You know I always Amnesia off as the game that influenced a wave of run and hide horror games nobody likes. The horror game that was only popular due to let’s play content creators from back in the day and was not very good as a video game. I took the word of others and passed it off, but times have changed and my views on video games have opened. Now that you constantly have a person online willing to tap into your ears about how things suck, so basically I’ve lowered my standards to find more joy in the world. How interesting this year has been with me getting into the Assassin’s Creed series and admitting right that I finally played Amnesia: The Dark Descent and absolutely enjoyed it. That’s the second turn around of the year and I’m quite happy to prove myself wrong. To be fair though this isn’t the first Frictional title I’ve played. What really started to open me up to their work was Soma, which contained one of the most fascinating sci-fi stories in gaming. Then last year’s Amnesia: The Bunker which I loved and showed me and many others these guys are willing to innovate their formula.
I really do believe Frictional Games is a great game studio. They’ve had ups and downs mainly in terms of the Amnesia series, but they’ve made works of art that tests the boundaries of what is morally right and wrong with their characters. What I’ve come to realize is that the games that took inspiration from Amnesia weren’t just bad because there were so many of them, but bad because they couldn’t realize what made the first Amnesia so spectacular and brilliant. Since it’s the Halloween season I’ve decided to purchase the first Amnesia just to see what made it great. Before the original release in 2010, the guys at Frictional were busy working on the Penumbra series. Their first wave of first person horror games and what served as a precursor to Amnesia. Helping set up the formula that was to come and the game engine they’d be using for practically all of their games. Much like Amnesia, the Penumbra games were unique in that the options you had to defend yourself from horrifying atrocities weren’t much. You could throw objects at them and in one of the games you could fight things with a mop, but killing enemies would take a bit and sometimes they could just power through. Barreling down the dark decrepit hallways so they could kill you within a few measly blows. Your main options were to run and hide in the hopes they would stop chasing you or you could hopefully find the way forward to progress.
It wasn’t until Amnesia that Frictional Games roughened out the edges of the Penumbra formula and made something revolutionary. The game put an emphasis on disturbing the player as much as it could and constantly making them feel on the edge. You never knew what was real, if one of the strange monsters would show up, or if it was even there. The sanity mechanic allowed minor details in the world to change and make you wonder if a place you’d walk through moments ago were just like that. Monsters were no longer killable, creating light was restricted due to scarce resources, and despite the overwhelming horror of the game there was a gripping story to push players forward. Rewarding them for overcoming the nightmares and facing the evil deep below the surface. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is special. It’s a shame horror games afterwards made people forget what made it great. There’s certainly a lot of videos doing a better job than me. I’d recommend watching the MandaloreGaming review as that does a fantastic job breaking things down. However, this is my review and I want to express my joy of this game as I’d never played it before and again it’s the Halloween season so I want to stay in tune. I love this game. It has a few flaws, but there’s plenty of reasons to like The Dark Descent outside of the horror and many frightening moments. Today let’s talk about why Amnesia: The Dark Descent and why it deserves your attention.
Story
You awaken to find yourself inside a harrowing Victorian castle. There’s no guards, servants, and any people to speak to. It’s night out, the wind is howling, and the floor is cold. You have not a single clue of how you got there, but upon searching the room you’re in you find a handwritten note. This note is from a past version of yourself and quickly you learn your name is Daniel. You once lived in this castle for quite some time and served the baron Alexander. Together you two conducted experiments and researched the unknown, but something happened and Daniel went on to do something to make himself forget everything. A dark unworldly force known simply as the Shadow is stalking Daniel, and once it catches up to him he’ll be dead. Daniel does not give any more explanation as to what summoned the Shadow, but he says Alexander lives deep below the surface and he’s conducting a sinister last experiment. The now amnesiac Daniel must now journey deep into the castle, find Alexander, and kill him no matter what tries to persuade him not to. All the while collecting notes and remembering what type of person he was before the game’s main events. You’ll learn what the Shadow is, why Daniel came to Alexander, the type of work they did, and what led to the madness. It is a literal Dark Descent as the title of the game suggests, and a metaphorical one as Daniel is not the person you expect him to be. The horror is too much to take and at times the monster is not the being that stands before you.
Good luck.
Gameplay
As explained in the intro, Amnesia: The Dark Descent does not play like a majority of survival horror games out there. You can’t fight enemies, you have no weapons, and throwing objects at them seems to do absolutely nothing. Your main option more than half the time is to run and hide in the hopes that the monsters will stop pursuing you. Amnesia is a very dark game. I mean it’s in the title so what did you expect? Unless you crank the gamma settings in the options menu to the max it’s hard to see where you are going. You have two options of creating light, that being your lantern and tinderboxes. The tinderboxes are a limited resource. There’s only so many of them in the game, so you have to be careful what candles and torches you light with them. They’re also pretty cleverly hidden in the environment with some stashed within chests and behind boxes. So it’s important to look around your surroundings and check carefully. Second source of light is the hand lantern, and you’ll be using it a lot of the time. The lantern uses oil to produce, and much like tinderboxes you can find jars of oil to loot and fuel your lantern with. When the lantern runs out of oil you can no longer produce light with it, so be careful how you utilize your lantern.
