hackersfan95

[hackersfan95]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent Mini-review

Instead of simply using tumblr as a twitter backup like i planned to about an hour ago, i thought i'd also use it to contain my thoughts on games i recently completed, specifically thougths that i find to be too long for a twitter thread, but too short or too lame to be useful anywhere else. Here's the first one! the darling of 2011 Let's Plays, Amnesia the Dark Descent!!!!!!

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this game, given how much i was amused and repulsed by Soma a few weeks ago. Not sure what happened to this studio, really. This game oozes good atmosphere, a sort of Vaseline-coated early xbox 360 Dungeon Synth aesthetic, like an Elder Scrolls Oblivion dungeon without (real) enemies. The central mechanic (a system whereby standing in the dark for too long causes your sanity to build, which can be offset by using tinderboxes you find or spending oil to light your lamp) is wonderfully realized. The fact that bypassing dangerous enemies requires you to stand in complete darkness constantly forces you to sacrifice sanity for efficiency, a simple give-and-take that makes every enemy encounter, no matter how barebones and repetitive, feel like a coherent part of a greater whole.

Soma, meanwhile, has the central game mechanic of, uh....walking around. Oh and it also has a lot more puzzles that just take place within a single area, like on a single computer screen or whatnot. It's like you're being forced to play a million crummy mobile games in a row. Not the greatest!

One thing I will say, though...those sanity effects do sorta falter when it comes to modifying the challenges of the game.

Unfortunately, the sanity effect never actually causes any new enemies or damaging environmental effects to accost you--its effect is purely aesthetic, meaning that when you're at high sanity, you can safely assume that any new dangers you see or hear don't actually pose a threat. It's a shame, because despite how much I like the core sanity mechanic, it could benefit from a few extra enemies, especially if these enemies are more likely too spawn in due to poor sanity management.

Towards the endgame, Amnesia starts to lack the novelty factor of a truly great survival horror game--you begin to feel like you've seen everything, you begin to feel confident that the walls and the ceiling and the corner you're about to turn pose no danger to you. You're probably right. In fact, on normal difficulty you can't even die from sanity effects; apart from some blurriness, sluggish movement, and visual/auditory effects, insanity is completely harmless.

Nonetheless, if you follow the game's own suggestion (which appears when it boots up for the first time) and play the game for atmosphere over everything else, you'll probably be quite enamored with it. As it stands, it's a cool little game that should have led to better things for Frictional Games.

[hackersfan95]

howdy friends if you came from twitter and are a mutual or whatnot add me or whatever so we can be besties here too and you can teach me how to post on tumblr!!!!