Erkki

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

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I concur. Silent Hill is for some reason totally acceptable to me where other horror games are emphatically not.

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I was at Staples today and came upon the bargain PC shelf. I found this little gem right on the top row.

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So i would consider myself a person that enjoys horror games, and i think i've largely become desensitized to a lot of the tricks developers use to create the illusion of peril, but even with those things considered i am still finding this game really difficult to play. (I mean that in the best possible way.)

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It's been two months since I've installed this game. I've played it for a total of 2 hours. (I also mean that in the best possible way.)

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Yeah, I really thought that the setting wouldn't appeal to me at all (I greatly prefer my horror to be contemporary) but that went away pretty quickly. There's something about the simplicity of it that really connects to the 1800's setting, like an old ghost story by M.R. James or something, and the journal entries you find are better written and more evocative than most audiolog stuff you find in games like this.

 

I'm only 45 minutes in, but I haven't gotten to the point where I'm too scared to keep playing.

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The constant illusory footsteps really got to me, and just how long the game draws things out before you even encounter an enemy, it draws it out just long enough to make you feel really paranoid.

Also, the way it obfuscates when it checkpoints, and the fact that you are not safe in either the light or the dark. That latter mechanic is genius, i think. Having to make that choice about which thing you are more afraid of happening, but both options being really shitty.

Even the goofy analog door/drawer control, trying to silently shut things so you don't make a ton of noise. Is that even a mechanic? Have i just been doing that assuming that's how it works?

I also love that solving puzzles is how you restore your sanity. I like to imagine my character having, for his personal benefit, a little morale boosting internal monologue about his own cleverness and resourcefulness.

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Even the goofy analog door/drawer control, trying to silently shut things so you don't make a ton of noise. Is that even a mechanic? Have i just been doing that assuming that's how it works?

 

 

The analog manipulation of world items is definitely one of my favorite things. Running towards a room with a candle when you're low on sanity, and rushing to close any open doors once you're inside is way more effective when you can't just push E.

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It reminds me a bit of Call of Cthulhu, which is a game that still just had an action button, but many object interactions required several steps. You would frantically be fumbling around with door latches as something banged against the other side. (I would highly recommend Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth to anybody who likes Amnesia. Amnesia is even similarly steeped in that Lovecraftian style of horror.)

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Vouching for Dark Corners of the Earth. Never finished it, but frequently played through the first couple of hours, including

the infamous hotel chase scene.

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Vouching for Dark Corners of the Earth. Never finished it, but frequently played through the first couple of hours, including

the infamous hotel chase scene.

 

The latter half of the game is significantly less interesting than the first half, it decides it wants to be a first-person shooter for a while and is really terrible at it, but the eventual climax goes to some pretty ridiculous, entertaining places.

The goofy, overly-elaborate health system i find really charming too, that you can suffer different kinds of injuries to different parts of your body, each combination thereof creating different problems for you. You can break a leg from a fall, impairing your mobility, but then take some morphine to temporarily negate those negative effects so you can still flee your pursuers.

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I can also vouch for Dark Corner's of the Earth. It's not as consistent as Amnesia, or even Penumbra, but falls into similar category. I stopped playing it at the beforespoilered

hotel chase scene

, but later continued from there and finished it. That was probably the worst/best part of the game.

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