You’ll encounter a variety of puzzles in this game and you’ll have to think carefully on how to solve them. Some will involve combining objects in your inventory, using said inventory object on something in the world, or making use of the physics engine and throwing something in the world. Whatever the case these puzzles will block your way forward and you need to get through them to progress. Another defining feature of Amnesia is the sanity meter. When the meter goes down you start to go insane, and when you go insane things don’t appear as they seem. Objects in the world change form, your vision goes blurry, your movement becomes more sloppy, and you have a higher chance of running into the monsters roaming about. Sanity goes down when you’re in the dark for extended periods of time, witness strange events, or stare at monsters for too long. It’s only by solving puzzles, staying in the light, and progressing that you maintain your sanity. That’s why it’s so important to manage your tinderboxes and lantern fuel. Monsters can be detected by carefully listening in the environment, and when one appears you want to try to sneak past them while looking away. If they see you then do the good old run and hide. There are a total of four regions in the game and each one has a variety of sectors to explore. Follow hints given correctly and hopefully you’ll get to make it out of this whole ordeal alive.
Thoughts
Almost a decade and a half later, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is still brilliant. Even if you don’t like the style of gameplay and what it would eventually influence there is still a lot to love about this game. A majority of my review so far has been stating facts and explaining what it is, but for the rest of this review I really want to emphasize why I enjoyed Amnesia. The gameplay overall is alright. When you actually play Amnesia you realize it’s pretty simple and there’s only a single path forward. You are encouraged to explore, but some areas can’t be accessed until you obtain a certain key or item needed to progress. For example, in the third area you need to venture down a sewer tunnel flooding with poisonous gas. You can’t do this without obtaining a serum needed to make yourself immune to poison. To do this you must access a sector needed to make this serum and to reach this place you must lower a bridge. To do that you must readjust machinery, and to use said machinery you must fix the pipes that help power it in another sector. There’s a specific path forward. A path that’s not explained clearly, but is very linear in design. However, I do like how the game expects you to figure out problems by yourself. Sure you have a journal to keep track of what’s going on and where you stumble upon problems, but the game doesn’t hold you by the hand or tell you how to exactly solve the problems. The puzzle design in Amnesia is great. There’s this one puzzle containing a room full of weights you have adjusted, and you compare it to another room containing weights to get the correct alignments. There’s a simple puzzle in the late game where you have to shut down some machinery, but the lever which you’d normally use to shut it down doesn’t work, so you find an object nearby to jam the gears. Puzzles test you and they always make sense from a logical perspective.
I like the mechanics Amnesia surrounds itself with as while not always perfectly executed work quite well. I love the limitations surrounding your two light sources. You'll always have enough tinderboxes to light the way, but not enough to light every candle or torch in the castle so there is careful consideration on how to spend them. The sanity meter is great as it makes you consider whether to play carefully or not. You gain insanity while in the darkness, and combine this with the downside of not being able to see where to go creates further incentive to use the lantern. Yet, more light makes you more visible and if you are attempting to sneak by monsters they’ll be able to spot you faster. Looking at the monster increases your insanity, but you need light sources to see where you are going and the path to sneak around them. You can run and hide in the dark, but then this increases your insanity further and all these considerations make you wonder what to do. It’s a game that still manages to make you think and adapt to the situation on hand without there having to be weapons or challenging combat like in a lot of other survival horror games. I love this system and is one of the main reasons Amnesia stands out in the horror scene.
Gameplay is alright, but that’s not the defining feature of The Dark Descent for me. The setting is top notch. I think we can all say that about Amnesia. Lighting, shadow, tone, art direction, the sound design are masterful and still hold up all these years later. This is a dark game, but you can still make out what’s in the world while not having a chuffing clue what is truly there. This even adds to the gameplay as Amnesia is an experience where you don’t truly know what is real. You may see a strange figure walking in the distance and when you go to check it out it’s not there. You hear growling and tuck away your lantern in the fear the creature is nearby. There’s a section around the second area where you have to hide in a closet. You can’t peek outside the closet as it will alert the monster of your presence, so all you can do is hide while you hear this fowl beast rummage through the room. You didn’t have to witness the event happen, but it’s still effective because you don’t know what truly occurred and if it will potentially happen again later down the line. Combine this with the sanity mechanic and you have a game that is constantly making you wonder if you should trust yourself or not. There’s an achievement for if you decide to quit the game early on probably from an early game scare. It happened to me and all it was from was the sound echoing in the distance. That’s how you know it’s a good horror game, but one lie I do want to disprove that others claim about Amnesia is that most of the game is scripted. In some ways this statement is kinda true, but most of the time you are in control. Meaning nothing feels too artificial and many of the game’s scares, even the scripted ones, can still work as you still have personal control during them.
Last aspect to discuss is the story and honestly it’s the best part of Amnesia. In fact, I would say it’s the smartest aspect of the game more so than the gameplay and mechanics. The Dark Descent is a game that really makes you question the morality of the main character Daniel. This section is a bit spoilery, but this game has been out for more than a decade so I’ll assume you know what the plot is. Daniel is haunted by the Shadow and with the help of Alexander he attempts to get rid of it. Sacrificing dozens of prisoners in the hopes these sacrifices wards it off. You assume these prisoners are all terrible people, but as the story progresses you learn these are individuals whom Alexander kidnapped in the night. Some of which Daniel helped with the kidnapping of, and the whole time he’s trying to justify the cruel and sadistic torture they carried out on these people. In the hopes this would free him, which depending on the ending you get doesn’t. The game’s title is in both a literal and metaphorical sense. You descend deep into the castle to uncover the truth, but you learn that the truth is of a man who went from being a good person to one of the worst to ever exist. It’s a man who will never be fully redeemed of what he has done, but can at least try to put a stop to the madness he helped create. I would say this is tied with Soma for being one of the best stories Frictional Games have ever made and it’s this story combined with everything else that make Amnesia: The Dark Descent worth recommending more than a decade later. In the end I give Amnesia: The Dark Descent a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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