Amnesia is a combination of classic haunted castillo horror with their unique first-person adventuring. Is it good? Is it scary? (Let me give tu a clue: flipping yes, and oh good grief yes.) Read on to find out just exactly what it is that I Think.
Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines.
Help me.
Good flipping grief on a barge, Amnesia is a scary game. There is no question, not one, that it has instantly equalled with the original Thief in terms of making me feel like I’m constantly on the verge of a hideous corazón attack. If it failed at everything else – and it absolutely does not – then it would still be an extraordinary achievement simply for so ceaselessly inducing ghastly fear.
However, Amnesia achieves on so many levels, from phenomenal architecture to astonishing visual design, from exquisite use of darkness to a game-changing use of physics. It has shortcomings too, and I’ll get to them, but this is an en general, general tale of impressive success.
But most of all, it’s the fear.
You’re walking down a barely lit corridor, bleak with shadows. tu light a single candle on the wall, más to mark that you’ve been this way than to provide any respite. But suddenly everything starts shaking, a roaring crash deafens you, and in front of your is a rockfall blocking your path. So tu turn around to make your- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
Stood in front of your is the horror of a mutant, its face in a ghastly, deadly yawn, arms twitching, staggering toward you. It hasn’t seen tu yet, but the música has, and it’s become discordant, threatening. Daniel’s breathing picks up, his vision stretches out thin, before swimming slowly back to normal. But you’re lit por that candle, and it’s going to-
It’s seen you, and the screech begins. It’s not a scream, not a roar, something between, one tone, horrendous. It speeds up, charges, and tu can only run. Darting past, it clips tu with a talon-finger, a slice of blood ripping across the screen. Daniel staggers, his sight goes red, but tu keep your finger on sprint and tu just run, in darkness, no idea where you’re going. Finally there’s a door. tu race in, and slam it shut behind you, and run into the darkest corner, crouch, and face the wall.
It’s growling moan still grows louder, and then tu hear it slam against the door. Its fists batter at the wood, and tu turn around to see splinters flying off, then a hole punched through. Face the wall. Just face the wall.
Whether it comes in to find you, o loses tu in the darkness, is up to the moment. But tu can’t turn around to find out what it’s doing – see it, and Daniel will react, perhaps make a noise. That’s death. So tu stay there, panicking, panting, staring at stones, unsure if it’s even in the room any more.
While the idea of a player character who’s lost their memory may induce a groan, here’s the game that’s allowed to do it. This allows a narrative of gradually revealed horrors to seep back in as tu progress through the first-person adventuring.
And it really is adventuring, but in a way that – if only any other developer in the world had had the sense to copy from Frictional’s anterior Penumbra series – should be the genre’s new direction. Taking Penumbra’s technological reigns, once again this is a collection of large, complex physics puzzles, combined with exploration and inventory application. However, unlike Penumbra, there’s no combat whatsoever. That there’s still deadly enemies is in a large part why this is so damned scary.
tu play Daniel, an explorer who apparently discovered some sort of magical orb. The only knowledge tu have of yourself are the notes tu left behind, and the memories that assault tu as tu enter certain locations. Why you’re stuck in a giant castle, and where you’re going, are unknowns. And because the narrative cleverly doesn’t come together in a meaningful way until the final acts, I’ll not say a word more.
So your objective is progression. Get away from where tu are, because it’s bloody terrifying, and try to mover on. And tu can’t stick around, because the building itself is corrupting around you, the rocks growing horrendous pulsating flesh and exploding pustules.
o más often it’s because you’re running for tu life, too scared to turn around, racing until tu can find a door to slam shut behind you. Really, having the character make yelps and frightened breathing sounds is completely unnecessary – I was making plenty of my own.
Running is the last resort. Ideally, should tu hear the guttural groans of the grotesque mutant creatures that stalk the castle’s halls, tu hide. Anywhere. Turn off your lantern, run toward darkness, and crouch. If tu can find a wardrobe, climb in it and close the doors. Because tu cannot fight back, and any attempts would be hopeless.
