Amnesia

This review is for Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games, released in 2011.
This game is...by far...the scariest thing I have ever seen.
I don't usually play survival horror games, but Ben Yahtzee Croshaw of Zero Punctuation recommended it, and I decided to give it a shot.

This review, however, is more of an initial reaction because I haven't gotten too far in the game -- considering I'm terrified to play it and keep turning it off.

The player takes on the role of Daniel, who is in this completely creepy mansion looking for and trying to kill someone named Alexander. The story is advanced by a series of flashbacks and notes. Since Daniel drank some kind of potion to make him lose his memory, notes from his former self along with other clues laying about slowly develop the story for the player.

One thing about this that really changed the way I had to play the game was the fact that there are no weapons. There is no combat. The monsters and evil things in the game that follow you cannot be beaten in any way. As a result, the player must run away from things and hide so as not to be killed. This proves very difficult considering monsters have no problems busting down doors and kicking obstacles out of their way to find you.

The game also implements a very H.P. Lovecraft feel with it's sanity meter. Along with your health, your other stat is your sanity. Staying in the dark too long, looking at monsters or other ghostly events will slowly make you lose your sanity. The audio and visual elements of the game start to deteriorate as Daniel loses his mind, and if pushed too far, he will actually pass out which makes him very vulnerable to monsters. I love the fact that the controls also start to get very sluggish. It's as if Daniel is losing his decision making capability or losing control over himself. Staying in the light, and completely puzzles will raise your sanity back to normal.

Light and dark are extremely important in this game. While being the dark makes you go insane, being in the light makes you more vulnerable to monsters. This means as a player that you really need to find a balance between the two. Also, light is hard to come by so you end up dashing from one pool of dim light to another. If you really want to be scared out of your mind, play this game with headphones in the dark.

I've never played a game like this where I was so utterly emotionally swayed. I can't exactly explain what it is. The graphics are pretty standard - beautiful, sure, but nothing truly ground breaking. The sounds are excellent, especially with surround sound headphones. There is just something about the overall feel of the game that is terrifying. The developers realized that the less you see of a monster, the more scary it is. As a result, you spend the entire game peeking around corners, and straining to hear any evidence of monsters. The game is startling, freaky, and an excellent buy for the $10 I paid for it. I would recommend this game to absolutely anyone who wants their wits scared out of them. Thanks for watching my review!

By the way -- I purposefully didn't go anywhere in the game for this review where you might see the monster. Go and find it for yourself!

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Amnesia

[lindsay4410]

Wow thanks. I wasn't expecting comments. I'm in a class where we do game review videos as homework. Thanks for commenting!

[JustSomeRandomGuy227]

I'll be a viewer.

Nice video (:

[Montisa2008]

Thank you for making this video. i Always wanted to play Amnesia, but I would probably get a heart attack from the scenes in this lol. Good job though, keep posing more vids like this, I subscribed!