Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review
1st Person Survival Horror game for the PC
$20 MSRP
While I was playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent late one night, I noticed a huge spider crawling on the wall near me. I paused the game, killed the spider, and then tried to play the game some more. Nope, my nerves were too frazzled at that point and I had to call it quits for the night.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the new survival horror game from Frictional Games, makers of the Penumbra series. Like the Penumbra games, it is a first person survival horror game with an emphasis on physics puzzles. Even more so than Penumbra, you’re out of your league in Amnesia. Not only do you not have a weapon, but just looking at a monster causes your sanity to drop. How’s that for Lovecraftian?
I thought the game took a little too long to get to the good stuff (the first 30-60 minutes were decidedly unscary), but once it hits its stride, it’s well done and plenty scary. You can tell this is an indie game – the graphics look about a generation or two behind the times – but when you’re hiding from an unkillable monster or fleeing in terror, it’s easy to overlook such things.
Amnesia reminds me a great deal of Call of Cthulhu – Dark Corners of the Earth, one of my favorite horror games in recent years. I’d say Amnesia isn’t quite as good as the Call of Cthulhu game – understandable since I’m sure that the Cthulhu developers had a much bigger team and budget to work with. Still, not quite as good as excellent still equals a great game. Great horror games are a rare commodity these days so it would be a shame to pass up on one as good as Amnesia.
I wish I could handle scary games. I love horror movies but I cannot make it through a scary game.
Just watching that video increases my heart rate quite a bit. Scary! 🙁
I thought the controls were fine. The object manipulation system is a little clunky for some things, but I understand why they used it (for greater immersion & certain puzzles).
I picked up this developer’s previous game, Penumbra, via the Humble Indie Bundle earlier this year. It was pretty cool, but I’m not a computer gamer and had some issues with the interface. Have you had any problems getting around in this game?
Yahtzee Croshaw of Escapist’s Zero Punctuation had good things to saw about Amnesia, too.