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Click for Gameplay Trailer - Review
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Graphics:
+ detailed equipped rooms
+ right light atmosphere
- simple architecture
Balance:
+ good introduction to the game with help text
+ automatic notebook
+ objects stand out
+ many automatic save points
Sound:
+ great surround effects
+ good english speaker
+ atmospheric music
- not all texts has voice output
Control:
+ clean inventar
+ interface does not disturb the atmosphere
- sometimes complicated
Atmosphere:
+ great tense situations
+ panic and helplessness
+ good switching between quiet and haunted passages
Game Size:
+ solid playtime
+ many different locations
+ 3 endings + 1 secret ending
+ nice physic puzzle
- not replayable
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is to date, the only game that has ever scared me. Not scared as in a short burst of shock, but in a heart-pounding, sweat-inducing, I need to stop playing so I can calm down kind of scared.
The player takes the role of Daniel, the main character who wakes up in a dark castle with no memory of who he is or why he's there.
That's the entire setup, and the simplicity of this concept lends itself brilliantly to the sense of isolation that Amnesia conveys so well. Completely alone in the castle, Daniel must contend with all the things going bump in the night on his own, with no map and completely unarmed save for a lantern.
It understands that the imagined far outweighs the known in its psychological punch, and it gives you enough audio and visual cues to imagine a very carnival of horrors.
This is every part the worthy successor, with considerably higher production values, bags more atmosphere, and a deeper exploration of the parallel themes of horror and insanity.
There's not a weapon in sight: it's all about the puzzles, exploiting the neat physics engine, combining items to apply to the environment, and hiding when the nasties come.
Spooky, shadowy castle rooms add to the uncanny feeling that something awful is about to happen any second. Most of the rooms provide subtle chills, through the presence of ruined walls, smashed-open ceilings letting in rain, and lone candles sputtering in the middle of lonely cellar chambers.
Going insane comes with interesting visual effects as well, including smearing colors, teetering camera angles, and bugs crawling across the screen. You never know what's really there.
Spend too long in the gloaming, and madness beckons. As Daniel's sanity starts to stutter, imagination plays merry hell. Insects skitter across your vision, the input-lag between mouse-gesture and action goes to hell, the ground lurches sickeningly, and you'll hear things – whispers, cries and horrid noises, one of which can only be described as someone pulling crabs apart.
Actually solving the puzzles shouldn't be too difficult for anyone who's played adventure games before. Despite the bizarre and often disturbing states of the sewers, morgues, and downright revolting torture chambers later on, the solutions often require you to collect a few objects and combine and apply them in simple ways. The game makes this easily manageable by confining solutions to set areas, meaning you don't need to worry about backtracking all the way to the start of the game if near the end you worry that a particular puzzle might require an overlooked item.
This is one of the scariest games in recent memory. The loading screen recommends you turn the lights off and play with headphones, something I'll strongly echo. It was without a doubt one of the most difficult, draining, and stressful gaming experiences I have ever had, but it's also an absolute masterpiece.
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