No, I've played all of the Alone in the Dark games. I went out of my way to play every entry in all of the 'classic horror franchises', such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and indeed Alone in the Dark. So as a result I have played AitD 1-3 (and the Jack in the Dark thing) as well as New Nightmare and the two attempts at a reboot in the last decade. I haven't played the Gameboy version of New Nightmare or those weird semi-related but not really horror games to the original series I can't remember the name off the top starring the Knights and classic AitD gameplay and by the same studio though.
The two best games easily I think are the original and New Nightmare, the first due to being both innovative for the time and nailing a few things they were going for (the immediate sequels after it went a bit sillier than the original), and New Nightmare was a god Resident Evil clone that did some interesting things with its setting, two characters, etc. I do also think AitD2 has some interesting elements even if sillier though, it's definitely unique at the very least.
I was just mentioning their two most recent attempts in the last decade. AitD 2008 is kind of all over the place, it's actually a highly ambitious game and did a number of things before they were popular, and has some hilarious wonkiness, dialogue, and at the very least is not boring as the game keeps on throwing weird scenario after weird scenario at you (everything from a weird sequence you're a firefighter, to open world exploration of New York's Central Park, to fighting off a giant bat tornado, to a chapter with forklift puzzles, to a first-person 'walking simulator' chapter, to this one bit you're eaten up, go through, and shit out by a giant worm). AitD 2008 I would classify as one of the most interestingly cheesy games of all time. This is also backed with this over-the-top orchestra soundtrack the game doesn't really deserve, hilarious cutscene direction, and the gameplay trying to be everything and the kitchen sink.
Illumination I suffered through with some friends and we did beat it all the way. It's a bit sad to see, there's some glimmer of inspiration behind the title a bit in as they try to throw in some differing scenarios through its campaigns and some decent level design for some of the maps, but it suffers too much from just overall jank (the combat in the game is absolutely terrible and it's what you spend so much of your time doing), game design flaws, glitches, and frankly for many I'm sure it was just a bad idea (for example, who thinks to take a franchise named ALONE in the Dark and turn it into this co-op thing?). It's a bad game straight out I wouldn't recommend to anyone, but having played it all the way through there's some signs of greater ambition behind it, but that doesn't mean much when the end product is shit. Now they did update the game after I played it that apparently made it a bit better, all I know is they fixed some things, added a new enemy type, and some people say it got better after they patched it, but I wouldn't know and don't plan to go back to it. For the record that patch came like a year and a half after the game released.
