Amnesia is…I guess a first person puzzle survival horror game for the PC and Mac platforms. It was developed by Frictional Games, a group that also produced another little known game in the same genre called Penumbra. What Frictional Games seems to have been aiming for here is a controlled experience, all the way down to how the game is “best” presented. It is suggested upon starting the game that you should be in a dark room and wearing headphones for the maximum psychological horror factor. Dark basement with 5.1 surround sound would hopefully suffice.
Lets get started.
Gameplay
Jumping right into the game, you are put in the shoes of Daniel, a man who decided to take a potion to forget things. What things? Why? You have no clue. The last thing you remember is telling yourself to get to the center of the castle and kill some one. Mission accepted I guess. The concept of an amnesia potion is interesting here though. In most games you take the roll of someone who lived, loved, lost and had some kind of back story whether you are told it or not. That makes it kind of awkward when people decided to tell you about yourself. In Amnesia you, as the player, are learning everything on the fly. Who you are. The horrible things you’ve done. This can make for a good story telling mechanic and properly connect player with character in most games, but it feels like Amnesia missed the mark. Maybe its just me but everything seemed so disjointed and almost meaningless to the grand scheme, particularly in why you took the potion in the first place. The hole trip leads you to remember everything anyway. In the end your still a horrible person that performed unspeakable acts of torture to further your own power under the guidance of a mad man. Whats the point. Amnesia also missed in several other areas as well. The monsters in particular. Great forward step for survival horror games involves making the monsters impossible to kill. Games like Silent Hill, though great in my opinion, fall short in the whole survival part. I mean, conceptually speaking, creatures cross over from a nether world environment to kill you and your able to pick up a baseball bat and kill them. Kinda kills the fear factor. In Amnesia its run or die, but due to horribly stupid AI the running part is overly easy. Crouch down and face the wall and your safe. The hell? Not to mention the monsters all feel like quick triggered events. Monster spawns, you sit in corner for 2 minutes, monster vanishes, continue on with the game please. The only time Amnesia nailed what the monsters needed to be was in an early part of the game. The water monster got my hopes up for later only to have them cut down. It was the first and only time a monster was treated as a puzzle in Amnesia and I feel their true callings were missed. Past that my other big issues include the lore within this world created by Frictional Games and the balls they had to call it high end in the graphics department. I don’t want to touch on the things about the world that make it feel awkward due to how infuriating they made me, but graphically speaking Amnesia falls short in so many ways.
Ladies and gentlemen...THE FUTURE!!!!
Visuals
From the very limited visual pallet of dark hallways and torches,reminiscent of Elder Scrolls Oblivion, to the lack of interactive elements in the world such as light and water Amnesia is years behind modern developments in actual cutting edge graphics. Particle effects and lighting feel slapped on and separate to the world in comparison to the very integrated feel that Metro 2033 brought to the table. Textures, color choices, complexity of architecture, objects, character models, and monster designs feel very low quality in an overall sense. From time taken to produce them and direction that was decided upon. Everything feels like a trick to save the need to render anything. When large things fall over it happens out of sight. A room fills with water, but you black out just before it. The worst part of this is that it seems Frictional Games starts giving up the further in you make it. The levels begin to have less detail and objects. Paths become basic 90 degree turns lose any sense of possible architectural design the further in to the game you make it. A game that looks this bland and basic should not make my computer chug by simply enabling SSAO graphics…. For shame.
omg...its a monster....
Sound
This is where psychological games should shine. But no. The sound is basic ambiance only altered by the triggered arrival of another blind creature, and we all know the scariest kind of monster is one that announces itself right away before it even sees you. Other than that you seem to be stuck in a world where some one learned how to bind their keyboard to sounds from a Halloween sound board. Creaking wood. Low booming bass that sounds like a creature humming in pain. Bugs. Scratching. Howling. Oh noes I am so scared. The voices you hear during flashbacks seem fine though the story lacks a lot of punch and tries to be gritty and gory for no reason. Prisoners screaming and crying out to their tortures. Listening to a dog get sawed apart by an alchemist in order to make a health potion of some kind. The sounds never really becomes an assault on the mind. Never once did I really question what I was hearing as a possible evil. Though I must say that Daniel seemed easily frightened. Most of the sounds heard correlate with a psych out moment such as a strong gust of wind or a mild quake and these things send Daniel’s mind into the fetal position for extended periods of time. If only he knew the monsters won’t attack if you can’t see them. Be an ostrich Daniel. Put your head in that sand and nothing can hurt you.
