

When I was in school/kindergarden a lot of teachers warned us not to touch syringes, guess devs just don't know how dangerous that stuff can be

I loved the DRAMA moment at 22:30 XD

19:41 HUH?! How is anyone supposed to figure that out?

i laughed a little too much at the bear bit

Not having an arrow as your map position was something I noticed right away and bugged me the entire time.

Sorry to hear that about your friend's dad, was the perpetrator ever prosecuted?

I mostly agree. Although I did have a good time with it, jank and all. Me second playthrough was actually more fun because having the puzzle combinations was nice and beine able to just run through everything without worrying about resource management makes it very casual and fun just to run through.

the team that worked on it have potential but I think they need a new direction. they tried too much to copy the new resident evil games when they should be copying haunting grounds with fewer hide and seek parts and more exploration like the first resident evil. when I was a kid Alone in the dark 3 was my fav game

The thing is what Gman said is and he forgets to acknowledge that most people who demonize 7 out of 10s are mostly kids, teenagers or man children who probably can't afford to actively buy games, they probably don't even get games at sale price either and they view 8s, 9s and 10s as something "worth" spending full price on. Those kids will eventually grow up and if they still go down the path of playing games, will realize that 7 out of 10s aren't so bad, I know, I used to be that myself. Just that the next batch of kids that play games will demonize 7 out of 10s and then the cycle repeats itself, it's human nature, doing that is the only thing it is good at.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. A solid 6 out of 10. I DID have fun with it, I really enjoyed the setting and the mood but it was janky/unfinished feeling. A LOT of bugs and stutters and the whole game could have really used another month or two to polish up the code.

You should try play Alone in the Dark A New Nightmare, it’s as close to og RE as this series ever got, great at least for one run through both characters runs as both are completely different

I really liked it and the idea of having a "new game plus" with a new char and changed cutscenes. the stunlock enemies can be annoying at times and there are strange gaps between combat encounters is odd. overall shoud be 50 bucks game.

Im curious how you'd feel about The Evil Within series. I just finished the second game and I have strong opinions have both games.

Nice Alien reference at the end!

Hey Mayo, you should do a video on Fatal Frame: Maiden Of Black Water and Lunar Eclipse. Those are definitely worth a play to scratch that horror/survival itch.

I was expecting this video to drop😃

Mayo, If survival horror is your favorite genre, you should really check out the original Alone in the dark. It a bit rough in its old age but its the OG blueprint that influenced all subsequent 3d survival horror games that followed

I am with you. When the player character basically tells me the way forward, I think, what is even the point of this puzzle, mechanic, etc. How stupid do they think I am.

so that healing room had those heals for me too, i am not completely sure it has DA, but if it does it seemed to be from the random item boxes, not the items placed in the open, those seemed to be constant

"The shooting is not great" I hate the fact that devs think survival horror mean the gunplay should NOT be smooth. They can incorporate the feel of horror through limited ammo, realistic recoil. But noooo, they have to add rough/clunky aiming.

Mayo, have you played Resident Evil Revelations 2?

I notice that tormented souls theme in the background

Alone in the dark is moslty a lovecraft noir detective thing first, survival horror 2nd, however not having the backtracking thing does eliminate a big part of survival horror. that said its more survival horror than a lot of games, at least mainstream ones. whats odd is so many reviewers having trouble with the combat, its pretty easy. saving anywhere goes back to the original alone in the dark. unraveling the lore, and figuring out the secret endings, and how the og game got alan waked by a character thats in the game you never meet, and all that stuff is really neat. that jeremy letter is actually brilliant, that is casandras story from on him before you go to the mansion, its telling you to go do that in a new playthough early in the game to get secret items. Cassandra is the one narrating your objectives...but she seems to have alan waked the original, and if you look at ht e prologue, you can see the little girl shreading the original story and making a mask with it......the story is hardly convovulted for a lovecraft game, its not super hard to piece most of it together after both characters....also the game has literally 0 reading, it will do it for you....and of course its odd...its freaking lovecraft...and she is not going to freak out, shes doesnt want to be put in a straight jacket, shes a woman in 1930....how on earth did you not realize she was married either...she had the ring, people called her by her married last name which she no longer wanted to use

Shame, I was looking forward to renting this one and trying it out, but to hear that once again modern AAA devs don't know how to design a survival horror game is just sad.

That 913 thing is hilarious but also kind of your fault, they flat out told you that wasn’t the right code so why did you try it?

Overcomplicating simple puzzle solutions is my second nature in these games. You simultaneously feel dumb and smart😂

I'm all for 7 out of 10 games but the game industry needs to be about 7/10 pricing. You have a game that is flawed like this and can be completed in 4 hours but are charging full price? then they wonder why it doesn't sale. Make the same game $40 and even 30 bucks and it instantly becomes a 1000 times more attractive. Yes the make less per unit sold but I'd bet money that they'd still end up making more money overall. The way it is now people are just not gonna play it or wait for a deep sale anyways or even worse for them go used which sees the devs getting zero on the resale. There's something worth playing here for sure but boy it's a tuff sale at the moment.

