I both love and hate horror games. Not "horror" games which feature people carrying guns bigger than me shooting demons in space. I mean proper horror games, which pit you against nasties from the nether regions of hell with little more than a light source and one too few changes of underwear.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the latter. In fact, some of the time you don't even have a light, which makes the change of underwear even more precious.
As mentioned, games that try to be scary while giving you enough weaponry to take down a zombified Genghis Khan are not scary at all. Sure they can make you jump with cheap shock scares, but once that has worn off you can send a kilo of buckshot through their face... providing they have one.
The true horror game strives to terrorize the players mind for hours; subtly building the tension up to a pants wettingly terrifying crescendo. Or not, you never know when things are going down. This is exactly what Amnesia does, and it does it so superbly that I found myself not wanting to play it for fear that I wouldn't have clean boxers for a while. That is the hate aspect of my relationship with horror games, but I love that it can do that to me.
The story of Amnesia follows a young chap called Daniel. He awakes in a strange castle with, you guessed it, amnesia. From the very start it seems like the whole castle is alive and not terribly thrilled that you're there. He stumbles upon a note written by himself telling him it's what needed to be done and that a man must be killed. The note also explains the feeling of constant dread within the castle. The man you want dead has summoned a nameless evil which has enveloped the town. Classic horror themes, don't you agree? But hey, if it isn't broken don't fix it.
While the main genre of the game is horror, the larger aspect of the game is puzzle solving. You get the standard locked door puzzles, interspersed with things such as finding ingredients for potions and fixing sewer systems. The range is great and nothing ever really feels like a chore. However, that could just be the overlying terror crushing every other emotion I had while playing.
The only problem I found with the puzzles stemmed from my own incompetence. Several times I found myself flailing around in the dark, having wasted all my lantern oil, trying to find the one thing needed to advance the plot. In the end the thing needed would be right under my nose, which would make me feel so incredibly stupid. I didn't like it, but it's probably almost exactly what I would be doing in Daniel's situation. That and sitting in a corner crying.
Throughout the game we're given the story in that most recent of literary devices, the audio log. Although, it's not strictly an audio log, but a written diary entry read aloud in Daniel's head. They gave a great insight into why you need to kill that man, Alexander of Brennenburg, but I've always felt it's a strange way of delivering story. Even more so with hand written diary entries. Audio recordings I can understand, as they're quick to make, but sitting down to write something erudite while being chased by ghoulies... doesn't seem plausible to me.
It's even less plausible when you find these notes in some of the darkest, dankest places of the castle. Oh look, one of my diary pages in a torture chamber in a dungeon. So that's where I left it, how silly of me.
Speaking of castle locations, it's not often a game can accurately give off a sense of foreboding with something as normal as a study. When you are dreading walking around a guest bedroom for fear of having your nads lopped off by a monster from the black lagoon, the thought of setting foot in a dungeon is outrageous. Other areas include food storage (where I lost several years off my life), laboratories and book archives. I don't think there is an area in the game which you can consider safe, which ramps up the psychological terror to all new heights. This is especially evident when the room looks safe. You could argue that this could saturate the game with horror, but it balances everything so well it's never mundane or frustrating horror.
Daniel's sanity plays a big part in how you play the game. The more crazy stuff you see, the more crazy you become. What I really found great, which I only realised after playing, was that my own stress levels were mirroring Daniel's sanity level almost perfectly. If he was fine, I was fine. If he was stressed, I was stressed. I played a lot of the game with friends present and I think I can safely say we all let a little bit of wee come out at some points.
In my opinion, this is one of the scariest, creepiest and most of all best games of recent years. I can't think of many games that have drawn me into it's world and been so good at what it does. The only downsides to the game came from my own bumbling nature. It's a true horror game and it's almost perfect.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the latter. In fact, some of the time you don't even have a light, which makes the change of underwear even more precious.
As mentioned, games that try to be scary while giving you enough weaponry to take down a zombified Genghis Khan are not scary at all. Sure they can make you jump with cheap shock scares, but once that has worn off you can send a kilo of buckshot through their face... providing they have one.
The true horror game strives to terrorize the players mind for hours; subtly building the tension up to a pants wettingly terrifying crescendo. Or not, you never know when things are going down. This is exactly what Amnesia does, and it does it so superbly that I found myself not wanting to play it for fear that I wouldn't have clean boxers for a while. That is the hate aspect of my relationship with horror games, but I love that it can do that to me.
The story of Amnesia follows a young chap called Daniel. He awakes in a strange castle with, you guessed it, amnesia. From the very start it seems like the whole castle is alive and not terribly thrilled that you're there. He stumbles upon a note written by himself telling him it's what needed to be done and that a man must be killed. The note also explains the feeling of constant dread within the castle. The man you want dead has summoned a nameless evil which has enveloped the town. Classic horror themes, don't you agree? But hey, if it isn't broken don't fix it.
While the main genre of the game is horror, the larger aspect of the game is puzzle solving. You get the standard locked door puzzles, interspersed with things such as finding ingredients for potions and fixing sewer systems. The range is great and nothing ever really feels like a chore. However, that could just be the overlying terror crushing every other emotion I had while playing.
The only problem I found with the puzzles stemmed from my own incompetence. Several times I found myself flailing around in the dark, having wasted all my lantern oil, trying to find the one thing needed to advance the plot. In the end the thing needed would be right under my nose, which would make me feel so incredibly stupid. I didn't like it, but it's probably almost exactly what I would be doing in Daniel's situation. That and sitting in a corner crying.
Throughout the game we're given the story in that most recent of literary devices, the audio log. Although, it's not strictly an audio log, but a written diary entry read aloud in Daniel's head. They gave a great insight into why you need to kill that man, Alexander of Brennenburg, but I've always felt it's a strange way of delivering story. Even more so with hand written diary entries. Audio recordings I can understand, as they're quick to make, but sitting down to write something erudite while being chased by ghoulies... doesn't seem plausible to me.
It's even less plausible when you find these notes in some of the darkest, dankest places of the castle. Oh look, one of my diary pages in a torture chamber in a dungeon. So that's where I left it, how silly of me.
Speaking of castle locations, it's not often a game can accurately give off a sense of foreboding with something as normal as a study. When you are dreading walking around a guest bedroom for fear of having your nads lopped off by a monster from the black lagoon, the thought of setting foot in a dungeon is outrageous. Other areas include food storage (where I lost several years off my life), laboratories and book archives. I don't think there is an area in the game which you can consider safe, which ramps up the psychological terror to all new heights. This is especially evident when the room looks safe. You could argue that this could saturate the game with horror, but it balances everything so well it's never mundane or frustrating horror.
Daniel's sanity plays a big part in how you play the game. The more crazy stuff you see, the more crazy you become. What I really found great, which I only realised after playing, was that my own stress levels were mirroring Daniel's sanity level almost perfectly. If he was fine, I was fine. If he was stressed, I was stressed. I played a lot of the game with friends present and I think I can safely say we all let a little bit of wee come out at some points.
In my opinion, this is one of the scariest, creepiest and most of all best games of recent years. I can't think of many games that have drawn me into it's world and been so good at what it does. The only downsides to the game came from my own bumbling nature. It's a true horror game and it's almost perfect.
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