Also available on PlayStation 4, Switch, Android, Linux, OSX, and Windows Horror is my favorite genre of both movie and video game, and every October, I play at least a couple of horror games in the week or two leading up to Halloween as it's also my favorite holiday. I love to be scared, and when a horror game is done well and played in the dark, it can definitely get a good scare out of me. The games that rely purely on jump scares like Five Disappointments at Freddy's are trash, but good atmospheric horror is peak gaming in my opinion. Amnesia: The Dark Descent absolutely falls into that category. There are a few jump scares here and there, but they're not what the game relies on to scare the player. Amnesia is a fairly old game, so don't go into it expecting Resident Evil 8 quality visuals. That said, it looks extremely good on Xbox and even on Switch. It's the first game in a series of four so far, and at the time of its release, I remember hearing that it was a relatively novel type of horror game by relying almost entirely on atmosphere and lighting to build the player's fear rather than hordes of monsters and jump scares. I tried it back in the day on PC, but I got frustrated and gave up with the water monsters (if you know, you know). I wanted to give it an honest second try, though, and seeing the collection of the first three games on sale for $3 on Switch and included on Game Pass, I did the sensible thing - bought it on Switch to sit on my SD card and then proceeded to play it on Game Pass. You play as Daniel, a British man who's lost all memory except for his name and where he's from. All he has to clue him in as to the situation is a letter from himself before his lost memory, and all it says is basically "Shit's messed up, so find this dude named Alexander and gank him." Well, that's not helpful, but clearly this Alexander fellow is nefarious, so let's get our bearings and remove him. As you make your way through the mansion in which you awaken, you notice a lot of supernatural events - doors moving, disembodied voices, wind out of nowhere blowing out candles, and some weird red pulsating...tissue...of some sort covering walls and floors. That's where the horror begins as the strange goings-on continue and increase in both frequency and severity while you're left in the dark with no idea who or what is causing it. As you progress through the game and solve puzzles, you'll find diary entries from Daniel that fill in his backstory and how he found himself in this supernatural tribulation. Eventually, you do discover that you're not alone; the manor is also haunted by disfigured horrors that skulk around and will kill you on sight. You have no way to fight them, though; the game is an exercise in avoidance and evasion. That's another aspect of the horror - a foe out to kill you but against which you're powerless to fight back. Amnesia: The Dark Descent does seem to have start a surge in the "can't fight back" sub-genre of horror games that builds tension and fear from the feeling of complete helplessness rather than enemies that are just hard to kill. Writing that out, it sounds like a difference without a distinction, but playing these games, the difference is very real, and Amnesia is significantly scarier to me than, say, Resident Evil because of it. Because Amnesia walked, games like Outlast and the tragically aborted PT could run...straight into a broom closet to hide from hideous horrors. Given its relatively low price point and its widespread availability, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is definitely a game that all horror fans need to experience. My Rating - S |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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