Review – Amnesia: The Dark Descent

First question: have you ever been scared by video game? And I don’t mean that you got kinda jumpy after an unexpected quick time event or that you thought some zombies looked rather creepy. I’m talking about being terrified of what lurks around the corner, of not knowing what horrors could possibly be thrown at you next, about hesitating to ever play the game again in case it leads to insomnia. If yes, on to question 2: Did you carry on playing anyway? If you can’t answer yes to both those questions, you should never under any circumstances play Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

The first significant item you find in Amnesia sets the tone perfectly, it’s a letter from yourself and it states 4 things: That your name is Daniel. That you can’t remember who you are because you CHOSE to forget the past. That your objective is to descend to the deepest depths of castle Brennenburg and kill Baron Alexander. And most importantly, that you’re being perused by a sinister darkness that cannot be killed or subdued; all you can do is run. I honestly can’t stress that last one enough. Throughout Amnesia the only thing that’s going to be on your mind is that one step behind you is something that can’t ever be overcome, and if it ever catches up, it will destroy you.

The narrative itself focuses far more on what happened to Daniel before his amnesia rather than your quest to murder Alexander. But as there are no NPCs that don’t want to kill you on sight, most of the plot has to be fed to you through Daniel’s frequent hallucinations of past events as well as the ever indispensable diary pages scattered around each location. The only real let down of all this well written exposition is when Daniel’s rather uninspiring voice talks over the top if of it. Upon hearing it for the first time I began to imagine him as a parent reading their child a bedtime story rather than someone trapped in an unending nightmare of unrelenting terror. It’s not a game-breaker or anything; it’s just disappointing when every other aspect of the game has been so finely crafted.

It’s also a rather embarrassing oversight when you consider this isn’t Frictional Games first attempt to crack the psychological horror formula; for the last few years they’ve been busy peddling their “Penumbra” franchise with mixed success. While those games were pretty scary for similar reasons as Amnesia, they were let down by some slightly lacklustre graphics. You know, there’s a good reason most small independent studios don’t generally make these sort of “first person perspective with realistic graphics” type games, they can never live up to the absurdly high expectations that all the big name console releases have forced upon us. But instead of learning from their mistakes and opting for a more stylised approach in their next game, they just went ahead and tried it again with Amnesia……and totally pulled it off. Judging from visuals alone you’d not be blamed for thinking it’s some sort of high profile console game and not some crazy independent title you bought on a whim while browsing Steam.

But of course, what indi game would be complete without a quirky mechanic that’d make a publisher throw a hissy fit? The graphics might be distinctly mainstream but Amnesia still proudly upholds the time honoured indi tradition of making a big deal about simulated physics. In this case, just like the Penumbra games, interacting with objects is done through making push and pull gestures with the mouse. That is to say, to open a draw you’d have to click it to “grab” the handle then pull the mouse towards you, or to rotate a crank you’d have to “grab” and then move your mouse around in a circular motion. While it’s easy to write it off as a simple gimmick as it’s a lot fiddlier than just clicking stuff, how many horror games let you slowly open a door just a crack so you can peak at what’s on the other side, then slam it shut when you realise whatever’s there probably doesn’t like you very much? It’s all part of Amnesia’s finely crafted atmosphere that’s designed to make you feel far more human and vulnerable than you’re probably used to in a video game.

However Amnesia’s main entrance into your subconscious is through your ears rather than your hands. Right from the start you’re bombarded with sounds of distant footsteps, eerie moans and blood curdling screams. Don’t even think about trying to play with the sound off, as much as it’s going to creep you out it’s also essential for survival. Lacking any sort of HUD or gadgets the only way you can tell if something just round the corner is about to chew your face off is to listen out for the right audio cues. From a gameplay perspective it’s rather a haphazard method of threat detection as the game delights in throwing numerous false positives at you at every turn; without trial and error there’s no way to know if that noise you just heard was just some ambiance meant to creep you out, or a warning that Cthulhu is standing right behind you and wants to scoop out your brains with his giant claws. It keeps you on edge and everything but it also means avoiding an untimely death can be as much about luck as it is skill. As frustrating as that can be, it’s also an integral part of the Amnesia experience.

You see it’s not the physical monsters you’re going to fear the most, it’s the ones you don’t see. The ones you slowly begin to conjure up in your mind long before you even encounter something that can hurt you. It’s all about an irrational fear of the unknown, of what MIGHT lurk round the corner rather than a very rational fear of a slack jawed zombie tearing chucks out of your face. That’s not to say Amnesia doesn’t have its fair share of violence and gore, but its more there for the purpose of mental suggestion rather than shock value, and not just for the player but also for Daniel himself.

