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It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a game; I believe the last one that I reviewed was Are You Afraid of the Dark?: Tale of Orpheo’s Curse, a horror adventure game that puts you in the shoes of one of the story tellers of the Midnight Society (90’s, YO!).
So in continuing with games that stick to my roots, I decided to play Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games, after seeing a few 4 Player Podcast vids and thinking “This’ll be fun to play!”
My Amnesia experience can be described in one rhetorical question with only three words:
DEAR GOD, WHY!?!?
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a First Person Horror Adventure game that takes place in the mid 1800’s, inside an ancient castle. You play as a character named Daniel, whom, appropriately enough, has amnesia, after
consuming a drink aptly named “Amnesia” (Am I saying Amnesia enough?). Daniel comes across a note telling him to kill a manknown as Baron Alexander of Brennenburg. The note comes from his former self. Alexander resides in the deepest part of the castle known as the Inner Sanctum; you’re reading this note when you’re roughly at the ENTRANCE of the castle.
The note also tells you that a Shadow is following you. Well…following isn’t necessarily the best word for it, more that, IT’S FUCKING CHASING YOU! You can find this out the moment that you try to escape the castle.
When you finish the note, you go off on your quest to banish Alexander, all the while, FREAKING THE HELL OUT at the various sounds, graphic moments, and monsters that you will see in the game.
Here’s the thing, though: you won’t see a monster for a long while. You will see a few, but only out of the corner of
your eye. And they won’t attack you for some time. It’s only after you get past an INTENSE WATER PART that the monsters that you glimpsed before will start actively pursuing you.
Aside from the scares, one of the major draws of this game is the Sanity Meter. It is an image of Daniel’s mental state (depicted as a brain) that takes hits when you view unsettling things, or you stay in the darkness for too long (as Daniel is, indeed, afraid of the dark.). The sanity meter can take major hits during some story parts in the game and when your sanity gets too low, your vision gets very blurry, you start to move sluggishly, and you start to hallucinate.
You start getting auditory hallucinations, hearing voices, and seeing bodies appear in areas where they weren’t before! The sanity meter can represent both Daniel’s AND the player’s mental state as they play in the game (as seen in my last play through Amnesia, in which I nearly snap after seeing the most straightforward memento that I’ve gotten in the game).
Oh and don’t even thinking about fighting the monsters when you see them: You can’t fight…at all. There are no guns to stave off the monsters, no spells to burn them, no nothing. Your method for dealing with monsters is to stealthily move around and away from them, while not looking at them. Mainly because the monsters are so grotesque that if Daniel even looks at them, his sanity will start to drop. This ultimately makes him easier to spot.
Another draw for this game is light. Light interacts with the environment in many different ways, but for Daniel, light also acts as a means of security. This isn’t called “The Dark Descent” for nothing; there are areas that are quite dark, thus requiring you to light up torches and candles in various rooms and hallways using a limited supply of
tinderboxes. You also have a lantern that you can refill with oil to keep the flame alive for a long while. The thing is, while the light can help Daniel see in dark areas and even help him regain a bit of his sanity, it also makes Daniel VERY VISIBLE TO MONSTERS if they are in pursuit of him. Thus, using your lantern sparingly and staying in the darkness is a viable strategy…just watch your sanity. The game’s only drawback is the controls, as they are a little difficult to work with. Movement and inventory management is pretty straight forward, but some of the point-and-drag aspects of the game can be a little difficult to manage. For instance, unless you’re moving from one area to another, opening doors requires you to hold down the left mouse button and manually drag the mouse backward or forward to open or close it. It takes a while to master, but if you don’t have that down by the time chase scenes become more intense, you’re kinda boned.
That aside, though, the game itself is quite amazing. The story is well paced, in that events seem to unfold fairly reasonably, not too fast, and not too slow. The puzzles that you do in the game range from normal to a little challenging, and can require you to go to multiple rooms in order to solve them. The interactions with the monsters is well done in that you do NOT see them often, which ups the tension that much more when you actually do encounter them.
Ya’ll know of the various horror games that I have played…this game here managed to beat out the Fatal Frame series for scaring the ever loving hell out of me, and that’s saying something. Hell, it managed to scare me so bad, that I didn’t return to it for roughly 6 months (and then two months…and then two weeks…). Don’t let the fact that this is an independent game fool you; the game manages its scares in such a way that it would make H.P. Lovecraft weep tears of joy…in which said tears would produce a pool big enough for something to splash around in…
…
…
…oh damn, that’s a bad thought D:
Those that let their imagination do the work when it comes to playing horror games like these will either get a kick out of this, or MOVE AS FAR AWAY FROM THIS GAME AS POSSIBLE! This game will play on those fears…it will mess with your head…it will encourage your imagination to run wild…in the worst…way…possible.
Highly Recommended that this game be played.
--Chocothunda (7/30/2012)
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