Taxidermy done by preschoolers. Oh my.
Closing Experience
Know that I toughed this game out in hopes for something appealing. At my job i got into a long conversation with a customer about the current lack of proper survival horror games on the market and I kinda hoped this one would be at the very least decent. But I just walked away angry at the whole thing. i felt that Friction Games swindled me out of time that could have been better spent being angry at Blacklight: Tango Down for the PC or something. I mean come on, my psyche is no more scarred than it was going into this experience. I’d at least hope to be partially disturbed by the end of all of that. The worst part is that I had no real expectation going into this. At least I didn’t pay for Amnesia and that it only lasted 5 or 6 hours. That’s less time than I spent playing Arkham Asylum, so I guess I’m fine with that.
In Closing: 3.2/10
Gaming Value: $9.99
Help me... I'm trapped in a linear game.
Another review done by a little geek who’s fond of great graphics and Blizzard. The idea of the whole game is to freak you out and create an atmosphere that makes you want to look over your shoulder. The sound and the overall feeling of the game is simply amazing if you actually put your mind to it and see the big picture. In addition, considering a survival horror game, it isn’t some freak show where you run after the possible monsters, captivated by their advanced detail. It’s about running and hiding, trying to get yourself the hell out of the place if possible!
Stop sacking games you don’t obviously understand anything about and instead, have a nice little dose of Crysis.
Did you read my review? 1 I hate blizzard. 2 I don’t care about graphics. They claimed they were cutting edge not me. 3 if running and hiding from monsters is the point of this game I once ducked facing a wall and had a monster walk by me without incident. So much for that. This game fell short of its purpose. I’m not gonna rant and rave about it cause its indie. I’ll do that about games that deserve some note like Plain Sight and Worms (not exactly cutting edge graphics on either but never claimed to have them).
This was a horrible review, to be honest. Crouching down and facing a wall doesn’t save you, unless you’ve already run to a safer, darker spot (which then makes you lose your sanity). The lighting in this game is amazing, considering it’s a major playing mechanic, and I really didn’t see ANYTHING wrong with the textures. I thought it was very well done.
The water filling the room is a freak-out tactic, I will admit. Most people, if you watch videos, flip the hell out when that happens. It successfully makes most players terrified of touching any sort of water for the remainder of the game.
The monsters are pretty well-constructed.. however the point of the game is to make them seen as little as possible, as your imagination will make something far more terrifying than it really is. The fact your vision will warp and blur if you stare at the monster too long is both a clever and excellent mechanic, making sure you don’t really ever get a good look at it, so you remain a little more scared than you would otherwise. (unless you’re like me, running up to it with full sanity and a lantern out)
The less open the spaces are, the more terrifying it becomes, due to small, cramped spaces you can’t really run around in well.
The sounds were also great. Yes, ambient noises are intended to frighten, but that’s what the game is all about. Would you prefer some John Phillips Sousa playing in the background?
3.2/10 – your rating has convinced me your reviews really aren’t worth reading. It’s not just because I like the game, but because you just scoffed at it, and were more intent on tearing it down instead of seeing where the game really shines.
Oh well!
I guess that is fine. I usually don’t mind if people that find the time to argue a personal opinion stop reading my stuff. I’m just pointing out what I felt are flaws. If you view these things as positives so be it. Who knows. Maybe my mental fortitude was too high for this game. But that is how it is. I hope you all the best in your future of seeking a writer to properly stimulate opinions you already have. Enjoy the mutual mental masturbation.
Get out of the darkness. It makes you insane.
“The water monster got my hopes up for later only to have them cut down. It was the first and only time a monster was treated as a puzzle in Amnesia and I feel their true callings were missed.”
You hit the nail on the head for me. Trying to solve simple and logical puzzles under EXTREME duress, like a chase, is exciting and Penumbra got my hopes up for this game because it had it. However, after the water monster, that causal stroll near the end seemed like huge missed potential (once I had a calm moment to think after surviving it, of course).
