Together Alone In The Dark

Whoever's currently wearing the withered Atari skinsuit plans to release a new Alone In The Dark game before year's end, and whether the fact they're only putting out the first trailer now is a sign of confidence or otherwise is for looser tongues than mine to speculate about. I'm too preoccupied with the distinct absence of alone time in Alone In the Dark: Illumination, given it's a four player co-op monster shooter. I guess Together In The Dark sounded too spicy? I'd have gone for Foursome In The Dark myself.

Other naming crimes include that Illumination is being developed by a studio named Pure FPS. I can clearly see the player characters' shoulders, so that's a damned dirty lie.

Here you go: Vincent Price-alike, flashlights, demons, ratatatatatatatat and all that jazz. Trying to read between the lines of the fast cuts here, I'm anticipating a pretty straightforward third-person corridor stomper that's far more about the bang-bang-bang than puzzle-solving. Some may feel this is a betrayal, but I'm very much with Alice in thinking the AITD series has never quite earned the clout its name carries.

Apparently all four playable characters are descendants of original Alone In The Dark heroes. Given that every Alone In The Dark bar a Christmas minigame starred the same bloke, Edward Carnby, either he's been retconned as particularly frisky or Atari have been exploring the supporting cast. You know, all those guys we love so well - Johnny Demonbotherer, Annie IDontLikeGhosts and Ian Insidious.

You can pre-order Alone In The Dark: Illumination if something about the above ninety seconds of sibilant muttering and machine guns has floated your boat, but I'm going to go ahead and say 'wait for the reviews, eh?' Its release date is listed as 'Fall 2014', which surely means it'll arrive within the month.