2DARK
Want some horror fun? 2Bad
You don’t see too many retro stealthsurvival horror titles with adventure game inventories ported to console these days. 2Dark exists – in a cruel sort of way – to show us exactly why that is. 1 The story of Smith – a man whose family was torn apart, somewhat literally, when his wife was decapitated and his children abducted while he obliviously swore at a tent – should be at least engaging. Helmed by Frédérick Raynal, creator of 1992’s Alone In The Dark (and, by extension, most of the survival horror genre), it should also be good.
Sadly, what we have is a game which mixes squat voxel art with top-down backdrops to spectacularly ugly effect; which asks you to save screaming children from serial killers’ lairs by means of the world’s slowest escort missions; which refuses to make good on any and all promise. There’s a smattering of clever thinking in here, but by Newton’s Third Law Of Heinous Crap, it is always counteracted by something equally horrible. A nervy save system centres around waiting for Smith to finish a smoke, which can lead to some tense encounters – but instant-kill traps in pitch darkness mean you light up almost constantly, 2 just in case.
Worst of all is the inventory – a lovely idea, forcing you to employ puzzle thinking alongside your stealth-action, but so clearly designed for a mouse and keyboard that wrangling with multiple elements of your controller simultaneously is scarier than the frequent child death you’re confronted with. To be brought so low by something so mundane becomes blandly typical. 2Dark will not make you feel annoyed, it will make you feel sad, and that’s definitely worse. Hal Tarrare