Gaming Amnesia: The Dark Descent Review

Joe's been scared senseless by Frictional Games' latest game. Find out why in our review.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/09/09/amnesia-the-dark-descent-review/1

 

at that price, I think I may have to give this one a go!

 

Sounds like a good game, and £12.99 is a good price for a new release. Unfortunately, a student budget (and a backlog of games bought but not played) means I'll have to wait until it's on a Steam sale.

 

It's also multiplatform, for us Linux Gamers.

 

Steam Sale for me, methinks. I have a big enough backlog as it is!

 

Ooh this looks good. Is it anything like the Penumbra games, ie cool physics where you can pick up objects with the mouse etc?

 

Yep, there was plenty of mousing action going while Joe was play-testing (between the massive jumps and gasps, that is!)

 

Sounds like top Halloween fear fodder. Normally the word 'horror' used to describe a game is just a synonym for 'crap third person zombie shooter' so it'll be good to play something genuinely different.

 

Read the review, like the sound of it, it's been a while since a game spooked me out good lol , but I too have a backlog of games to play through but I'll remember to get this when I can or might just get it spare of the moment, definately sounds good .

 

have to check this out

 

thanks for the tip Joe, downloaded the demo on Steam

 

I get dizzy just wondering around the mansion.. I dunno joe- think my guy had a sex change or something.. I went into a dream state and I could have swore I saw a guy dancing around in a tootoo in the dark areas



ugh can't play anymore man.. the dizzy effect is making me sick =E mixed the acid- in the refinery trying to be stealth and the screen is going all over the place.. same thing happen in mirrors edge when looked over the side of the buildings

 

I don't get why Mafia II got just a 7 and this got an 8. Mafia II is a good game but is really anoying all the police chase. The story is quite compelling too and along the way you learn to care about the main characters.

Amnesia is a good game too. But it is quite repetitive because all the come and go to gather things. The graphics are kinda washed out and all that dizzyness of insanity makes me dizzy IRL. It is really annoying how fast the oil lamp goes empty. You go insane too easy because of all that hide in shadows thing. And when you are a bit insane and your vision blurs at least for me i get really dizzy.

But the game is immersive. Not as much as Penumbra but it is. I would rather give it a 7.

But again, "fun" is a really personal matter.

 

this sounds like a good game, and only £12.99 you must be joking! I love these types of games that have good gameplay are unique and are sold for a reasonable price. That says to me that the developers are making the games for reasons other than profit, i like that!

 

uncheck insanity in the graphics options.. or be a vet in the navy

 

Looking forward to this one. Overture is one of my favourite games. Black Plague was a little more Hollywood.

 

Hold up, sanity meter? Woo! Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is one of my favourite games ever, I may have to give this a try.

 

This is a bit of a toff-ish game imo. The gameplay itself is crap. A few puzzles here and there which mostly are very uninteresting, just a matter of finding something and clicking on something. The creeping around the house element is also very boring and it didn't manage to scare me as much as I hoped. There is a whole lot of nothing going on in this game. Lots of walking around doing bugger all...

It reminds me of lots of other games that gave me a similar experience but which were far better. The original Alone in the Dark in the old DOS days was great. It was similar, creeping around an old mansion, but it was far better because you were constantly making progress and doing stuff. There were lots of fights with swords or old rifles, it was really creepy, and it had good puzzles. Even with its crappy old graphics, I prefer that much more to this game. Then there is System Shock and SS2. If I'm going to be going back and forth over the old ground, uncovering journals, collecting items to go and use somewhere else, I would MUCH rather be doing it in the SS games. I found that FAR creepier, even more immersive, and yet that had loads of fantastic combat too with great FPS action and grenades and stuff. Then there are the Thief games, more about sneaking around voluntarily to steal stuff.. but it still had that similar kind of tension but I found it far more purposeful and fun and just better. And then lastly, there is haunted house level in Vampire Bloodlines which scared the living crap out of me. Still to this day I've never been very scared by a computer game, except by that level which did it greatly.

That's not to say that this game is completely worthless though. It's fairly cheap for a start. And if you like that posh English storytelling aimed at 14 year olds like Famous Five or something, then you might like that in this game. