Hi

Amidst the chaotic rush to get ready for the first day of the semester tomorrow morning I’m hastily going to write up my thoughts for Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Never mind the corny cover art, Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a wonderful breath of fresh air compared to a lot of games I’ve been playing recently. Again, I only played the demo, so I can only say so much about the game but I’ll try squeeze as much detail as I can.

Starting out you discover your character lying cold and alone in a drafty castle. You have no idea what’s happening, why you’re here, what your name is; in other words you suffer from total amnesia. (duh)

After exploring the hallways a bit you notice a strange pink goo trail that serves as point of interest for your character to follow. Not exactly the most subtle way to lead you through the game but I’ll overlook it. What’s most interesting is the fact that you don’t get any weapons at any point in the game. All you have is your lamp and your wits for protection. Having just a lamp doesn’t sound like much but believe me it helps, because this game is DARK.

Do you remember as a kid when you would watch ‘The Twilight Zone’ reruns at night and you get the sudden urge to go potty? You’re walking all alone down that dark hallway to the bathroom. You finally get to the toilet as try as hard as possible to finish as fast as you can because you just know any minute something bad is going to go down. You finally finish and run your hands quickly through some water and call it “washing.” Then you jet back to the safety of the living room in a mad attempt to avoid the malicious shadow that’s chasing after you?  

Yeah, that’s pretty much Amnesia: The Dark Descent in a nutshell.

This is the kind of game you really want to play alone at night with the sound way up. Beyond some of the corny sound effects, like hearing footsteps when you’re all alone or weird organic fleshy things pulsating on the wall. The game actually relies on your own imagination to terrify you. Just through simple effects like walking down damp, creepy cellars not knowing what surprises lurk or hearing a sudden roar and running into the nearest cabinet are some of the most intense moments. The game never shows what exactly is chasing after you. Is it a monster? Ghost? Crazy man? Who knows!

I always believed good horror never completely shows you the weird things that bump at night. (I genuinely believed there was a ghost living in my closet as a kid. I never had any evidence but it didn’t stop me from being terrified if I left the closet door open.) 

This threat of the unknown is reflected in your “Sanity level” which depletes the more your character is subjected to disturbing events. Just being alone in a dark room can affect the sanity of your character after a while. Other times it might be a door suddenly closing or an apparition which appears one second and is gone the next.

One of the things which I loved and hated about the game was the dramatic camera effects. I liked the idea of my character becoming so terrified the camera would swing back and forth and create motion blur for dramatic effect. Except these parts would honestly give me headaches and make me feel sick. After about 20 minutes I had to step away for a little while and reorient myself. It doesn’t happen too often but still often enough that I couldn’t play for any extended period of time.

Going off on this is, I didn’t always like that you would lose complete movement control of your character when he become too terrified. I mean, I get it, he’s scared stiff and doesn’t know what to do, but as the player all you want to do is get the fuck out of there and you can’t because the guy is paralyzed with fear.  It’s a cool cinematic quality but nothing annoys a player more than not feeling in control of the character. I guess I’ll chalk it up as being one of the challenge’s of the game.

To end on a positive note one of the simple pleasures I got out of the game was the ability to peer over the corner into the next room. In the amount of time I played I didn’t find it super useful exactly, as in I didn’t notice any difference from peering over the corner as opposed to simply charging into the next room. (maybe there was a benefit and I didn’t get to a part where it was apparent) It was nice because it seemed like something purely for the benefit of immersing the player into the setting. Fluff or not, small things like that always make me smile in a game.

Overall, I had a great time with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I plan on buying a full copy as soon my next check comes in. Thanks for reading!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M627-obxNzg (click for more on Amnesia: The Dark Descent. My favorite part starts about a minute in!)

I spent the better part of winter break reconnecting with my video game roots. Being poor and dissatisfied with a lot of the major label games I decided to try out indie games for a change. I tried out some old and new titles, basically all the games I wanted to play but was too busy or addicted to World of Warcraft to care about. So far LIMBO wins best game under $10 and Amnesia: The Dark Descent wins best under $20.

LIMBO is pretty straight forward ‘flash-esque’ puzzle/side scroller type game. It reminded me a lot of the old games on newgrounds and ebaumsworld I would play back in the day. Starting out, I was a little confused what was happening since it began without any kind of introduction or indication the game has begun. I probably just stared at the screen for a full two minutes before I realized my character was lying in the grass camouflaged by the black and white scenery, waiting for me to press the move key. After a quick facepalm moment I finally started the game.

The controls were very simple and straight forward. Playing on the PC I was limited to my arrow keys and the ctrl key to interact with the environment. At first I was a bit disappointed, but going on I actually found it refreshing. Maybe after playing WoW where you’re aggressively tapping every key on your keyboard it was quite nice to know everything you needed was in five keys. The option to rebind keys would have been nice feature though.

I really enjoyed the games minimal art design, it gave focus to the puzzles and while beautiful, it was never distracting. I’ve never been the best at puzzle games but I always thought of myself as being just ‘okay’. The puzzles themselves were fun, not too hard, but not too easy either. I only tried out the demo version so my experience was limited. The most fun I had was probably placing a bear trap under a bee hive and watching it get chomped when the weight of my character forced it down to the ground. 

I have to admit I was shocked by the violence the game possesses. This isn’t a negative critique mind you, I simply did not expect it from a game like this. I was totally blindsided when I watched my character (who looks like a boy no older than 10 years old) was slowly impaled on a stake, or decapitated, or drowned, etc. Keep in mind LIMBO is entirely in black and white with a nostalgic, almost ‘Winnie the Poo as drawn by goth kids’ look. So just imagine my horror when Christopher Robin’s cousin was chopped in half by a 10 foot tall spider. Even though the game stops just short of Kill Bill style fountains of blood, it somehow comes off as more disturbing. Major credit for the animation and art team for that.

This isn’t meant to be a super well thought out video game review or anything. Just some amateur thoughts and feelings I had about the game after I was done with the demo. I’m definitely no writer or journalist (or any plans to become one) but I write this with the hope of better understanding what I liked and didn’t like about the games I play. I really hope to get involved in creating a game myself one day so I figure might as well start putting my thoughts down in writing and see if it helps later down the road.

I’ll finish this ‘review’ with Amnesia: The Dark Descent next time. Thanks for reading!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvRuu2rmZbI (if you’re still curious about LIMBO click the link!)