Running to darkness is quite the opposite of your usual intent. Darkness leads to fear, and fear leads to insanity. To maintain your mental acumen, tu need to seek light, and it’s in extremely short supply. The building is inevitably plunged in black, and too long without being able to see properly causes Daniel to begin losing his already fragile mind. tu discover a lantern early on, but the game’s rarest commodity is lantern oil, and you’re going to want to ration it for emergencies. The other option is finding tinderboxes to light lamps, torches, candles o fireplaces. These offer a faint glow in the gloom that can allow tu to keep a grip on reality. But again, tinderboxes aren’t in wide supply, and you’re going to have to think carefully about where to create light.
The loss of sanity can only be restored por progression. (An absolutely fantastic improvement on the vista previa version’s Sanity Potions, that really made no sense at all). This is either geographical, o completing puzzles. It makes sense. These moments provide calm, offer satisfaction. It allows tu to believe you’re having an impact, making a difference, and not just the victim to this horror show.
But insanity is rife, and tu will be subject to it. The portrayal is splendidly evocative. The screen contorts, bellows, and woozily twists. Colours bleed, the world blurs, and tu lose full control of your movement. At worst your legs give way from underneath you, and you’re left dragging yourself across the floor por your arms. And the sound. God, the sound. The screeching, screaming, wailing. The tinnitus drone, the whispering voices, the distorted, atonal instruments. Help me.
Every moment of sound is a masterpiece (with the exception of the voice acting, which is mostly decent, but rarely brilliant). The thumping machinery, colossal chains and cogs, dripping viscera, unholy moans, and swelling tunes constantly conspire to terrify tu in even the most gentle moments. Add to this Daniel’s frantic breathing whenever he’s scared, and his little yelps of terror when surprised, and you’re left a gibbering wreck.
Those enemies – it’s not just a case of hiding from them. tu can’t even look at them. Their sight is too frightening for Daniel, quickly tipping him over the edge.
It’s crazy how affecting it is, every time. I found myself chanting, “Only a game. Only a game.” But it didn’t work. And I think at the point where a horror game has anyone tell themselves, “It’s only a game”, it’s unquestionably a success.
One particularly horrendous (in the good way, tu understand) sequence involves negotiating flooded chambers, stalked por an invisible beast. tu can see its footsteps splashing in the water, and it can only detect tu por yours. I’ll not ruin a moment of that bit, as it’s possibly the game’s greatest scene, but wow it inflicts terror.
The sense of urgency to get back onto a box, out of the water and onto the safety of a crate, is insane. The whole of my body tensing as the click of my ratón becomes más intense, más frantic, leaning adelante, hacia adelante in my chair as if that will help me climb to safety más quickly, my spine and chest tingling with urgent fear.
Things are so much más effective for the remarkable way tu interact. It’s similar to Penumbra, except without the key to have the ratón become a cursor. Instead tu use the central reticule to interact, pointing it at objects. When tu can interact a hand icono appears, which lets tu click on something to manipulate it. And tu manipulate it in a tangible, real way. Opening a drawer isn’t clicking the button to initiate the drawer opening. It’s gripping the handle of the drawer, and then pulling it toward you. It moves as a drawer moves, as quickly as tu pull it. Should there be an object inside, it will slide adelante, hacia adelante if tu give the drawer a sharp tug. It’s so simple, but crikey, it makes such a difference.
The same goes for opening and closing doors, which makes that earlier descripción of slamming doors behind enemies literal. tu can gently creak them open, just a crack, to peer through. o slam them against the muro behind in a mad rush. Objects can be picked up, and sort of magically float in front of tu – tu have to imagine your arms for yourself. They can be rotated, and thus stacked into improvised structures. tu can build ramps, o impromptu staircases to reach areas, from any local furniture.
It’s utter lunacy that más games haven’t mimicked this, but if Amnesia is the success it deserves to be, perhaps it will finally be noticed. For adventure gaming it’s the ideal solution to 3D, letting tu apply inventory objects in the real world.