I personally did not think the bosses were easier in RE4 remake compared to the original. Especially with Salazar, as in the original he didn't shoot acid at you, and he wasn't moving around, he was stuck to the wall while attacking with his slow tentacles and at times smaller enemy parasites would attack. The rest of the bosses felt pretty much the same as the original. And Seperate Ways brought something new with the hallucinations.

I'm through with my first playthrough. Despite actually reading all the notes (which is important) and enjoying that ;-) : On a scale that has 5/10 as an average and doesn't merely start there (with the rest reserved for numerous scales of badness), I'd agree with your 6/10 after that one playthrough -- apparently, there is a bit of stuff to be unlocked, including different endings, that you may see later on. I hope this gets an opportunity to improve upon and make a really great game. And I'll actually do that 2nd playthrough. Started with Emily. Didn't get stuck long on the safe puzzle, despite hints deactivated (I checked thereafter, and all the text relevant is being marked). Great point about both safe codes in the Manor being so similar, you may solve the one in room 3 by pure chance. Still I also NEVER assumed the hints in behind the tapestry were related to the safe code in the office, that was clearly meant for the office one as is directly written on the note -- you've found hints for every puzzle all over the game very near or even in the same room of the corresponding puzzle is in to boot. However, I've played many many adventure games back in the day with that type of puzzle -- and like the original AITD, this one is heavily rooted in those. Marketing it as "survival horror", as THQ tries to, is a bit of a misnomer -- even Amnesia:Rebirth is closer to this game's experience, with long sections of linear mood pieces with the occasional bit of combat or stealth. The game's main strengths are in the mood it sets alongside to its original Voodoo Jazz score. The deliberately slow detective game pace, some of the locales you visit. Due to the combat being rather basic and clunky, the ending battle full of respawning enemies and close quarter combat was a mistake and also plays real bad. That aside, the game rarely has major standout moments, however also few major lows. You're getting more out of this if you're familiar with Lovecraft, as there's a ton of references. And it's even relevant to the story, the kind of storytelling and what is actually going on -- right to what happens at the very end and who you are facing there. No wonder perhaps then that overall fan response has been more positive than average press response.

I'll check it out when there's a sale. I'm a survival horror enthusiast, so I have to at least play it once.

Thanks for reviewing the game Mayo even though it let you down in the survival horror department and other things.. as someone who has a weird affinity with some horror games that I love but haven't been so much to others have been Callisto Protocol or Daymare 1994 Sandcastle etc.. I knew this game wasn't gonna be as polished as the remake but I wanted to give it a chance. So far I've been enjoying the puzzles and admittedly jank combat.. idk there's a charm to it similar to silent Hill 2 slightly awkward pipe bashing of nurses.. I appreciate the fact they gave us guns and melee weapons as rudimentary as they are.. it was a nice attempt but boy if we could get those keen camera angles back into our modern survival horror games.. one day ..

The very first survival horror. Brutally hard to beat unless you make use of save states. Who doesn't remember the monster jumping through the window in the first game? The level design was way ahead of it's time back then. Actually letting the player move a items around to block enemies. Honestly, I wish they'd give alone the same treatment tomb raider trilogy just got. An HD remaster of the first three games would great. Nightdive is killing it with their remasters.

What I also agree with you that the game has the same issue of RE Village. It HANDS you the items for the puzzle or key items in general. Man the rug that was conveniently placed in the upper floor of the watch tower when it started burning just so Emily could glide down the rope pissed me off for real.

Mayo putting in all that effort just for the puzzles to be so simple 🤣

Currently unable to sleep due to catching the flu and waiting for an ibuprofin to kick in. Wasn't expecting a new Mayo video but lord am I thankful. Edit: I knew this game would have problems the moment it stated it was "Story Focused", I saw the jank combat and got rid of the fixed camera angles. And yeah, the fixed camera angles being missing is something worth mentioning. For one, it might have actually helped make this game scary instead of playing like a worse Resident Evil 4, but then there's the fact that the OG Alone in the Dark was the FIRST modern Survival Horror Game which paved the way for everything that came after it; without it, we would not HAVE the first few Resident Evil games. So seeing even this game, after years of nothing, finally make this "big" comeback and try so hard to evoke certain beats from the first game feels especially wrong. GIven the other problems the game has and given this is supposed to be a SURVIVAL HORROR title, it's hard to overlook. Having fixed angles might have actually remedied certain issues with the pacing and combat feeling as bland and uninspired as it did. I don't know, though. Alone in the Dark has an incredibly troubled history when it came to recapturing the magic of that first game, I honestly wasn't expecting much from this title to begin with. It's just sad to see people blowing it up as this 10 out of 10 title when it's honestly mid as f***.

Horror games need more bears. Like the best part of Condemned 2 .... More Bears! Great review Mayo! I was sitting on the fence for this one, and glad I didn't pre-order. But will buy it eventually. Maybe a physical copy when I visit the THQ shop in Vienna next.

I personally enjoyed this as an adventure game. Though, I had to turn off all hints in the settings rather than just use Old-School.

