And I thought Penumbra was scary...
The player assumes the role of a bystander in some mysterious castle suffering from amnesia. He has very little knowledge of the place and even the time period (although it appears to be aorund the second half of 19th century), and can only remember his name 'Daniel'. It is soon clear that the place he is in is supernatural, and something (or some things) mysterious is on the loose and right after him. Upon discovering a note he wrote to himself before he chose to gain amnesia, which tells him to kill someone called 'Alexander', things get more confusing. His only hope is to survive this nightmarish place is by investigating places and attempting to piece together his past while surviving from something that is hunting him.
*Along the way, you will find a good arsenal of weapons. These will be good for fighting against those enemies you will come across that are your hunters. You will be lucky to find a safe area where you can rest, re-arm and heal yourself. Until you have to venture out again and fight.*
But enough about Left 4 Dead, let's get to some real horror here. Amnesia attempts to immerse the way the Penumbra games did by providing little knowledge of the terror that awaits you, and giving deep and realistic interactivity with the environment, as well as little to no defense. This is proper horror, unlike games like Valve's multiplayer-based shooter. Instead of a torch and a forever-lasting glowstick, you have a lantern which runs out of oil. Exploring the castle is the main core of the gameplay, with occasional monsters and frequent puzzles along the way. The sanity feature is quite unique and contributes well to the atmosphere. Should Daniel witness too many scary things, he will become more insane and experience hallucinations such as sounds that may, or may not, exist and witness bugs crawling on the screen. Therefore, in order to mantain his sanity you have to search for tinderboxes to light up any candles you can find (be warned, lighting too many will make it harder to hide from enemies in the dark). Like this developer's previous games, you can interact with the environment by holding down the mouse button and moving it in the appropriate direction to open/ close a door/drawer or to lift up an object and throw it. Improvements to this feature are the ability to rotate an object while holding it in order to inspect parts of it or to place it in a certain stance. Another one is less clunkiness to the formula. If you sometimes had an exhausted hand for moving the mouse all the time in order to close a door/drawer, you can now right-click to instantly shut them, which saves a lot of pressure.
If you are an adventure game, or simply a Penumbra, fan, one of the biggest attractions would be the puzzles. So far, they remain the same quality as what was experienced in Frictional's old trilogy. They are generally logical and almost always fun without ever being a big challenge. There has been some new creativity here: For example, I was in a flooded room and some invisible being was patrolling around and ready to attack me if I jumped off the floating crates into the water. It was necessary to stand in the water to turn a valve to open the door to the next room. Therefore to distract this invisible monster, I had to chuck human body parts for it to feed on while giving me the time to escape.
There are some good puzzles to be found here, but some people are here most for it's atmosphere. The advertising wasn't false, and if you had a glimpse at it then what you have seen is not even the worst, and from the videos alone I was hesitant to even buy this game due to the terrifying scenes. Even less brave enough to turn off the lights in my room (I already play with headphones and that's more than frightening enough). Amnesia: The Dark Descent's premise is perhaps the scariest thing one could wish for in reality: Suffering amnesia in an environment completely unfamiliar to you. In addition to that horror, the player will find themselves in vulnerably dangerous and terrifying places like dungeons, a morgue and torture chambers to name a few. Forget about Frictional Games' previous titles. THIS is the scary one. Like Penumbra 2: Black Plague, weapons are not available to you so therefore you must hide or run. You can still try to throw objects to knock out an enemy for a wee while, but you will never be able to kill them, so stealth and tactics are the best options out there, especially since these terrifying-looking humanoids run fast and kill you quickly. Unlike in Penumbra, danger could be lurking at any corner and may dispose of you in only one of two hits. EXTREMELY rarely was there any moment where I felt at all safe.
Something that is also worth mentioning is that this game has really good graphics too, one thing that IGN was positive about (unlike with Penumbra) which create the creepiest atmosphere. They may seem dated if by a large studio, but considering this was a small team, this is one of the best indie visuals I have come across especially from an artistic standpoint. To create the best horror effect, Frictional Games did not try to censor anything here. You get little hope as you progress through this dangerous castle (your only hope being the answers to your questions); hearing damsels in distress won't give you a chance to save them, flashback or not, because they usually only result in unsettling outcomes which you can only imagine as you only hear and never 'see' them happening. In addition to that, it means you will come across discoveries like mutilated bodies and organs that don't look too welcoming to certain areas. The creative design on the monsters easily manages to look terrifying by itself. Just by looking at them, you don't need to learn the hard way that they are extremely dangerous.
The horror does not only come from the environment, but also from Daniel's mind. The hugely disturbing flashbacks that sometimes need to be heard as part of the story, almost give you a clear reason why Daniel chose to forget his past. As mentioned before, the game does not resort to giving you false or true hope. Sometimes you hear gruesome, torture events with crying people so begful of mercy that even if they were evil you would still be sympathetic - the worst part being that they sound completely innocent. This kind of thing is experienced a bit later however as in the beginning, all that game's horror builds up throughout the intro with surprises and distant whispers, haunting music and lively environments to the point of chilling me and making me want to turn the game off for a break (and at the time, I hadn't even played 2 hours). But eventually, the game really opens with unbearably creepy and dangerous moments along with some of those flashbacks mentioned. Sometimes they are so horrible that I wonder why I had turned off the game near the beginning and not later.
So far, it appears that the replay value is the weakest point. It follows a steady storyline without bringing much open-endedness, but it is not totally worthless. Like with the previous games, there is some exploration and a couple of secrets to discover. A few puzzles have small, but varied ways of completing them if you want to come back and try a different solution (there are other ways with that one I mentioned earlier, by moving crates and standing on them for example). The conclusion features what seems to be 3 endings although they don't require going far back in order to make them a possibility. Understandably, like with every other horror game, the scares are most effective on the first playthrough and this is no exception, but some stuff may never stop disturbing you so feel free to replay in order to face that same experience again. Not to mention that it might be worth going back to look back at storyline clues you may have missed or simply overlooked to get better understanding and idea of the plot. Plus, there is 'custom story' where once you complete all endings, you can unlock password to opening a folder for a kind of level/map editor. (Edit) DLC has become more common as I noticed a promotion for Portal 2 with an available level at the bottom of the start game menu, called 'Justine', and in some ways, its even more polished and scarier than the proper game, although I suggest playing through that one before trying the expansion.
The only real flaw in my opinion is that you cannot favourite saves like in Penumbra, which is annoying because after several saves, the previous ones get deleted somehow. I don't want to relive awesome moments by starting the game from scratch, you know. But aside from that, there are no real flaws. Overall, Amnesia: The Dark Descent was well worth the wait in my opinion. It fixes a lot of the flaws from the Penumbra games and introduces an even more engrossing experience in addition to that. This is one horror game where playing through the entire way proves that you really have balls of steel. It is not the longest length video game, but with it's cheap price, it is totally worth owning and can be fun to replay. To get the best experience, you must read as little as possible about it before playing through the whole story. It's not for people who love gunfights and explosions, but for those that love a mysterious storyline, scary atmosphere, and enjoyable puzzles. If this game does not frighten you AT ALL, then I don't know what can.
Story - 8.5/10
Graphics - 10/10 (for an indie game)
Gameplay - 10/10
Sound - 10/10
Music - 8/10
Replay value - 6.5/10
Lasting value (respectively) - 9.7/10