The Mansion of The Marcabre Reviews

I'm going to be a bit of an outlier here and say I appreciate this game for a few specific reasons. I love the original Alone in the Dark. In fact, although this is a modern remake, I prefer the graphical style of the original warts and all. There is a certain charm in the old school graphics, and I would say the house interiors are more detailed in the original. However, the original is clunky to control. I was able to play it with a Steam Controller but that did not take away that every action is basically menu driven. I'm sure back in the day gamepads were not as prevalent as they are today. I don't know how many people are interested enough to play the first Alone in the Dark in the first place, but this version at least streamlines the process. It ironically takes some quality-of-life updates from Resident Evil, which was of course inspired by Alone in the Dark in the first place. Much easier to play. In fact, I played both simultaneously as I encountered a glitch in the first game and by finishing Mansion of the Macabre first, I had an a-ha moment and was able to overcome the glitch and finish the first game. Not saying this is a better version, just an easier version to play. (The original Alone in the Dark works perfectly on Steam OS, which is surprising because a couple of years ago, I struggled to play the Steam Windows version). I guess with the release of the newest game they actually put some work into the old version. Not sure about 2, 3, and Jack in the Box yet. So, basically this version has some merit for anyone who wants to experience Alone in the Dark without the old school struggles. Edit: This game has a wonky camera, but I was able to overcome them by changing Steam Input controls to Cross Gate.

Okay so, here is the situation as I understand it, and if I am wrong please let me know because admittedly it's a bit confusing. So this game was released as ALONE IN THE DARK REMASTERED, which in the dev's own words is royalty free, and they do not own the license to the IP, naturally. And yet, now the game is called The Mansion of The Macabre and all of a sudden it's okay to charge for it. Not sure if they were acquired, but the point is the same. If I may give a quote from the page : [b] "I paid for this! Have I been ripped off? Yes! We don't charge for the game, and demand a refund as we don't own the IP to Alone in The Dark, and no one should be charging you for royalty free, fan produced software. Although, you can donate for our hard work and dedication." [/b] (former itch page if I am not mistaken) So... I feel like there is a contradiction coming directly from the source - you saying it's not your IP and it's royalty free, but changing the name somehow, makes it different (and I don't know if it's the developer or whoever it is that owns the game now that is responsible for this). On a side note, it seems the game uses some level of assets, I am not sure to what extent, so even the remade material may not be original to this game. Technically speaking the game is not an identical copy of Alone in the Dark, it essentially uses different models and 3D locations to recreate the same game, such as puzzles, similar monsters, same type of progression. On that point, I played a similar Alone in the Dark inspired game called the Padre which also copied many locations, but that one was more like 30 to 70 and voxel based, where this one is almost the same progression, so far anyway. One has to ask, where exactly is that line if you no longer making your own game when you essentially copied every part of the game despite remaking it with new tools, this isn't very different from something like releasing a Resident Evil 1 fan remake and calling it Resident Nice. So ummm. Is it really your game, if your contribution to original game is just new look and changing the name? ............................... So controversy aside, the game is hilariously bad, actually it is so bad I intend on keeping it just for the laughs, it might actually play worse than the original game, and that is saying something. Generally I would not bash a developer for attempting at making a game like this, it's not even the worst survival horror that I played by any means, but here is the thing, is there really anything here that was even worth remaking with this amount of effort, because you copied the good parts, and made them worse, in some ways. One example I can give, you no longer have that nice texture on some of the walls like in original game, there are many flat colors on many objects and walls, sometimes the depth in rooms look worse too, and the few nice things about the game, like the camera angle perspectives are copied, and made worse by a different amount of depth. [h1] Pros: [/h1] (+) Actually, there are some things that I like about this game so far. However... Here is a thing, those things are actually from the original game, and they were better in the original game. Like, take a long shot camera angle of the long trap room, yea it's still a cool look, but you copied it, and made it worse. So yea if this was like original game, you know there are at least some promising ideas, but in this case, the ideas don't belong to this game. [h1] Feedback: [/h1] - my main problem with the game aside from the things that I said, it's very laggy, like it constantly stutters, also just buggy, warps, corrupted saves, you name it. (Update: to be fair to the devs, it seems the last patch mostly fixed the random lag during movement, not so much interactions, just not having constant stutter on walking) - the cool camera angles you copied from the original game are somehow made worse because the depth of rooms changed a lot - obviously this was never finished, and many objects lack a proper texture, as well as many walls, actually walls in original game look a lot better because of those patterns [b] Overall Thoughts: Um I don't know I have a lot of questions, and there are some contradictions, I am not even going to give this a score, you probably should avoid it [/b] I kinda knew it would be bad and I am laughing entire time playing it because it's so shameful, I just didn't expect this hole package with it.What personally confuses me, is that you set to remake Alone in the Dark, and you took all the good parts from it, just to make them worse, locations look worse, it feels even more clunky than original, and like, what do you want me to get from this. Maybe if you finished it, but it does not feel finished either, so many objects lack texture in random places. [code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]

As a die hard fan of AITD series and even not as a die hard fan I must say this game is an ABOMANATION! Where do I start... First of all it a copycat of AITD 1 so why calling it other name other than AITD 1 remake or collage. The game is atrocious an amateur asset flip with terrible camera angels terrible controls terrible sounds terrible aspect ratio especially on ultrawide monitor. Couldn't bare playing more than 10 min it's that bad, just a bad joke 0/10