Amnesia: The Dark Descent

I've said before that I think that survival horror (real survival horror, the merciful attached to invoke actual fear) is some of the most challenging work a game decorator sack undertake. Fiend shooting galleries like Dead Infinite, Resident Vicious, F.E.A.R. and Doom are precise in their possess way, but the really impressive work is launch in games like Silent Pitcher's mound or parts of Stealer, where the pun is many about self-conservation than bringing murder to all of the creeps.

I can't think of any other genre where the central purpose of the game is to make the player tone a specific emotion. It's hard sufficient to just get up and properly execute a regular game where you can amuse yourself away construction or destroying things. But doing all of that piece reaching in and plucking at raw, primaeval drives? Invoking any emotion is tricky stuff, with fear being one of the most intriguing to pull along turned.

And to be perspicuous: I'm not talk about gotcha jump-start-scares present. Decades past hack movie makers learned that you can get a cheap scare by lowering the book and pointing the photographic camera into the darkness for fractional a bit before ruinous the audience with sound and light. That's not fright. That's just surprising someone. IT's non canny and it doesn't actually produce feelings of fear. Putting an air tusk into the halfway of Eat, Beg, Love wouldn't turn it into a scarey motion picture.

It's pretty heavy to scare someone patc they're secure in their own home, sitting on their comfy couch, sipping their favorite drinkable. You need a compelling character to draw them in and make them care. You need a solid story plume to pull them forward into peril. You motivation a stable story that isn't going to distract them with ill-natured plot holes and nonsense. (Capcom please, please drop a line that last one down someplace.) And you sure as shooting can't afford to break immersion with bugs. But in a survival horror game information technology's possible to get the gameplay and technology right and still have the game go because the idea simply didn't connect with the player enough to prepar them feel fear.

This actually happened with the Penumbra series from Resistance Games. Their 2007 debut title Penumbra: Overture was a good sweetener. It conferred a spooky world with a solid scare factor, but the follow-up titles didn't quite a work for me. Without getting too much into spoilers, there is a character who begins speaking to you at unitary bespeak, on the spur of the moment gift vocalism and personality to what was previously an unknown peril. At that head the game completely lost me. The evil voice sounded to a fault much alike the amusing devil in the first Joseph Black & Albumen game. When you're trying to ghost the player with some horrific unknown horror from beyond, it's a bad melodic theme to give them the voice of some whatsoever unrefined-level mook in Tony Soprano's organization. The game would have worked a lot better if they had left that part away entirely.

Having said that, the courageous was an admirable attempt with a lot of brilliant ideas, and I was really excited to hear that they were coming out with a new spunky this year, Amnesia: The Dark Pedigree.

This is the part of the clause where the author usually flirts around and fills in about more inside information before they give you their opinion, but if it's all the same to you I'd just as soon cut to the chase: Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a triumph. It's dark. It's disturbing. Information technology's twisted. And most of all it's genuinely frightening.

As with the late games, you Don River't fight monsters. You are not the Doom Marine. You are not Master Chief or Marcus Fenix. You're not symmetric Gordon Freeman. You're a regular guy who has unwittingly involved himself in something far beyond his own superpowe and understanding. Monsters are not common, merely they're hefty, they're fast, and your only real options are running and concealing.

Also making a return appearance are the physical science-based interactions. Doors can be pried spread ou with a good lever. Machines tin can be jammed operating theater un-jam-packed by interacting with their dangerous moving parts. Objects can personify down or shoved, and they respond sensibly to the flow of water. Even doors are governed by physics, and if you carelessly offer them open or slam them closed you may wind up attracting care that you do not want. These touches don't just make the planetary Sir Thomas More immersive, they bring off some darn good puzzles.

Amnesia isn't antitrust a good independent game. It's a good biz, period. The technical aspects like sound, environment design, and art are all polished and occupation. (Although I'm probably not the best guy to ask close to graphics. Pretty very much anything made since 2004 looks awesome to me.) The only thing that feels "indie" about this game is the convention-defying come near of not-combat gameplay, and that's the best part.

If you desire to shotgun monsters in the grimace, then this is not the game for you. Merely if you're in the mood to actually immerse yourself in a world of strange and allow yourself to be scared by a game, then this title is an excellent example of a rare breed.

Shamus Adolescent is the guy behind Twenty Sided, DM of the Rings, Taken Pixels, Shamus Plays, and Spoiler Warning. Beat that, fanboy.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/amnesia-the-dark-descent/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/amnesia-the-dark-descent/