What I found most remarkable about this was the nonchalance with which I applied it. Stood por a balcony in the gloom, I wanted to know how high up I was. So I picked up a stone from the floor and dropped it over the side, and waited for the clatter. It wasn’t until I’d done it that I realised that no game had ever needed me to do this, let alone made it so instinctively possible.
There’s some silliness in there too. An unfortunate side effect of having puzzles be solved por improvising with the surrounding items is highlighting how daft it is when it requires a specific object in a specific place. One scene needs a rope to lower a container into a hole in the ground. The room is decorated with non-interactive spools of rope, but tu have to find the correct bit of string in another location to get anywhere. A normal oddity for gaming, but here it stands out a little bit more. The hammer and chisel in your inventory is used to get past quite a lot of challenges, but there’s many where they’d clearly work but the game just says no.
The script isn’t perfect. There’s some broken English in a couple of places, and a huge number of very long letters tu find aren’t voiced. Stopping to read a missive that doesn’t make narrative sense yet doesn’t really fit into the panicked theme of the game, and often things are so obscure that it’s hard to pull it all together in your head. por the end the core plot does come together extremely well, but there’s a lot that’s left confusing because tu didn’t do your comprehension homework properly. Daniel’s voice veers between competent and a bit overly pantomimed, often quite mood-breaking. But Alexander’s – and tu can learn about him yourself – is great.
But so much más is done so well. There’s an almost Valve-level of smartness with visual cues, and I cannot think of a game that uses audio cues better. Most times I got stuck anywhere were because I was forgetting to listen.
And did I mention it’s scary? I was inventing new swears por the end of it. “Fucking cocksticks, what the shitstack was that?!” And I confess I yelped on más that one occasion. One of them might be considered, por some, to be a squeal. But más often I’d find myself rigid with fear, my stomach pressed against my escritorio as I leaned into the monitor trying to reach the siguiente illusion of safety más quickly. I think it is seguro to say that Amnesia is the most successfully frightening game to have been made. It feels perhaps a slightly over-obvious observation, but the compliment is utterly valid: It’s Thief III’s cuna as a full game. Unrelenting in its scares and jumps.
That this was made por a five-man team who built their own engine is bewildering. I cannot recommend it enough. So long as tu don’t mind being utterly bloody terrified.
Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines. Paint the man, cut the lines.
Help me.
Good flipping grief on a barge, Amnesia is a scary game. There is no question, not one, that it has instantly equalled with the original Thief in terms of making me feel like I’m constantly on the verge of a hideous corazón attack. If it failed at everything else – and it absolutely does not – then it would still be an extraordinary achievement simply for so ceaselessly inducing ghastly fear.
However, Amnesia achieves on so many levels, from phenomenal architecture to astonishing visual design, from exquisite use of darkness to a game-changing use of physics. It has shortcomings too, and I’ll get to them, but this is an en general, general tale of impressive success.
But most of all, it’s the fear.
You’re walking down a barely lit corridor, bleak with shadows. tu light a single candle on the wall, más to mark that you’ve been this way than to provide any respite. But suddenly everything starts shaking, a roaring crash deafens you, and in front of your is a rockfall blocking your path. So tu turn around to make your- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
Stood in front of your is the horror of a mutant, its face in a ghastly, deadly yawn, arms twitching, staggering toward you. It hasn’t seen tu yet, but the música has, and it’s become discordant, threatening. Daniel’s breathing picks up, his vision stretches out thin, before swimming slowly back to normal. But you’re lit por that candle, and it’s going to-
It’s seen you, and the screech begins. It’s not a scream, not a roar, something between, one tone, horrendous. It speeds up, charges, and tu can only run. Darting past, it clips tu with a talon-finger, a slice of blood ripping across the screen. Daniel staggers, his sight goes red, but tu keep your finger on sprint and tu just run, in darkness, no idea where you’re going. Finally there’s a door. tu race in, and slam it shut behind you, and run into the darkest corner, crouch, and face the wall.
It’s growling moan still grows louder, and then tu hear it slam against the door. Its fists batter at the wood, and tu turn around to see splinters flying off, then a hole punched through. Face the wall. Just face the wall.
