I’ve been playing the graphic adventure survival horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent for the past 2 weeks and have finally completed it. I’m sure most (not all) of you gamers out there would not have heard about this game, or even if you might have heard of it, you might have skipped it, considering it was released during a time period of major big video game releases, plus it’s released from a developer that I won’t say is among the “A League.”
IGN finally picked it up and decided to take it more seriously, considering the feedback they were getting on this game. I have to say, “Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is by far, THE scariest game I’ve ever played. This game really raised the bar when it comes to scary or horror games. I have played the generic scary (both horror and psychological) games like Bioshock, Bioshock 2, all the Silent Hills (Silent Hill 2 is really up on the psychological horror factor), Fear, DOOM 3 (again, scary), etc., and I was frankly of the opinion that video games couldn’t get any scarier than this. But yeah, this wasn’t enough.
I read about Amnesia: The Dark Descent in a PC gaming magazine, and I was intrigued. Plus, I had never really heard of the developer of the game, Frictional Games, a Swedish company. I did some research and found out this game uses its own independent engine, so that raised the anticipation even more. With most of the first-person games running on the Unreal Engine, you sort of know what to expect.
So, I purchased this game from D2D and started playing it.
I was playing the character Daniel, the protagonist, who possessed this orb he found during an expedition, which, obviously had certain consequences on his lifestyle. So this is a game mainly about Daniel, trying to get “The Shadow” off his back. It’s mostly set in a very dark environment, in dungeons, sewers, and low-light castles. There’s a very disturbing vibe throughout this game. It scares you with different techniques. One is obviously the “element of surprise” technique used by so many of those overrated scary games, like FEAR, but with Amnesia, it’s different. You will know there’s something going to happen, that’s because of the settings. You are expecting it, but you don’t know the hows, wheres, and whats. There is minimal use of weapons in this game. If you see a monster or zombie, your only option is to run. This adds to the realism of the game. What I liked here was how this game set itself apart from the typical first-person horrors. All you have in your hand is your lamp. And you also have matches, to light up the torches around you. Low light will make you paranoid, and the game portrays this emotion excellently.
Throughout the game, you’ll be on your journey from one area to the next, solving puzzles, figuring out things, etc. The game is linear but is not repetitive at all. All the levels have a distinct mystery and a distinct puzzle, with distinct objectives, and I’m sure you’ll be loving most of them and anticipating what happens next.
The graphics aren’t top of the league, but yet, this game really achieves what it has. Most parts of the game are dark, and you’ll be going to tunnels lit with fire torches, so there’s not much in the first place to boast about graphically, but it’s done excellently in a really, really subtle way. I never really noticed anything to comment specifically about the graphics until I sat down to write this post, so it’s not really much of an issue.
All in all, the entire gameplay was about 10–12 hours, which is a little on the shorter side, and left me begging for more. This is the kind of game where you’ll actually want to keep your lights on, because, you know, if you switch them off, you’ll freak out. During my first 2 days with this game, I played with the lights off and full Dolby Pro Logic 7.1 surround sound (cheers to my new soundcard, the ASUS XONAR D2X, which really proved itself there! ), and on the third day, I didn’t have the heart to keep my lights off. It is really freaky. Especially if a zombie spots you, the footsteps of the zombie running after you and the ambient effects combined make you want to refrain from turning your character around to get a glimpse as to how far he is from you. It’s that scary!
I would recommend this game to all gamers likewise, and you should at least be 12+.
Sound – 10/10
Graphics – 7/10
Gameplay – 8/10
Story – 7/10
X-Factor – 9/10
Overall – 8.5/10