Keeping Daniel sane is in fact a major part of the game, spend too long in dimly lit areas or witness too many unsettling events and he’ll begin to flip out. While the sanity system isn’t as crazy as the one in Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, letting it get too low will distort your vision and extenuate some of the already disturbing ambient sounds. The only items you have available to stem the tide of Daniel’s psychosis is some oil for a handheld lantern and a few tinderboxes for lighting candles, both of which are in very finite supply. However, trying to keep Daniel both sane and alive this way is a very dangerous economy. Even though it sends him crazy, the darkness is the only place monsters can’t see you very well, so get too carried away with bathing yourself in light and you’ve got nowhere left to hide when the time comes. This dynamic makes you torn between making the game a little less scary, but at the same time making you more of a target for the shambling horrors. That is, unless you go into the options and turn off the insanity effects……ya big wuss.

The sanity system does fall apart a little bit once you realise standing in the light doesn’t actually recover any sanity, it just nullifies the effects and stops Daniel freaking out anymore than he already has. To actually recover sanity you have to reach progress checkpoints or complete puzzles. However what passes for puzzles in Amnesia is rather laughable, it often feels like they’re just excuses to show off the physics engine rather than present any sort of cerebral challenge. But somehow they still manage to be difficult, not in the traditional sense but more in a “how the hell was I meant to know that” kind of way. So you know what I’m talking about, here’s the first “puzzle” in Amnesia: The door to the next level is behind a bookcase, but to move the bookcase you need to find and pull a switch. But you’re not told there’s a switch or that the way forward is behind the bookcase. You’re just expected to know without any indication that that small wooden thing in the corner that looks an awful lot like a clothes peg is meant to be a switch, and it happens to be one you need to pull in order to progress. The progress checkpoints can be a bit of a hassle too, a lot of them tend to cause new monsters or scripted events to spawn that will almost instantly negate a good chuck of the recovered sanity anyway.

But that’s fine right? All Survival horror protagonists these days come equipped with an armoury of weapons complete with copious amounts of ammo! Who needs to worry about recovering sanity when you can just blow the zombies away with a shotgun? Bad luck, Amnesia brings you crashing back down to earth pretty fast by giving you a grand total of zero weapons and no way to fight back; if something spots you, it really is run or die. You can try using the physics engine to throw stuff at the monsters if you want, but I can tell you right now that’s not going to work out well for you. Hell, that’s if you can even bring yourself to look in the general direction of the damm things. Amnesia might be all about the horrors of the unseen but that doesn’t stop the monsters appearance from being truly horrific at any distance, the game even starts hacking away at Daniel’s (and your own) sanity as well as giving away your location if you glimpse them for more than a few seconds.

Your only real “weapon” is to try and hide like some sort of Lovecraftian Solid Snake. Huddling up inside inconspicuous cupboards is the most effective method but in a pinch the best you can do is take advantage of the monsters poor eyesight and the camouflage bonus given by crouching. Yes that’s right, your best method for hiding from the monsters is to cower away in a dark corner with your back turned and just pray to got they don’t notice you. Lets be honest now, this is exactly what most of us would do if confronted by a monster in real life; if you don’t start eyeing up the Esc key at this point in the game, then you’re certainly made of harder stuff than I. It’s also a perfect example of how all the games mechanics (both good and bad) come together to hit your fear senses on the most primal level. The first person perspective, HUD-less interface, realistic object manipulation, lack of ways to fight back, sanity system, noise based threat location and absence of the usual super human endurance are all designed to force one idea into your head: You are Daniel; his pain is your pain.

As long as you don’t let its few minor flaws get to you, then Amnesia can become one of the most immersive experiences you can have with a video game. But be warned: it’s also an experience for sensory masochists only, don’t enter unless you’re sure you can take the punishment Amnesia dishes out……or just don’t ever sleep again I guess, it’s you’re call.

[starreviewmulti id=3 tpl=20]

The Good

• Utterly terrifying.
• Near perfect atmosphere.
• Immersive control scheme.

The Bad

• Simple puzzles that are somehow still difficult to figure out.
• Sanity too difficult to recover.
• Avoiding monsters based 50% on luck.
• Daniel’s voice actor.

Recommended similar games
Penumbra: Black Plague/Overture
System Shock 2.
Condemned: Criminal Origins/Bloodshot
Forbidden Siren: 1/2/Blood Curse