Whether it comes in to find you, o loses tu in the darkness, is up to the moment. But tu can’t turn around to find out what it’s doing – see it, and Daniel will react, perhaps make a noise. That’s death. So tu stay there, panicking, panting, staring at stones, unsure if it’s even in the room any more.
While the idea of a player character who’s lost their memory may induce a groan, here’s the game that’s allowed to do it. This allows a narrative of gradually revealed horrors to seep back in as tu progress through the first-person adventuring.
And it really is adventuring, but in a way that – if only any other developer in the world had had the sense to copy from Frictional’s anterior Penumbra series – should be the genre’s new direction. Taking Penumbra’s technological reigns, once again this is a collection of large, complex physics puzzles, combined with exploration and inventory application. However, unlike Penumbra, there’s no combat whatsoever. That there’s still deadly enemies is in a large part why this is so damned scary.
tu play Daniel, an explorer who apparently discovered some sort of magical orb. The only knowledge tu have of yourself are the notes tu left behind, and the memories that assault tu as tu enter certain locations. Why you’re stuck in a giant castle, and where you’re going, are unknowns. And because the narrative cleverly doesn’t come together in a meaningful way until the final acts, I’ll not say a word more.
So your objective is progression. Get away from where tu are, because it’s bloody terrifying, and try to mover on. And tu can’t stick around, because the building itself is corrupting around you, the rocks growing horrendous pulsating flesh and exploding pustules.
o más often it’s because you’re running for tu life, too scared to turn around, racing until tu can find a door to slam shut behind you. Really, having the character make yelps and frightened breathing sounds is completely unnecessary – I was making plenty of my own.
Running is the last resort. Ideally, should tu hear the guttural groans of the grotesque mutant creatures that stalk the castle’s halls, tu hide. Anywhere. Turn off your lantern, run toward darkness, and crouch. If tu can find a wardrobe, climb in it and close the doors. Because tu cannot fight back, and any attempts would be hopeless.
Running to darkness is quite the opposite of your usual intent. Darkness leads to fear, and fear leads to insanity. To maintain your mental acumen, tu need to seek light, and it’s in extremely short supply. The building is inevitably plunged in black, and too long without being able to see properly causes Daniel to begin losing his already fragile mind. tu discover a lantern early on, but the game’s rarest commodity is lantern oil, and you’re going to want to ration it for emergencies. The other option is finding tinderboxes to light lamps, torches, candles o fireplaces. These offer a faint glow in the gloom that can allow tu to keep a grip on reality. But again, tinderboxes aren’t in wide supply, and you’re going to have to think carefully about where to create light.
The loss of sanity can only be restored por progression. (An absolutely fantastic improvement on the vista previa version’s Sanity Potions, that really made no sense at all). This is either geographical, o completing puzzles. It makes sense. These moments provide calm, offer satisfaction. It allows tu to believe you’re having an impact, making a difference, and not just the victim to this horror show.
But insanity is rife, and tu will be subject to it. The portrayal is splendidly evocative. The screen contorts, bellows, and woozily twists. Colours bleed, the world blurs, and tu lose full control of your movement. At worst your legs give way from underneath you, and you’re left dragging yourself across the floor por your arms. And the sound. God, the sound. The screeching, screaming, wailing. The tinnitus drone, the whispering voices, the distorted, atonal instruments. Help me.
Every moment of sound is a masterpiece (with the exception of the voice acting, which is mostly decent, but rarely brilliant). The thumping machinery, colossal chains and cogs, dripping viscera, unholy moans, and swelling tunes constantly conspire to terrify tu in even the most gentle moments. Add to this Daniel’s frantic breathing whenever he’s scared, and his little yelps of terror when surprised, and you’re left a gibbering wreck.
Those enemies – it’s not just a case of hiding from them. tu can’t even look at them. Their sight is too frightening for Daniel, quickly tipping him over the edge.
It’s crazy how affecting it is, every time. I found myself chanting, “Only a game. Only a game.” But it didn’t work. And I think at the point where a horror game has anyone tell themselves, “It’s only a game”, it’s unquestionably a success.
