Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review

It's been such a long time, perhaps a week or so, since the release of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I have to say, I feel quite disappointed in myself for not posting a review sooner, but with school starting, it's hard to keep myself writing back on here. Nonetheless, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a game that is truly deserving of a good review. While I'm not entirely sure my writing skill is at the point where I can convey my thoughts the way that they appear in my delusional mind, there is just too much good to be said about this game. Here goes:

That's one heck of a wishing well.

There are a lot of games now that generate hype long before they are released. Through little teasers, images, and bits of expositional information, these games worm their way into your heart like the latest conspiracy theory does for a hippie. For me, Amnesia was one of those games. Of course, it wasn't blind hope; I had played games by Frictional Games before, most notably Penumbra: The Black Plague, which still remains one of my favorite horror games to this day. It's one of the few modern horror games that focuses on what's actually important in a horror game: the atmosphere. With the lights shut and my room barricaded off, I was immersed in a world that I couldn't logically separate from reality because I was too scared to. This immersion and detail to environment was really what set it apart from other 3D horror games I had played.

"Ehhh.... I'll leave this for the night guy."

Long story short, Amnesia: The Dark Descent was everything I wanted it to be and more. It's almost as if they directly catered to the article I had wrote about adventure horror games and then pulled an Emeril Lagasse and kicked it up a notch. Not only did it have one of the most beautifully detailed environments I have seen in a horror game, it managed to be even more immersive than Penumbra. Although there were a couple things that I wish had been done differently, the fact that these developers focused on the right factors that make a good horror game is enough to earn them some type of prestigious award that they should proudly display on their lapels.

Darn you shimmering light and your false hope!

I think what made me most happy with Amnesia: The Dark Descent is that you can't use any type of weapon. In fact, there's no way to actually kill the lurking threat that awaits in the darkness. This, I assure you, is a great thing. As I have said before, the less you are able to confront your attacker, the more fear their presence instills within you. You'll spend most of your time shaking in your boots as you peer around corners as inconspicuously as possible; scanning through the darkness with what little light your lantern throws off. If you're like me, you might even barricade yourself in a room for a couple minutes before you regain composure and travel off into the unknown. Unfortunately, because you deal with the presence of these shadow lurkers so often throughout, your fear of them might begin to wear off before the game reaches its end. While you'll never be completely liberated from your fear, you might eventually start to garner enough braveness to want to confront the monster. However, even if that is the case, the game certainly does not drop off the nervous tension that you gradually acquire as you play through. It was actually towards the end that I had a couple "Oh My Gawd!" moments that almost resulted in me inadvertently throwing my mouse in the air in a bout of shock stricken fear, which is strange considering they were the moments where I knew something was soon going to happen.

Something witty should be here.

The frights and scares are intensified by the solid adventure mechanics of the game. Your constant need of light is a good example of this. While your character may go temporarily insane when enshrouded in darkness, you can take comfort in that fact that you're not going to die from lack of candle light. It is a welcomed feature, because it allows you to progress through the game and establish light as you see fit. It also creates tension in the sense that you need to carefully preserve resources. This survivalist approach can also been seen in the physics enabled puzzles, which are logically created to be solved quite simply. After all, why burden a player with having to solve overcomplicated puzzles if they're scared out of their minds? It just wouldn't make sense; even I have to admit the ridiculous usage of walkthroughs to complete quite a few of the horror games I have beaten. Anyway, you'll usually be thinking about how to be solve a simple contraption or quickly pondering how to get from point A to point B, and with the horror elements the game provides, this is a more than satisfying experience.

One of my favorite environments of the game

There's not much about the story I can say without revealing anything that could take away from the experience. I will say however, that the weakest point that I experienced in the game was its multiple endings. It's good to see that they wanted the player to make an impression that would ultimately change the fate of a character they had grown accustomed to, but I couldn't help but feel every ending just wasn't very satisfying. However, looking back, I can say that I did enjoy the journey there. I found the main character strangely likable and the rest of the voice-overs particularly fitting. On a side note, the game also has an editor available for it, allowing you to create your own fantasized horror adventure. While it's not as customizable as the popular editors, it's charmingly simple and intuitive.

The staircase of doom

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is one of the best choices for any horror/adventure game fan to play. It has an irresistible sense of immersion and sticks to the elements that make a good horror game. However, you must go into the game looking for the experience it has to offer rather than it's completion. I applaud the developers at Frictional Games for creating such a solid experience and wish them the best in their future creations. While there were a few issues such as the arguably disappointing endings, I found myself looking past them because of how much the game did right; things that it perfected. The eight or nine hours I spent in it's clutches were terrifyingly awesome, and the relief I felt when lighting a candle, finding oil for my lamp, or even acquiring enough boxes so that I could forge a wall blockading a suspicious-looking door is a testament to its greatness.