8.9 hours played
Written 13 days ago
[i]19th of August, 1839
I wish I could ask you how much you remember.[/i]
[h1]Briefly[/h1]
[i]Amnesia: The Dark Descent[/i] is an older classic horror title, serving as almost a generational gap between the old and new. Notably, though, it introduced the wider world to horror games, and retains the title of classic horror title for good reasons.
[h1]The Good, Neutral and Bad[/h1]
[b]The Good[/b]
-The maps and general environment help to make the game feel rustic and uneasy.
-Puzzles are mostly well telegraphed and intuitive to understand.
-Horrifying enemy designs.
-Depiction of the horror that man can inflict on his comrades.
-The main antagonists are fascinating and feel the way they should, like a relentless killer and a madman using you for their benefit.
-Sounds of wind and creaking wood add to a dilapidated and dangerous atmosphere.
-Lore from notes.
[b]The Ambivalent[/b]
-Sanity sounds emphasize losing your sanity to unimaginable horrors, but get old and annoying very quick.
-The game is surprisingly easy and light on jumpscares. I only died a handful of times, mostly by accident or going in the monster's face for fun.
-Resource management is surprisingly easy. You can see rather well in the dark and conserve oil and tinder without a struggle.
-Many of the rooms are integrated into the story somehow. While this ensures you see what the developers want you to see, there are very few rooms that are thought provoking and actually optional.
-Heavy railroading, though this is still because the game is a story-based horror experience.
[b]The Bad[/b]
-Towards the endgame, the game starts taking Lovecraftian leaps of faith, resembling more a Dungeons and Dragons campaign rather than a rustic horror game set in a decaying castle. This happens both lore/story-wise as map-wise - for example, the castle's dimensions lose meaning in the endgame, with vast and open environments sprawling everywhere.
-The ending is kind of anticlimactic and sudden, even. On top of that, you can easily get the bad ending because the grab mechanics are very finicky in the ending. It also leaves things open and unanswered.
-The puzzles that aren't telegraphed well will have you bashing your head against a wall for an hour before solving it, if not straight up searching online for a solution.
-Enemies disappear almost at random, making it feel too forgiving. Even if they go into a room without an exit, they might disappear regardless.
-Enemies have no object permanence, and the rooms are designed around this.
-The game is simply too forgiving. You're not often put in between a rock and a hard place.
-Sanity mechanics can cause headaches because of the visual effects. Cutscenes flash white, discouraging you from playing in a darkened room.
-You're often not in actual danger. The mobs feel like they're there for show, rather than there to chase you and make you strategize. When you are in danger, you most likely have plenty of space to maneuver in without stress.
[h1]Story[/h1]
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is based around its name - waking up as a man who doesn't remember anything, in a foreboding castle boasting Prussian eagles and diminished, collapsing walls, guided only by notes seemingly written by your past self in search of answers and closure, going deeper and deeper into a mind forgotten in a castle. This story is largely told through notes, allowing you to infer the true horrors of past, present and even future.
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
While being [i]the[/i] horror game that will pop up on the edge of anyone's mind when thinking of the horror genre, it also created some tropes and fundamental mechanics, if even clichés, that later horror games have come to embrace in at least some way.
For example, puzzles play a large part in the game, such as physics puzzles and puzzles of order. Though admittedly, some of the puzzles only seem to serve to artificially extend the playtime, giving little to no lore on the game world and not being as realistically feasible in the game's world.
The monsters encountered have also been invested into significantly. Not only do they look horrifying - human, yet still distinctly something else entirely - but their encounters are also designed to be both navigable but still terrifying, despite some weakness in their AI and abundance. Their chase themes serve to drive point the home of terror and just what they are, even sounding a tad fit for the game's era.
There is also the management of important resources, which seeks to induce stress in the player, especially those who are made easily anxious. Tinderboxes and oil exist to preserve the most important resource of all, your sanity and player comfort. However, they are also seriously omnipresent and hardly necessary, even if you don't know where you're going or what you're doing. Generous exploration by mid-game will likely have resulted in enough oil and tinder to last you to the end.
[h1]Graphics[/h1]
The graphics of Amnesia are iconic and impressive for its time. However, it does inevitably suffer from the curse of the passage of time, as models are left lacking detail on close-ups, looking blobby. They do still however serve their purpose of making the game look good well and give the game the feeling of a different era in time, where Napoleon was still a somewhat recent memory.
[h1]Sound Design[/h1]
Undoubtedly one of the strongest parts of Amnesia, if not the strongest, the sound design is superb. From the beginning's ever-present wind, wooden creaking to the monsters' grunts, groans and walking, it create an uneasy atmosphere of tension and serves as the first warning to the player of danger in the castle's depths, while also setting the stage.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
[i]Amnesia: The Dark Descent[/i] is a cornerstone of the genre of horror in gaming, and for several worthy reasons. It is brutal in telling the story it wishes to tell, with small hints of the horror of the self spread along the fear of the dark and monsters. It engrosses the player into its story with notes and thoughts rather than quest objectives and arrows, while also being designed well enough to make sure the player doesn't get lost often. The audio is well thought out and works to both create tension and help the player. All this coalesces to form a perturbing atmosphere fit for a game of its caliber.
However, the game is dated and has weak points that somewhat detract from the experience; the most notable of which is the fact that it is too forgiving, too easy. The challenge of managing sanity is negligible when almost nothing stops you from standing still for minutes on end, (practically months in game terms) waiting for it to regenerate all the while you have far too much tinder and oil in your inventory to even remotely worry about scavenging potentially dangerous rooms for more; scavenging itself is also practically free of risk. Naturally, there are other, more minor or marginal weak points in the game, such as oversights or lore faith-leaps, but this ease at which the game can be played, even as a comparatively new entrée to the horror genre along with the low grade of the tension, which seems to be intended for players who are faint of heart, serve as the game's most notable problems.
However, the game is still very much so worth it to play through. It even manages to retain surprises, even for those introduced to it earlier from videos or other media. The game still does feel as if the player is always somewhat at threat of siege, with the feeling of dread still following the player most steps along the way.
[b]8.0/10
