In case you’re unfamiliar with me, I have a huge appreciation for all things horror, video games included of course. Something about the genre is so fascinating to me, so unique in its communications of such a prevalent emotion that is pursued almost as much as it’s avoided. Tapping into to such a primal emotion like fear in a way that exhilarates the heart and mind with an nearly drug-like intoxication that leaves you confused on whether you like it or hate it is really something special. I’m not a thrill-seeker per se, but I like to think that I aspire to be, in little ways perhaps. Like playing horror games frequently.
As I’ve gone through, read about, and played some of the gaming communities’ most lauded horror game entries, one detail I’ve noticed is a particular franchise that’s sure to always make the cut when greatest of all time discussions come up. Amnesia, or its developer Frictional Games’ predecessor series, Penumbra. So naturally, I figured it made a great candidate for my 2024 Horrorfest as a well-known and culturally relevant title from the genre. I’ve seen it compared to offerings like Outlast or Layers of Fear, but after actually playing it I think their similarities are superficial at best. Unlike the former games, Amnesia: The Dark Decent wears its puzzles, story, and gruesome ambience on its sleeve far more prominently than it does enemy interactions or moment-to-moment dangers. To illustrate this, I’d like to go down the list in that exact order. Let’s start with the puzzles.
Amnesia: The Dark Decent, which from here on out I’m just going to refer to as Amnesia, has a heavy emphasis on spatial and physics-focused puzzles and challenges. While actually made by Frictional Games on their in-house HPL engine, the game runs and looks miraculously close to titles developed on the source engine. Think Half-Life 2, Garry’s Mod, and Portal. Generally speaking you’ll be asked to throw, pull, stack, and grab objects in a pseudo-realistic fashion by mimicking the movement with your mouse to solve the challenge in front of you. Most puzzles are confined to a single-room, but that rule is sometimes broken here and there.
You’ll have to think about problems laterally when they go beyond break down this door or get from point A to point B, as once or twice there were instances where the solution were extremely unintuitive. Not helped by the fact that certain tasks you would think would be impossible given the weight of certain items you’re assumed to be able to carry and lift. But fine, it’s a video game so I can pretend like that’s not the case and not be butthurt about it. To expand on the puzzles overall though, I think Amnesia teetered the line of banal and convoluted too hard. That sweet spot of thoughtful, complex, and rewarding was too rare a moment for me to describe the puzzles as a whole that way. A couple of introductory puzzles are fine, but too easy or too obtuse probably describes around 70% of the tasks. Even that being the case, I can take simple if the other elements take the brunt of the load off that aspect. Some of the best games are walking-simulators. I’d argue in spite of them being that though, not because they are, but that’s another discussion for another day.
So how does the story hold up? Kind of poorly if you ask me, and is probably my least favorite part of Amnesia. Luckily there are some nuggets of intrigue, like tiny buoys in a sea of convoluted, non stop hullabaloo. I won’t spoil the story here, but I will spoil how they tell most of it, so be warned all the same. Much of the game is told through an absolute deluge of flashbacks, findable notes, and monologues from the main character, Daniel. It feels like it’s trying to be like Memento, if it were a game and about 80% less interesting. Very non-linear, drip-feeding information, and sometimes contradicting itself later on. However with a name like Amnesia it’s a bit of struggle to justify the meandering done leading up to the twist reveal. And I say this as someone who doesn’t mind mostly extraneous lore dumps or exposition being more subtle. It’s just that Amnesia is anything but subtle in its desperate attempt to connect you with the story of our dear Daniel, who can’t help but yap endlessly whenever given the opportunity.
By the way, despite the reveal being the most interesting part of the story, it’s also kind of…. dumb. It felt like they had an idea for the climax and worked backwards from it. I’d say the most interesting crumb that the game offers is in some of its horror it displays that’s gone at the castle courtesy of the non-beastly monsters. Genuinely disgusting and horrific. And not in the shock-horror way that’s so in your face about it. Past that, the story is just not for me. Long for the sake of long, disorganized for the sake of cultivating a mistaken perception of “complexity”, I just didn’t connect with the game much at all in that regard.
Oh and as a really quick sidebar, I also hated the flashbacks for an unrelated-to-story reason. They were always preceded with a white screen flash. I don’t know about you but I like to play horror titles in the near pitch-black darkness. Amnesia itself is in agreement with me too, the game literally uses light and darkness as a mechanic for sanity. So why then does it insist on flashbanging me seemingly every five minutes with the most head-ache inducing screen imaginable? Minor I know, but it’s something that actually started to annoy me by the end with how often it occurred.