One particularly horrendous (in the good way, tu understand) sequence involves negotiating flooded chambers, stalked por an invisible beast. tu can see its footsteps splashing in the water, and it can only detect tu por yours. I’ll not ruin a moment of that bit, as it’s possibly the game’s greatest scene, but wow it inflicts terror.
The sense of urgency to get back onto a box, out of the water and onto the safety of a crate, is insane. The whole of my body tensing as the click of my ratón becomes más intense, más frantic, leaning adelante, hacia adelante in my chair as if that will help me climb to safety más quickly, my spine and chest tingling with urgent fear.
Things are so much más effective for the remarkable way tu interact. It’s similar to Penumbra, except without the key to have the ratón become a cursor. Instead tu use the central reticule to interact, pointing it at objects. When tu can interact a hand icono appears, which lets tu click on something to manipulate it. And tu manipulate it in a tangible, real way. Opening a drawer isn’t clicking the button to initiate the drawer opening. It’s gripping the handle of the drawer, and then pulling it toward you. It moves as a drawer moves, as quickly as tu pull it. Should there be an object inside, it will slide adelante, hacia adelante if tu give the drawer a sharp tug. It’s so simple, but crikey, it makes such a difference.
The same goes for opening and closing doors, which makes that earlier descripción of slamming doors behind enemies literal. tu can gently creak them open, just a crack, to peer through. o slam them against the muro behind in a mad rush. Objects can be picked up, and sort of magically float in front of tu – tu have to imagine your arms for yourself. They can be rotated, and thus stacked into improvised structures. tu can build ramps, o impromptu staircases to reach areas, from any local furniture.
It’s utter lunacy that más games haven’t mimicked this, but if Amnesia is the success it deserves to be, perhaps it will finally be noticed. For adventure gaming it’s the ideal solution to 3D, letting tu apply inventory objects in the real world.
What I found most remarkable about this was the nonchalance with which I applied it. Stood por a balcony in the gloom, I wanted to know how high up I was. So I picked up a stone from the floor and dropped it over the side, and waited for the clatter. It wasn’t until I’d done it that I realised that no game had ever needed me to do this, let alone made it so instinctively possible.
There’s some silliness in there too. An unfortunate side effect of having puzzles be solved por improvising with the surrounding items is highlighting how daft it is when it requires a specific object in a specific place. One scene needs a rope to lower a container into a hole in the ground. The room is decorated with non-interactive spools of rope, but tu have to find the correct bit of string in another location to get anywhere. A normal oddity for gaming, but here it stands out a little bit more. The hammer and chisel in your inventory is used to get past quite a lot of challenges, but there’s many where they’d clearly work but the game just says no.
The script isn’t perfect. There’s some broken English in a couple of places, and a huge number of very long letters tu find aren’t voiced. Stopping to read a missive that doesn’t make narrative sense yet doesn’t really fit into the panicked theme of the game, and often things are so obscure that it’s hard to pull it all together in your head. por the end the core plot does come together extremely well, but there’s a lot that’s left confusing because tu didn’t do your comprehension homework properly. Daniel’s voice veers between competent and a bit overly pantomimed, often quite mood-breaking. But Alexander’s – and tu can learn about him yourself – is great.
But so much más is done so well. There’s an almost Valve-level of smartness with visual cues, and I cannot think of a game that uses audio cues better. Most times I got stuck anywhere were because I was forgetting to listen.
And did I mention it’s scary? I was inventing new swears por the end of it. “Fucking cocksticks, what the shitstack was that?!” And I confess I yelped on más that one occasion. One of them might be considered, por some, to be a squeal. But más often I’d find myself rigid with fear, my stomach pressed against my escritorio as I leaned into the monitor trying to reach the siguiente illusion of safety más quickly. I think it is seguro to say that Amnesia is the most successfully frightening game to have been made. It feels perhaps a slightly over-obvious observation, but the compliment is utterly valid: It’s Thief III’s cuna as a full game. Unrelenting in its scares and jumps.
That this was made por a five-man team who built their own engine is bewildering. I cannot recommend it enough. So long as tu don’t mind being utterly bloody terrified.
