Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a PC game in which you descent into the far reaches an ancient mansion in Prussia. You start off the game apparently having taken something that erases your memory. When you wake up you find yourself in unfamiliar surroundings, soon after exploring your surroundings you discover a letter that you, yourself, must have written shortly before. It tells you to seek out Alexander in the inner sanctum and kill him.
Graphically this game looks like it could have come out during the early 2000's. Its not overly bland, but it does look dated, and I'm not talking about the structure you find yourself in. Of course that mansion, or castle, or whatever you want to consider it definitely has quite a few years on it. That becomes highly noticeable when you take into the factor all the candles and torches scattered throughout the area. I do have to say that I like the lighting effects in the game. Depending on what you lit, the area that would get that light would be different.
The sounds for this game are eerie, creepy, and made to make you jump. Right off the bat the game tells you to get the best experience you should wear your headphones. The split the audio up into left and right, and most times it gives you the creepy feeling of constantly going to stumble upon something strange. Probably the sound that haunted me the most was that of whatever was in the water (note to future gamers of this game, if there's water on the floor don't stand in it for too long or you'll get destroyed).
The controls are the basic WASD on the keyboard. Tab will bring up your inventory. F will allow you to utilize the lantern (once you get it, and if you have oil to burn). Shift will get you moving a bit faster, in the game they say run, but I say brisk walking pace. You'll also get to use Ctrl, which is used to duck, and you'll have to use that unless you want to draw attention to yourself with abominations in the room.
The story basically goes like this, and I'm sorry that I'm going to spoil the first little bit, you were part of an archeological team that went out into a desert to search for a tomb. You decide to press your luck and get trapped away from everyone else. You discover an orb, and then pass out. When you wake up you discover that the orb has been shattered. You pick up the pieces and get rescued. You spend countless days trying to get the orb back together, but it never works. Then one day after return back to London you get a message that says that the man who was leading the expedition has vanished, and that they have rounded up all the stuff left at his tent for your inspection. You go over his journal and discover that you were trapped for an hour, and should have suffocated in that time. Then with the fevered nightmares that you continuously you finally wake up and know how to put the orb together. Once that is done you start trying to reach out to anyone in your old friend's book. Finally a man by the name of Alexander, in Prussia, tells you that he can protect you. You are unsure as to who he will be protecting you from, but it definitely peaks your interest, and you decide to go. For the rest of the story you'll have to play the game.
The one thing that I will tell you is that things are not always going to stay the same. You're going to have to utilize items in your surrounds during different parts of the game. There's going to be many times when things of importance will be in rooms that you'll uncover. Anything that glows blue is something that you're going to want to hold on to. There's a lot of story that gets revealed in notes or journal entries, so pay close attention to those.
Finally whatever you do, if you decide that you want to play the game with the lights off, and the headphones on, make sure that you warn people to not bother you until you are done. There's a good chance that if you get wrapped up in the game you might find yourself literally attacking, out of fear, anyone that tries to tap you on the shoulder.
This game, in my opinion, could have been better with just one little thing, a map, add a map in there and this would have been a spooky, creepy, awesome game. There's too much back-tracking and trying to remember where things are to not warrant a map. So with that I'm going to have to say that if you're looking for something a bit different and scary on the PC, give this a whirl, as I give it a 7.8 out of 10.
