I spent the last three to four days playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I had nothing else to do for that period, and still the game only clocks about 10 hours of actual play time. How do those two things come together, you wonder? By not being able to stand the dread and terror for longer than fifteen minutes at a time, with one hour breaks in between sessions. That, and following Frictional Games' advice to play the game only after dusk. 
 
This game.. Where do I even begin? Even though I've finished it a few hours ago, it's still as present in my mind as if I'd never closed it. 
 
First, don't be put off by the protagonist suffering from amnesia. Forget about it. Your first thought will be to snort condescendingly and put it off as a cliché, and while it kind of is, it's executed more along the lines of Memento, and less as a device to help the writer excuse the lack of back story. Overall, while Frictional Games do draw from the cliché-box from time to time (especially regarding locations), they know how to apply it gracefully. 
 
Which helps me to swiftly segue to my next point, which consists of praise regarding all the times they do shit you don't expect. At all. Frictional Games is pushing boundaries, just like they did with the Penumbra series way back when. My headline already indicates that I believed the genre to be dead; especially after games like Dead Space and F.E.A.R. were praised as horror, just because some people can't handle little girls playing peek-a-boo. The latest PC game I found worthy of the survival horror label was Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth... up until you got a gun, and the game started to suck. Which is still a proper hour! Well, in Amnesia, you don't have a gun. Or any other weapon. Ever.
 
 
Oh, damn! Actually, this should be all the review you need about this game - Amnesia: The Dark Descent is 10 hours of Dark Corners of the Earth's Hotel level. 
  
 

 
...I'll probably write a proper review, anyway. For now I'm still processing what the game has done to my psyche. It's not just a strain on Daniel's sanity.

I'm probably about halfway through Amnesia right now, and loving it.  Great atmosphere, really compelling story, and the puzzles are pretty solid too (generally not too stupidly easily, and not too ridiculously abstract).  
 
I do think Dead Space was a pretty damn good game, though, too.

Yeah, it was scary, but after the storage level I think the scares went a bit downhill. I didn't really jump or anything the closer I got to the end. Still a great game though.

I can only play this game for very short bursts before I get to freaked out.
 
Haven't been this frightened by a game since I played the Penumbra games.
 
I'm in the cellar archives right now, and there's something in the water......

" @TheSeductiveMoose: Yeah, you may want to stay out of the water... "

This has to be the first game in a decade that I envy the PC gamers. Let's hope it does well enough for the publisher to demand a console port. 
 
 
Huh, "a console port". The good old days.

When trying to come up with a reason to JUST START THE GAME, even if amnesia's a cliche it winds up being the best way to tell the player: "you're going to make up the context as you go along, stop trying to use the background material for hints and just try to get absorbed in the world." It's too bad this isn't just considered another genre of writing, so people wouldn't worry about amnesia as a tool so much. We use other tools, stuff that's impossible or too much of a coincidence all the time, but because we're used to these sorts of cliches, we accept them, often without thinking about it.  I think it's a bit disappointing when too much information is given ahead of time, myself, since I like to just jump in and find out stuff by playing.
 
Maybe the way around it is to not even bother explaining amnesia, and just let the player play, bypassing any sort of back story at all.  Maybe that's what the real issue is, that by giving an in-story reason we actually interfere with the player's ability to make up a reason on their own.

Oh, damn! Actually, this should be all the review you need about this game - Amnesia: The Dark Descent is 10 hours of Dark Corners of the Earth's Hotel level.     

I will gladly watch someone LP it with commentary but play it myself?! Haha, way too chickenshit-scared for that.