Amnesia: The Dark Descent

[Pip Boy]

Is really, really, really a terrifying game. I find that a lot of the newer survival horror games diminish the creepiness by overarming you *coughDeadSpacecough*, but being a protagonist that is flimsy and easily murdered and kind of insane and unable to use weapons against the horrific nightmare hellspawn that attack is a nice change for this kind of game. There seem to be so many sequences where you must hide, run, or die. In one portion your vision gets blurry and suddenly the room you're in is flooded. As you move through the water, these splashes of water follow behind you getting closer and closer, accompanied by growling noises. If you don't get out of the water in time, whatever it is will reach you and you will die. Whats worse, for the next 15 minutes of the game, you find yourself jumping from box to box (or from box to water to box in places where the nearest box is too far to jump) all the while having that horrific thing follow you in the water. Then you get to another room where there are no boxes, just several doors and hallways. Had to run down a hallway, slam the door behind me (which is very involved and immersive because the game's control method has you grab the door and push it shut rather than "press e to interact with door") then run like hell while I can hear the monstrous growls of the invisible thing behind me as it beats down the door. Could hear the door behind me breaking just as I managed to get through and close another, through about four or five doors with some splits and turns and OH MY GOD THERE'S ANOTHER ONE! AND ITS A DEAD END! SHIT! THERES SOME BOXES! CLIMB ON THE BOXES! FUCK! THE BOXES FELL OVER! GODDAMMIT WHY ARE THE WALLS BLEEDING!? THE WALLS ARE FUCKING BLEEDING HOLY SHIT! At another part, I was standing in a small study with only one door out right behind me. I then began to hear some kind of undead monster banging on that door, slowly tearing it down. With it blocking my only escape, I ran into a nearby wardrobe to hide. Whatever it was broke into the room, and because of the way door interaction works, I was able to slip open the wardrobe just a tiny bit to peek at the monster and watch it shamble around, then leave, without fully opening the door and alerting it. Sometimes such simple touches can make a game so much better..

Even more interesting is the way sanity works. Whenever you linger in dark areas for too long or see that which mortal man was not meant to see, you start losing your sanity. Your vision will blur, everything will turn red, and in the extremes you'll begin hearing voices that aren't there and experience a lag between your controls and in-game actions (that one can get you killed sometimes). However, lingering in well-lit areas, while normally the better choice, makes it easier for zombies and the like to see you, which is another good way to die.

The game also has a puzzle element, sticking to the normal Survival Horror elements of having you slowly explore an area grabbing items as you go that can be combined with other items to make the thing that gets you past the other thing, but its done unlike a lot of games where the devs seem to just "LOL YOU DIDN'T GET THE UNNOTICEABLE SHINY ROCK IN CHAPTER 1 THE GAME IS NOW UNWINNABLE", at least to the point that I'm at everything you pick up and carry around with you seems perfectly logical. I've never seen an item available for me to stash that didn't immediately make perfect sense.

Anyone else played this? Anyone else impressed lately by another pants-shittingly horrifying game?

[Viridis]

Yahtzee reviewed this, didn't he? He was fairly positive about it. Made me want the game.

[Pip Boy]

It was surprisingly one of the I think 3 or 4 games tops that Yahtzee gave a good review.

[tacticslion]

The sanity function sounds at least somewhat like a less-armed Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. Which was also an awesome game. This one also sounds good, and perhaps not as railroaded as that one.

What platform is it for?

[Pip Boy]

I believe its just on PC and Mac.

[Magus]

Yeah, I loved the sanity effects in Eternal Darkness. I wish they'd make a sequel to that game. Maybe this is similar, I'll have to look it up.

EDIT: Looks pretty awesome, even though I will probably have a heart attack when I play it. 20 dollars is certainly a good price for such a nice-looking game, those are some really nice graphics and the gameplay looks incredibly tense, and yet it also doesn't appear to be too taxing on my system requirements--I could actually play this on my PC instead of my relative's, a definite plus.

[Aldurin]

It's Linux compatible, so I'll definitely demo it.

I still remember games I played when I was younger that were far from horror games. It was shit that would paralyze me like the flashlight guards in the first chapter of Sly 2 or some of that shit from the early Harry Potter games. I don't know how I'll cope with this.

EDIT: Holy crappin' shit I nearly shat myself watching the gameplay video I must download this immediately.

[Pip Boy]

To emphasize, the game's insanity meter will fuck with you in ways that aren't okay. This game will make you witness events that are strange and frightening on a Lovecraftian level. Sometimes, when your insanity is high enough, you'll hear... things. You'll successfully hide as a monster walks by, slowly going mad as you watch its horrid form trudging through the darkness. When its out of sight and earshot, you'll think you're safe, only to suddenly hear it right fucking behind you. Not because its actually there, but because you're so goddamn terrified that you're hallucinating that you heard it. Other times, once you've just lingered in the darkness too long, you'll hear sounds. I was once walking back through a hallway I'd been through dozens of times wandering around looking for the solution to the next puzzle when I suddenly heard glass breaking and a woman screaming. "Oh my god! Help me! Someone help me!". Whats more, all the sounds you hear as part of hallucinations are directional. I could hear her voice coming from a specific room, so I ran into the room to find only a few dusty old books and an empty desk. The game's sanity scale won't show you a specific level of sanity or anything, but if you check your status/inventory screen you can see a general estimate. The levels I've seen so far go from "Crystal Clear" to "A slight headache" then "Head throbbing and hands shaking" and then just "..."

When my sanity reached the point that it was described as "...", I began to freak out in a very big way. Most importantly, the trigger for this insanity was seeing one of the many horrific horrors that lurk the dark halls of this creepy-ass castle. It was still walking around in the room with me, I was just hiding, very quiet, very still. After the stress of watching it slowly hunt me down became too much, the character simply curled up on the floor and whimpered softly as the walls began to bleed and womens' screams and tears could be heard from all directions. This was while the monster was still searching the room, slowly working its way in my direction.

The only complaint I have about the game so far is that some things cause your sanity to drop that simply shouldn't. Namely, standing in the dark. By "in the dark" it unfortunately means "not standing so close to a light source that you risk catching fire". You can be literally five feet from a lit candle and start losing it because its too dark. Other than that, the mechanic works very well. You'll slowly crumble away as you see the shadow horror stalking you begin to approach, and sometimes finding things like the time I opened a random, unimportant cupboard and a pile of human skulls fell out, will hasten your madness. The only way to reverse the effect is to work your way closer to your goal, as solving puzzles and progressing will renew your confidence and help you hold on.

EDIT: If anyone is wondering, the reason for these long, ranting posts is because it gives me one more thing to do that is NOT playing more of that game because I'm too terrified to touch it right now. My last save happened when I grabbed like 3 important puzzle items from a chamber where zombies were patrolling for me, only to be seen and run like hell, thankful that I escaped with my life. Then I realized I had forgotten to get a fourth item in that area, and that I would have to go back into that horrific nest of nightmares. Then I cried a little, and quit playing.

[Aldurin]

I'm still looking for installation instructions for the demo. Does anyone know a command that will install and .sh file on linux?

EDIT: Nevermind, figured it out. I'm literally freaked out shitless by the first couple minutes of the game and haven't even seen anything that should be worth being scared over.

[tacticslion]

Meh, I ran across this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTKY5GTQ1HQ) accidentally recently, and while posting it here ever-so-slightly spammy (for which I apologize), I feel it fits the mood of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, as described so far enough and that I had to share it.

Anyway, sorry for any nightmares, it may cause...