The mechanics with the walking monsters confused me so much that it drained my willing suspension of disbelief. How is it that nearly every monster simply vanishes after hiding for a while? That’s certainly not as scary as a monster that you think vanished but was actually patrolling elsewhere and then it comes back just as you leave safety. And it doesn’t help that the game always expects me to believe that they show up randomly later. I was convinced they were all part of the Shadow until I found the corpse of one.
Events got really buggy anytime I died, which was disappointing since there were times I wanted to stare down whatever killed me.
And, the endings were really disappointing.
TL;DR
Lots of missed potential. And yes, I still got scared.
To all these people saying that the monsters are a disappointment, I’ll have to disagree. I have opened a door and there was a monster inside, so I immediately slammed the door and ran away to hide in a dark room. After a couple of minutes of waiting, I cam back to explore the room. Right as i walked up to the door I heard a sound like Hrrruuuh? and then loud footsteps. The door got smashed to pieces and I got the &$%# out of there. The monster followed me for a while but i hid in a closet. I love this game. 9/10
Honestly, I don’t think this was a good review. Though it is true about some things. The water monster part was just plain crazy for me the first time, and I was always scared to go into water later. I thought I heard one drop in later, and heard it’s footsteps, but it was never there. What the Hell? I was kinda hoping it’d chase after me at least >.>
As for the sound, I thought it was great. Even the smallest sounds made me turn around a little scared as I walked down a dark hallway. And once I hear the “Huuurrh?” sound the monsters make, my heart races, I freak out, and run for dear life away from the thing. If I end up doing that while playing a game, the developers must have done SOMETHING right.
Visuals… meh. Not close to cutting edge, and they weren’t that great. But they worked. The lightning at the end, cmon, that looked pathetic.
Looking back, yes. Loads of potential was missed. But even then, it was the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never made the little scared sounds I made while playing this game XD I liked it, but maybe the monsters could have been used as a puzzle a little more, so at least you’re not just running, and thinking “oh crap, is it gonna appear? OMG WHEN!?”
7/10 in my opinion. Your review was way off honestly, but that’s not to say it wasn’t right for many things. I just think maybe you missed the point, or you just plain didn’t like it. Idk, I’m not in your head.
I did say i like the water monster… Its just…it ended after that. Never ran from monsters personally and, yes, games have scared me in the past, this just didn’t do it. The attempts felt as cheap as Doom 3′s scares and I’ve already been through that. I dunno. I am surprised people are still looking at this. As for the score, we have decided to do away with them and let people decide what they think it would be after reading it. Much easier on the writers to not have to personally justify a score as they put it down. As for this being a bad review or not, does my opinion not matching your opinion make it a bad review? Or just a difference of opinion? Another fun thing about writing.
I only just finished the game. I agree on one or two points you make. Personally I was scared to turn any dark corner if it was not a puzzle level. The graphics I felt were very well done, I played this on full screen with the highest graphic settings possible. Your monster encounters are actually the inverse of my experiences. The water monster was well done and the idea of not knowing if it could catch you was scary but encountering it was not as scary. Grunts (The ugly faced guys) are scary and I had quite the experience with two of them in the storage area. Brutes (the ones with knifes) growling scares the hell out of me and not knowing where it is, is the physiological effect you are supposed to feel. The ambience was a very cool and somewhat scary touch at the first half because I did not know what it was but the second half was not as bad and by the end the ambience was just the background of the castle falling apart and was not as scary. The end on the way to the sanctum was the great final rush for me just because I had the misfortune of having one of these guys on me on the way there. The endings I felt wrapped up the game nicely. Ai were buggy at times just because they would be idle and would not notice me. My only main concern was that the story line (while very good) was not unraveled evenly. I understood what was going on the whole time but the entire puzzle of accessing the sanctum was were you learned everything. However we must remember that this an indie game and for the price of 10$ and about 6 hours of gameplay it makes it very worth it considering most indie games do not evoke this kind of story line or gameplay. I personally would give this game a 8.5/10 It has the intertwinement level for you and people who watch, but it misses its mark on trying to be in depth. If this were made into a full game for both console and computers with a larger story line and maybe 12 hours of gameplay from its current 5-6 this could be something very good.