The Good
- Richly detailed graphics and environments that push the limits of the Game Boy Color.
- Ambitious design that has the feel of a PlayStation1 horror survival game.
- Amazing 3D feel using 2D graphics.
- Visually the highest quality Game Boy horror title.
- Terrific save system that allows you to save at any point in your game.
The Bad
- Frustrating movement has you walking in one direction on the first screen, then in the opposite direction on the next.
- Combat mini-games make it impossible to target your enemy and difficult to see them.
- Environments are almost over detailed, making it difficult to see doors, exits and paths.
- Allows you to interact with some of the doors and cabinets, but not all of them, making it confusing when as to which doors are actually doors and not just decoration.
- Music so droning and repetitive that you end up turning off the volume.
Features
- Simulated 3D environments.
- Rich story, mystery and exploration.
- Heavy interactive story style.
- Picks ups such as health flasks, weapons and ammo.
- Three different weapons – Revolver, Shotgun and a crossbow.
- Light puzzle solving.
- Exploration mixed with combat mini-games.
- Monstrously creepy critters.
The Game
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare for the Game Boy Color has you taking control of the supernatural Investigator, Edward Carnby, when he gets a call from a mystery woman claiming that his partner, Charles Fiske, has been murdered. The woman, Aline Cedrac, discovered a lost ancient statuette that was used in mystic rituals. Soon after she made her discovery the statuette was stolen, so she hired Fiske to get it back. His investigation uncovered deadly secrets of the sinister millionaire recluse Alan Morton. To solve the mystery Carnby travels to Morton’s home on Shadow Islands and discovers something far more horrific than murder.
With the feel of an interactive story, when it comes to bringing the flavor of Survival Horror to the Game Boy Color system, The New Nightmare is a promising and refreshing attempt, leaps and bounds better than the disappointing Resident Evil Gaiden. Unfortunately to deliver feel of a 32 Bit, CD-ROM based console game, something had to be sacrificed. In this case it was gameplay.
The challenges of formatting an exploration adventure in a horror survival style was tackled in a number of creative ways to simulate the same feel, however not all of these transitions were successful. The environments are richly designed and wonderfully illustrated, while the character moves through the dimensional environment constantly maintaining the proper proportions to the environment, a real challenge when dealing with a dimensional game using 2D art.
Just like the console counterparts there is exploration, pick-ups (health flasks, weapons, ammo), clues in the form of journal entries, and a deep storyline and mystery - however this is where the similarities end. The side effects of making the Game Boy transition are at the cost of frustrating screen-to-screen transitions, weak and confusing combat, and poor music quality.
Just like the other horror survival games of its time, instead of the camera following the character through the environment, each screen has a single camera angle from which we can see our character move through the environment. When you walk to the edge of the screen into a different part of the room, a different room or up stairs, the game switches to a new angle. To give the best and creepiest effect, the camera angles are carefully chosen, unfortunately practicality was not one of these choices. Instead of allowing the player to continually flow through each environment by continuing to press the same directional button, once you walk to the next screen, the camera often flips 180 degrees. Now everything is in the opposite direction. The only way to stay on the same path is to stop moving at each new screen, get your bearings and change the directional button, severely slowing down the pace of the game
In the horror survival genre, the highest regarded games and the ones that not only contain great exploration, mystery and graphics, but also have a fun and fluid combat system. In The New Nightmare the combat mode is the biggest disappointment. While still better than the combat system in Resident Evil: Gaiden, the problem of combat was still solved in a similar fashion. Because the capabilities of the Game Boy Color didn’t allow enemies to attack you in the same environments as the main one, the game switches to a 2D, top down combat mini-game where you shoot at monstrous creeps. The problem here is that you can’t aim, it’s hard to see your enemy against the background and if you run out of ammo you have no other way of battling or defending yourself. This makes the player want to avoid combat instead of enjoy it.
Shortcomings aside, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare is still an impressive and engaging experience, so long as your not looking for a lot of action. The tragedy behind a title that should be considered an important footnote in horror gaming is that it was a Game Boy Color title released the same year as the Game Boy Advance, causing it to unnoticed among the new generation of GBA games. What has sealed it’s coffin is that the Nintendo DS can’t play Game Boy Color titles; It is only backwards compatible with Game Boy Classic and Advance.