A Very Novel Game
It's an odd thing to call a game as unsettling as Amnesia: The Dark Descent “refreshing”, but for a person whose idea of horror in video games was Doom 3 and Condemned, Amnesia came at me with a style and atmosphere so unabated and disturbing that when I found time between the skips of my heartbeat, I couldn't help but think, “Wow."
Made by the team of five Swedes at Frictional Games, Amnesia is a game that focuses all of its energy into unsettling the player. From the very beginning, the game tells you that the goal is not “to win”. It's a silly thing to make clear, but it's said in case of the player who chooses to rush through the game with headphones on blasting The Polyphonic Spree. I say it's silly to make that clarification because if you go into the game with even the slightest open mindset, you'll find yourself quickly engrossed in the thick atmosphere and story of the game.
The engrossing nature of the game goes hand in hand with its scares, which revolve around one mechanic: character enfeeblement. The protagonist has lost his memory, is afraid of the dark, is weak... he whines and shakes from the slightest noise. The character in-game is often exactly as frightened as you are, and it's hard to explain just how much better that makes the experience. You feel helpless—you feel like this is going to kill you—but at the same time in your terror you try to survive as best you can.
That thick feeling of helplessness lends most of the terror to the game. Long stretches of time can pass before encountering another monster, but you never feel that way. Every door opened—every hallway—is potentially the last. You soon begin to cling to the light for security and also flee it in terror as you attempt to hide yourself from whatever may be searching for you.
As you lose your sanity, the thumps and bumps of the castle become more pronounced—you hear noises that may or may not be there; your own footsteps begin to frighten you. The sound design in the game is brilliant, composed of some of the eeriest and atmospheric sounds in a video game I've yet to play. It leaves enough of an impression to allow your imagination to fill in the blanks, and that self-made tension is what makes creeping along the hallways as unsettling as it is.
Finally, as disturbing as the gameplay is, the story certainly does no slouching either. As the story was pieced together, I found myself wanting to find out more and more, often leading only to greater horror. It was a pleasure (in the grimmest sense of the word) to read the journal entries and other various papers littered throughout the game.
I did have a few moments in game where the illusion was broken, and these came from the “environmental puzzle” solving aspect of Amnesia. Being a first-person puzzle adventure game (as there is no combat), there were moments where my next course of action was completely unclear to me. Monsters were no problem, as a hint on how to survive would appear after I died the first time (if I died); however, there were a couple of points where I had no idea what to do to arrive at the next area until a good half hour of mindless wandering, only to realize that the solution was so easy! One such moment occurred when the game told me to “find a key” hidden somewhere in a room. I searched for what must have been 30 minutes until I, in complete frustration, just began to throw objects all about the room. One of those objects, a crate, was lucky enough to land directly onto a painting that then fell off the wall, revealing a hole where the key was hid. These sorts of things are nothing new to such puzzle/adventure games, but it did lead to a few minor moments of frustration.
Those chance moments of confusion on my part, however, were minor blips compared to the overall sense of dread that the game had blanketed over me. It may seem counter-intuitive to some to play a game designed to frighten rather than entertain, but that terror is a certain form of enjoyment in and of itself. The scares didn't jump out at you—they built on top of themselves. Amnesia, in the end, delivered to me an entirely frightening experience wrapped around a compelling narrative that led me to enjoy it in spades.
Pros:
+Unsettling atmosphere
+Interesting story
+Brilliant sound design
+Not reliant on “jump scares”
Cons:
-Occasional confusion on how to progress