The original game had many inventory puzzles and health flasks were rare. Why did they change the location of the deserted manor to an asylum with inhabitants?

Sometimes I just don’t pick up resources if I want a challenge. You don’t have to pick up everything 🤷🏼‍♂️

"often there will be an equally effective weapon right there in the same room." Defeating the purpose of having weapon durability.

I love Tormented Souls soundtrack at the beginning.

The last time I played the original was back in 1996.

I don’t like guns in survival horror games, mostly because they are utilized incorrectly. Scarce ammo is a definite must in survival horror, but I think reload time is just as important. Give players guns that take 7-10 secs to reload. Trapdoor rifles, single shot crossbows or revolvers(where you have to put each bullet in). Part of the horror is reloading your weapon at a bad time. Accuracy and distance managing becomes more important overall. It forces the player to really only use their weapons in dire situations. Shooting should always be a last resort in survival horror games, stealth and hiding should be your go to instinct when playing. Another thing about guns is how much noise they make and how difficult they make the game be by attracting more enemies to your location. So to recap, you have limited ammo, slow reload time, and your gun attracts more enemies. Very discouraging, but I think that’s what makes it more fun and suspenseful.

I know games have always used models to create their characters, but can games please stop putting the literal model in game or stop using highly recognizable Hollywood actors? That takes me completely out of the game's experience. Like the moment I see Norman Reedus in a Kojima game I can never not call him Norman Reedus. This might be a me problem, but I also would like voice actors to get their fair share at jobs too.

Im glad im sticking to tormented souls and the classic resi games.

Best game i played from 2024. But this and the South Park game were the only games from 2024 that I played

Please do go and play The New Nightmare. It has unique vibe to it and gets undeserved hate. That being said - I almost bought this instead of a PS5 RE4R (I've played the shit out of the PC version already). Starting to think I made the right call.

Holy hell I’m so sorry to hear about friends dad

I have a same problem with overthinking puzzles in games. Somehow my dumb brain things that devs thought through puzzles little more. But no. Every time its the same stupid solution that you through away with "it cant be that simple" and every time it's just that simple. Good review btw. Gonna play tormented souls once more. Thanks for reminding.

Same man, Alan Wake 2 annoyed the hell out of me with the constant narration of what we were doing or supposed to do next. I liked the start of the game and then it went downhill. Ive never played this one before, but great review and thanks as always buddy!

This fucking series just can't catch a break :P

The puzzle ranting is the best. I’m on your page bud.

Mayo becoming the Angry Joe of survival horror i see

The amount of times that my character got stuck on something and couldn't move was driving me insane and i was completely done after my first playthrough, no way in hell i'm gonna play this crap twice just so i can some context with no other difference.

When are you gonna review My Name is Mayo?

Are we forgetting that in re village, you pull a ring off of a mannequin, wash the blood off of it in a sink, examine the date inside and use it to unlock a door? So basically AITD's best puzzle is a rip off that wasn't even as deep and they managed to screw that up too. I wouldn't give this game my time if it was free.

Omg its the ultrakill guy I love this fella

The reviews are just like the alone in the dark series itself. Wildly uneven.

I liked it quite a lot - and hat a good time with it, Would buy again. XD

It gets worse with Emily. After the trenches section, you find out she was lying to herself, about John dying on the battlefield. He died due to disease from his wounds, and she ended up abandoning him before he passed. Is that supposed to make me relate to this wooden plank of a character? How did you like that sunken temple transition, where you get carted away by the mutated bugs, and then suddenly, she's just staring at a noose in the attic? It's like they wanted to use the framework of Evil Within, but couldn't figure out how to do the strange world shifting coherently. I agree 100% on that shipping company safe code. It was the only thing I got stuck on, and boy, does that make me feel dumb... Lastly, I have to give credit to the VAs. Not so much the main cast, but rather, the ones that are found as notes. They all did a phenomenal job, and deserve some kind of award.

as someone who grow up playing the og alone in the dark trilogy in the 90s, i didnt like anything alone in the dark related after that from the games to the movie and i dont plan on any new alone in the dark games or movies to change that. besides a guy being named edward carnby, i would not have any idea this was SUPPOSED to be alone in the dark, seems more like the sinking city 2

lol, there's no way that woman would have swung that sledgehammer like that more than a few times before tumbling over from exhaustion.

My uncle Jeremy had died by his own hand!

Whoever was responsible for the melee combat animations in this game should not only have been fired but also sued for sabotage! Btw, great use of the Tormented Souls OST as bgm. :)

Alone in the dark a new nightmare was impressive back in the day with impressive use of light mechanics and enemy’s that were weak to it (waaayyy before Alan wake)

I'd be interested in a tutorial video on the RE2 remake fixed camera mod. I'm watching a let's play of this and all I've noticed is talking. There was an 8 minute file of talking and talking and talking. I'm not interested in playing htis. Why couldn't they straight remake the o.g. and maybe flesh out the story a bit. I don't mind both characters going into the mansion and meeting up every once in a while. But all there is is talking.