Lastly, and where I think the game is batting its strongest is in the ambience of Brennenburg Castle, your setting for the duration of your play. This is an odd comparison, but the cobblestone and wood structure greatly reminded me of some of the interiors in Skyrim, which is not a diss. It feels decrepit, abandoned, and downright creepy. A feeling that only gets stronger the deeper you go. With some of the hefty fog sections, coupled with the heavy emphasis on high contrast lighting for gameplay purposes. it allows for some serious visual feasts. It can almost feel like walking through a dream at times. It’s surreal, and I’d call it liminal if it didn’t feel so worn and claustrophobic too. And it cycles from creepy to gross on a dime when you get to the areas utterly overrun by the fleshy shadow creatures that have infected the castle.
The creatures and their bulging, leaking structures add to the visual gumbo in their own special way too. With the castle acting almost as a stand-in for your fractured mind. The designs, both bipedal and eldritch, nail the assignment of being gross and otherworldly respectively, while not going overboard and thinking scary = endless viscera. Granted that design pattern didn’t become a industry trend until long after this game came out, but regardless I’ll still commend Amnesia for its restraint. That’s not to say there isn’t viscera, don’t think there isn’t. It’s just used sparingly for some of the grossest and darkest parts of the game.
So, that covers the biggest elements in my opinion, which just leaves us with the enemies and their interactions. I say interactions because this is one of those ‘you can’t fight back’ titles. And the reason I say this is more understated in comparison to the others is really owed to the pure prevalence of these interactions. Playing on a standard difficulty, it felt almost surprising with how spaced out each enemy section was. Most consist of bipedal freaks stalking by and chasing you when seen, but my favorite enemy interaction was the water creature by far. Relying on sounds for distractions and raised objects for safety had me clenching my whole body more than once. And it didn’t drag on long enough for the adrenaline to wear off to the point of exhaustion.
With the exception of that monster, and since you can’t fight back, you’re typically relegated to hiding or running from the aggressive ne'er do wells. For hiding in the dark, the only complications is the sanity mechanic, a feature meant to encourage you to avoid disturbing events or close-up enemy contacts. In effect, it punishes you for doing things like looking at monsters or saying in the dark. While I see where they were going with this, I think this oddly enough funnels back into my headache complaint from earlier. In addition to being an annoyance for not letting me look at the creatures I’m literally trying to avoid, the sanity markers don’t spook me, and only immerse me in a way that I’d rather just imagine or have be communicated to me in a different way. The visual disorientation when losing sanity is just too effective in the wrong way.
Try to avoid losing it when possible, as on top of disorienting you in real life it will also alert enemies when fully insane. You have a lantern to combat this, but it’s always a trade off when to use it, as your oil is limited. It felt lax (maybe too lax?) enough for me resource wise - I never even got close to losing my available oil - yet it’s something to keep in mind at all times. You could think of the whole thing as a more heavily reinforced use of something like Outlast’s battery system, albeit with a constant threat of punishment.
Running is really not recommended except for scripted sections or if you get caught unintentionally. They’re deceptively fast, and it’s really not worth the trouble to have someone on your tail when you don’t even know for certain where you’re going or what you’re looking for. Their detection range isn’t crazy, but hiding in the dark for a few seconds when you think you’re made is almost always the best move, as simple as it may be. Though on that, I want to note that there were a few instances where the enemy’s eyesight was bizarrely godlike, lasering in on me even in near pitch black. Quite annoying, but it’s a factor that I’ll ultimately chalk up to a bit of good-old fashioned on-again off-again jank, seeing as it was not consistent at all.
Unfortunately, despite being a horror game, I think the fairly elementary enemy patrols and chases were just ok, nothing more and nothing less. Necessary for tension, genre conventions, and breaking up monotony, but not what anyone should remember this game for. Which is a shame, seeing as some of the best parts of the horror genre is in the creativity with which memorable, creepy scenes can be elaborately crafted and player set on to make a permanent impression within one’s psyche. Ironically, the water monster early on in is a fantastic example of this. I just wanted so much more of that.
Otherwise, the rest of the enemies felt like checking a box. And I say this as someone who doesn’t mind as much as some that you can’t fight back. Granted I do think there should be something that you should do to protect yourself when facing certain death, even if it doesn’t work, but it’s easier to believe here that it would be ineffective. You know, eldritch monsters and whatnot. I can understand the reasoning for thinking that’s lame. I just don’t feel particularly strongly one way or another.
With that final point, let me just say that I’m slightly underwhelmed by this title as a whole. I don’t regret playing it, but my final impressions of it are only barely positive-leaning overall. I can still acknowledge it as an important step and landmark title in the psychological horror genre evolution, but I can also recognize the fraying at the edges of this game’s polish. Definitely don’t see myself playing this one again, however I still hold a keen interest in its sequels, and whether or not they’ll improve on what I didn’t like or do a ‘second verse, same as the first’. Until then, have a good one.