I don't know that I've ever actually finished an Amnesia game or any of the Amnesia-likes that have popped up. I generally just kind of wind up losing interest in hiding from monsters until the fear meter goes away at some point? But I know some people really dig these games. Hope you're one of them!
A new Amnesia game has been announced: Rebirth
Have to agree that I hope the formula has evolved past "hide/sneak past insta-kill monsters". That style of horror is always diminished, for me at least, by the fact that it's so easy to see all the seams, to figure out how the simple AI works, and to see the clear path forward in the linear environments. Since it's usually a "figure out the solution or die" situation with no room for experimentation, having to repeat encounters just makes you see the seams and limitations of the game even faster.
My hope is that the game has more mechanical complexity than most of it's kind, or at least isn't overlong like many of these kinds of horror games are. The original Amnesia isn't a long game, but still feels about twice as long as it needed to be.
Given that Amnesia popularized this kind of horror game, it'll be interesting to see how the devs evolve the style.
Nice! Both Amnesia games were pretty great, The Dark Descent, as a horror game, and A Machine for Pigs as a narrative experience.
Have to say, after playing a machine for Pigs for 1.5h, i wasn't into it at all, but then the story kicked in in full gear and culminated with what I would call one of the best monologues in gaming, so in the end it was a very satisfying experience.
I hope they take what made each of the previous titles special and add something else into the mix, i'm genuinely excited for this one!
Very excited for this, while the "run and hide" horror sub genre has been dead for a while, SOMA was an absolutely fantastic game(and really was much more of a narrative adventure with *occasional* monster sequences) and Frictional is one of the few devs that have earned my money day one, sight unseen.
@relkin: I think this is probably the minority opinion on the internet, but I liked Penumbra: Black Plague more than Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
so stoked for another amnesia game from them, especially after they proved their narrative chops with the incredible SOMA.
I have the amnesia collection on ps4. is machine for pigs worth playing? everyone seems to say its disappointing. if i remember right, that one wasn't frictional. which is another reason why i'm looking forward to rebirth as its their return
I'm cautiously excited. Frictional makes some of the best horror games around, but unless the gameplay really changes up somehow, I'm afraid that years of Amnesia-likes will have diluted the run-and-hide gameplay loop too much. But man... if they can recapture the terror of Dark Descent...
@frostyryan: It's worth a playthrough. It's not scary in the least, but it's short and interesting enough to hold your attention. And despite the actual game not being scary, it does feature one of the creepiest songs I've ever heard, haha.
@panfoot I like Dark Descent more, but I get where you're coming from. That second Penumbra game was excellent. Third was a bit too cerebral for me, though.
@frostyryan It's worth playing, but it's a different thing. I think it was someone at Rock Paper Shotgun that said something to the effect that The Dark Descent was terrifying, and A Machine for Pigs is just deeply unsettling. You won't have too many run-for-your-life situations, but there is a ton of disturbing imagery that'll probably stick with you longer than anything from DD did.
@frostyryan: Did you play/like any of the other Chinese Room games (AKA, Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture), because it's very much one of their games more than Frictional, very little puzzle solving and monster encounters, looooots of monologues. Personally the game fell really flat for me, had some great imagery but the storytelling felt almost Kojima-esque in how literal/not subtle it is, though I haven't played it since release so maybe I'm being harder on my memory of it than the actual thing.
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