Alone in the Dark 2 - Nightmare Before Christmas

As Carnby's wearing a Santa Claus outfit, this game is starting to feel less like a creepy survival horror game and more like a jolly Christmas game. Considering how many good Christmas games there are, I feel like this might have been a missed opportunity on my part. Not like there's a dearth of pre-Resident Evil survival horror games about...yet...

With me wearing the Santa suit, he just wanders back and forth...to somewhere upstairs

When I make it upstairs, the cook takes no notice of me. There are a lot of locked doors here, including the front one. Was that so hard to mention when I was outside? As there seems to be something eager to kill me I quickly go to the one open door I see. Inside is a Christmas scene, curious for a group of zombie pirates.

RIP Santa 270-1924

There's nothing inside but a door that actually opens. I wish it didn't, because there are five guys in there. I suspect they're the same ones who rushed out when the chef screamed. I have more of a chance this time. Two seconds is still more of a chance. That leaves the next floor.

How nice of the game to give the enemies the same inability to aim as the player

Upstairs is safer, but that's because the enemy up here doesn't instantly kill me. I could use the shotgun, but I don't know how the rest of this section is going to play out and I have awful ideas about that. Gotta admit, fist-fighting is starting to feel annoying. He's the guard to some kind of forechamber to the actual hallway.

Check out the Evil Dead inspired woodwork here

I start from the logical position, one of the ends. This appears to be the room of Elisabeth Jarret, I assume its Elisabeth Jarret, that woman sure looked like a witch and this is her room. There are several sections here, including a bathroom, but there's nothing, and I do mean nothing, I can do here now. There's a pair of arms guarding...something, but I'll wait to deal with that.

Who would expect a pool player to be the toughest enemy so far?

Middle room, some sort of gentleman zombie. He's eating shotgun shells for breakfast and its hard to get him into an unbreakable loop. Eventually I manage to get him into a spot where I don't suffer too much. I was genuinely thinking I had to kill him via a trick somehow. Maybe that would have been a better option. There's a derringer (with 10 rounds) here and he drops a sword-cane.

There's a door there, but I won't know for certain for some time

On the other half of the room there yet more stuff I can't interact with in any way, and a piece of parchment (ripped in half) and another book. This is about Frederick De Witt, the pharmacist of the ship. He's also a poisoner and gambling expert. There's also a bookcase blocking a door, and a Pachinko machine, or whatever the non-gambling version is. Both unpushable, both useless to me now.

Carnby regretting his choices in attire

Door no. 3 is...a bathroom. With nothing in it. I don't remember large swaths of AitD 1 having this much dead space. Okay, back to the sword arms, I've got a sword again. There, the other half of the parchment, which is basically a hint for whenever I find an amulet. There's nothing more I can do here, so its back downstairs.

He's remarkably casual when violence is happening in the room

Doors are still locked, but the group of zombies aren't in the kitchen. Unfortunately, when I enter I get attacked by the statue, by some kind of homing trident. I figure out how to get past it eventually, by hugging the walls.

I feel like he's been waiting to work that into a conversation for quite a while

The kitchen is...interesting. The chef doesn't attack me at first, telling me that people like wine, and after making a round around the room, attacking me with a blowgun. The blowgun is incredibly deadly, firing rapidly, and for some reason this guy is difficult to hit with the sword. After managing to kill him...somehow. I find four items, poison, wine, a frying pan, fried eggs. The eggs heal me, the wine is a mystery as to what I actually do with it.

Well, why not?

It takes a lot of time to figure out what to do next. The statue has a crown on it, also acquired by hugging the wall. There's no clever place to put the wine nor is it very obvious as to what to do next. Once again, I look up a little direction, and I'm supposed to put the crown from the downstairs statue onto a different statue. I find it...upstairs. I think this is what the parchment I fixed earlier was supposed to tell me, but I'm not certain. Right now I'm also playing Legacy, and you know what? That game has a different problem with direction, in that its always too obvious. Why is this so hard?
This spawns an amulet, which I can't pick up. Why not? I can't reach it. Why can't I? I dunno. This game is annoying me with its puzzles. At this point I might as well just look up things anytime a problem could have been solved with an examine function. How do I know if its a problem with the examine function? I'll find one when I look it up hours later.

Sure would be nice if I could use those shotguns, but no...

On the 1st floor there are a pair of locked doors that I haven't been able to open. The idea should have been for me to figure out there's a pair of dudes in there that want wine, then give them the poisoned wine. This would have been quite clever if done in a way that made that understandable. Inside the room is another locked door, a couple of things I couldn't interact with, and a coin operated organ. Use one of the tokens to open the door. The other one didn't seem to do anything, so I'll hold onto it for now.

The nearest bathroom is a considerable walk away

Inside...is a bullet-proof vest and a tommy gun. I know what I'm going to have to do with these things. I'm going to have to kill the five goon squad. Something tells me this is going to be the trickiest part of the game so far...or one of the easiest. This game has been a rollercoaster so far, and the adventure game aspects have not been good. For a game supposedly aiming for a more action-y tone, we haven't had a good time of that yet.

Total Time: 5.5 hours

This Session: 2 hours