Alone in the Dark/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The game series contains examples of

  • Complete Monster: Alan Morton in The New Nightmare. Not content to spend his life researching The Corruption through vivisection and human experimentation, he murders his house staff, traps his brother into complicity with his crimes and attempts to unleash an eldritch biosphere on the Earth.
  • First Installment Wins: The 1992 original is the most critically well-regarded of the series and had the most definite impact on shaping the Survival Horror genre.
  • Goddamned Bats: In the 2008 game, Vampirez are bats that attack if the player gets too close and are almost impossible to hit. Since they look like bats and are minions of Lucifer, they could be literally considered to be Goddamned Bats.
  • Narm: Quite a bit.
    • In the first game, upon walking down to the second floor, the double doors slam, followed by the evil laughter. Said laughter came off... rather goofy sounding.
    • In the second and third game, the Mooks will say something upon spotting you. The things they say? "Morning sir!" "Hi guy!" or "Hey you.", all of them sounding hilarious.
    • From the 2008 reboot, we get this gem: "I don't have your stone, and f*ck you anyway!"
    • During Edward's narration intro in the first game, he noticeably slurs slightly as he talks, sounding as if he's slightly drunk. Taken even further that in his image to the right, there is a bottle of alcohol on his desk.
  • Older Than They Think:
    • Resident Evil is often credited for inventing Survival Horror, when all it did was coin the name for it and bring the genre into the mainstream. The Alone in the Dark series invented the actual gameplay model years earlier.
    • The criticism that "You're not alone and it's not dark" isn't new to Illumination. The reboot and The New Nightmare drew identical snarky comments over the presence of a partner character and light-based puzzles.
  • Polished Port:
    • The Updated Rerelease of the 2008 game for Play Station 3 because it fixed glitches from the other releases and even adds a few extra scenes. While not without its flaws, Inferno was vastly improved and closer to what the developers envisioned.
    • The PlayStation port of part 2, subtitled One-Eyed Jack's Revenge, gives the game improved character models (higher polygon counts and more detailed textures). It also copied the control scheme of the classic Resident Evil titles, adding a run button, more responsive Tank Controls, and generally making the game a bit less frustrating to play.
  • Porting Disaster: When you thought it couldn't get any worse, the PS2 and Wii versions of the '08 game.
  • Ruined FOREVER: Has Atari put the nail in the coffin for the franchise?
  • The Scrappy: Sarah Flores in the 2008 reboot, considering how annoying and useless to the plot she is.
  • So Bad, It's Good: As seen under Narm above, the 2008 reboot is sometimes seen as this, especially in terms of its story.
  • Strangled by the Red String: The rather forced relationship that develops between Carnby and female companion/sidekick Sarah Flores in the 2008 Alone in the Dark.
    • ...which almost beats the far more forced relationship between Carnby and Aline in the movie. It wasn't there in The New Nightmare, on which the movie is loosely based.
  • That One Boss: Li Tung in the third game. He moves and attacks much faster than Carnby can, and can close the distance very quickly and jump-kick you from halfway across the room you fight him in. Beating him essentially requires running back and forth, popping off Winchester shots whenever you get the chance.
    • A couple from the fourth game.
      • The Procuraptor in the library can take a lot of damage, which forces you to use the rocket launcher. Even then, you can't damage it in its normal state, but shooting it with any weapon (even the revolver) will cause it to enter a vulnerable state during a few second where you can actually damage it. However, since this is not obvious, you can waste a lot of rockets by using them during the first state. If you didn't find enough rockets, expect a very long fight as you'll run out of them and have to resort to the shotgun.
      • Alan Morton. The only easy way to beat him is with glitches or cheats. Otherwise he's borderline impossible.
  • That One Level:
    • The insanely frustrating driving level down 59th Street in the 2008 Alone in the Dark because the steering is lousy. Though some believe the look and sound of that level make up for it.
    • And the driving section with the bats, coming soon afterwards, where they drag your car up (possibly to your doom) and/or stop sticking to it completely at random; the black goo, which might or might not react to your flashlight, eating you up; and that final driving section, timed, where it's plenty possible to miss the right turn at the end.
    • Fixed in the PS3 Inferno port. While the 59th Street driving section is still unlikely to be beat at first try, the improved controls, Sarah's giving you directions as well as there being checkpoints along the way actually render the whole sequence somewhat fun if still challenging.
  • That One Puzzle: The flashlight puzzle in the Morton family crypt in the fourth game. It's as simple as moving your flashlight to draw a M. However, the controls in the Playstation versions, while good elsewhere, are horrible for moving the flashlight, which means you'll likely mess up the drawing and spend a long time there having to restart over and over.
  • Uncanny Valley: Ironically, these days the scariest things to come out of the original trilogy are the models of the human characters, notably the protagonists with their primitively blocky models and unsettlingly tiny pinhole pupils.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: Say what you will about the gameplay of the 2008 reboot, but sequences like climbing around on the crumbling building and the mad drive through New York are absolutely spectacular to watch.

The movie contains examples of

  • Non Sequitur Scene: The sex scene comes out of nowhere and has no relevance to anything that happens before or after it.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: The soundtrack is a surprisingly decent collection of modern heavy metal artists.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: The 713 sergeant, Miles, who comes across as the only competent character in the entire film and is significantly better-acted than most of the main cast (although that's not saying much). Sadly, he doesn't last long, although he does outlive literally everyone else in his unit.
  • Nightmare Retardant: The creatures that Carnby and the others encounter are meant to evoke terror, but fail thanks to the shoddy CGI.
  • Special Effect Failure: One of the possessed civilians about to attack Burke is killed by a bullet than can clearly be seen zooming two feet above her. As has been noted, the glowing effect was added in post-production, and no effort was made to correct it.
  • They Just Didn't Care:
    • According to a Something Awful interview with Blair Erickson, one of the original script-writers, a first draft of the script would have hewed much closer to the video games on which the film was based, but Boll discarded the idea in favor of turning it into a straight-up action film. At least someone was trying. Too bad he wasn't on the final scripting team.
    • As Spoony, the Nostalgia Critic, and Linkara pointed out in their review, you can clearly see a dead body moving and getting up on camera.
    • In another example a woman gets killed by a gunshot that misses her completely. Because it's a post-production CGI effect, this means that somebody deliberately had to design it to miss that person.
  • What the Hell, Casting Agency?: Tara Reid (best known for playing a Dumb Blonde in the American Pie films) as an archaeologist.
  • Video Game Movies Suck: Arguably the foremost example of all time.
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