Amnesia: The Dark Decent
Positives:
+ Really creepy, eerie, disturbing and downright scary atmosphere and environments. This game does an incredible job of immersing you into the game world and keeping you on the edge of your seat - you never know what could be lurking around the corner. Forget Scratches or Barrow Hill,
this is way scarier.
+ The music, ambience and sound effects are simply great and add to the atmosphere. The music ranges from disturbing pieces (the piece at the main menu) that fill you with dread, to pieces that are more sombre and haunting. Sound effects range from screams and moans from tormented spirits, chains rattling, things falling down/over (books or debris), sounds from machinery, and the sounds of other unspeakable monstrosities etc.
+ While not state-of-the-art, the graphics are decent, light and shadow effects are great, the game's physics are cool and responsive, and the environments are nicely detailed and creepy (providing there's sufficient light to see, of course
).
+ Gameplay ranges from environmental puzzle/problem solving - item hunting, operating machinery, or using the game's physics to interact and manipulate objects to your advantage. For example: throwing a rock down a corridor opposite a monster should cause it to investigate. Puzzles are all pretty logical and clues are left lying around in documents as to what you’re supposed to do.
Survival horror plays an important role as your health and sanity are at stake. It's wise to keep as far away from enemies as possible as your character is prone to dying very quickly. Staying in the dark or staring at monsters for too long will cause your character's brain to fizzle away and make him lose his sanity. Movement and vision will become hazy and sluggish as a result, which will make you weaker and slower at moving or running away. Getting back into the light will help you regain a bit of sanity.
Light is very important! Most of the rooms and corridors are completely shrouded in darkness. To find your way around and keep your sanity healthy, you’ll need to get fuel for your lamp, which will quickly drain away with use, or find tinder boxes to light lamps and candles scattered throughout the corridors. As your light sources are sometimes few and far between, you’ll need to manage your supply carefully. Of course, having too much light around you when near creatures is suicide. In this case, darkness is your friend – you’ll need to find some corner to hide in until they’re gone.
+ You’ll occasionally get a nice brief break from the exploration and horror as you find documents and letters scattered around, which will help you piece together Daniel’s (your character) past. The story is generally interesting to follow and is just as disturbing as the game’s atmosphere.
+ Apart from saving and exiting after a session, there’s no need to worry about saving progress during the game as it does it automatically. This prevents the immersion from breaking.
Negatives:
- The story is pretty thin and there are a number of unanswered questions.
- The ending is a bit disappointing and brief.
- Voice acting is generally good, but for the most part, I’d say it was only above average.
- It’s a bit disappointing that certain ‘scripted’ scenarios don’t return for you to try them again if you fail them. What I mean is, is that you may stumble across a monster by accident and fail to hide in time. And when you come back… it’s gone. There’s no way of tackling the situation again to do it right.
Overall:
The best horror adventure game I've played. Period!
