Overdue Review: Amnesia: The Dark Descent (PC)

Halloween may have long since come and gone, but Butler decided that the holiday season was a good time to scare himself silly.  More after the jump!

I have a weird relationship with the survival horror genre.  I've mentioned before how much I love the way that, when done effectively, games like Silent Hill (or its even better sequel) can pull you in to the story and really give one a visceral understanding of what its like to run screaming from a pyramid-headed rape demon.  Unfortunately, my understanding of such scenarios is generally crapping myself in fear as part of a wholly natural response.  Oftentimes, I get too freaked out to play the games for a while simply because I know the "on" button on my console essentially means "turn off sleep".  Silent Hill 2 took me about 4 months of on again/off again playing simply because I would have to take periodic breaks until I forgot how shitless this game scared me and had the desire to soldier on for a little longer.  When I heard of this little title called Penumbra by Frictional Games that was supposed to be actually scary (rather than simply "surprising" a la Dead Space), I figured I'd try it out.  I made it an hour before I just didn't want to play anymore because it was too stressful.  So to say that I was hesitant to pick up Frictional's latest offering, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, would be an understatement, and I simply let it be for a while.  I seem to completely lack a long term memory, though, and bought it on a much heralded sale on Steam, so let's get to it.

I'll answer the big question right now and say that yes, this game is REALLY scary.  You play as Edward, who has a case of plot-convenient amnesia (big surprise there) who awakens to find himself in a big scary castle with a note written by past Edward telling him to find and kill the guy who lives there.  So away you go to scrounge for items and solve puzzles, both physics based and otherwise.  But there is a catch, and that is that there is a dark force following you intent on making sure your bowels remain completely empty at all times.  But Amnesia knows how to play its cards when it comes to pacing.  The first hour, the game seems to be doing nothing but toying with you: doors blow open, stuff levitates, screams can be heard echoing down the corridors, stuff oozes out of the walls, yet you remain desolately and utterly alone.  It was probably an hour and a half before I even saw my first monster, but since you know that they're coming, you spend the entire time dreading what might happen.  And this is where the game genuinely shines: you and your constant sense of dread are your own worst enemies.  All the game has to do is make you think that something could be lurking around every corner, and its work is done.

Innocuous fountain, or stuff of your nightmares? The answer may
surprise you.

An interesting feature of this game, and one that absolutely contributes to the richly intense atmosphere, is that combat is absolutely never an option.  You literally do not fight a single thing.  You can survive about three hits, but can do nothing to defend yourself save run screaming from the room and go hide in the dark.  Even when you are hiding, however, you have to worry about the affects on your psyche.  Amnesia features a "sanity meter" that gets drained by seeing unnatural events or things (like monsters), or being in the dark for too long.  Draining the meter completely makes your movements appear jerky and your vision much more myopic, so you really don't want to let that happen too often.  You can light torches and candles with tinder boxes you find in the environment, or use a lantern provided you have enough oil in order to keep your sanity while you explore the castle.  Illuminate too many areas, however, and you won't have any place to hide when you need to, and having the lantern out for too long leads monsters right to you.  Sanity is restored by making progress or solving puzzles, but the game usually immediately trades the carrot for the stick and spawns a monster whenever you reach one of these milestones.

Did you enjoy the 10 seconds you weren't going out of your mind?

I suppose that formula's predictability is what starts to grate on me after a while.  Don't get me wrong, actually escaping from the monsters is still a pretty exciting affair, but I started to get a pretty decent sense of when one would appear, which removed an element of unpredictability.  The environments definitely started to get to me as well, as you can only traipse around so many samey castle environments before they start to lose their intimidating Gothic feel.  Lastly, the story is somewhat ho-hum.  There's the usual mad-scientist/sorcerer mumbo jumbo combined with ancient evil forces, with you as the unsuspecting victim in the middle of it all.  It's not bad per se, but anyone who has ever read any H. P. Lovecraft will have a pretty good idea of how all of this plays out.

Badly. Badly, is how these things generally play out.

I never really found the plot to be something that detracted from the overall depth and intensity of the game's atmosphere, though.  This isn't really a game that you play for a unique story.  Amnesia pulls you in on the merits of its strong gameplay, well crafted physics engine, intuitive controls, and meticulously terrifying pacing. This isn't a game to sit down and play when you want to feel like a winner, as it never lets you feel that way for a second, but if you have been longing for a game to lose yourself in that leaves your heart racing long after you've stopped playing, then Amnesia would probably be a welcome addition to your collection.  Just don't blame me when you have to reupholster your couch or office chair.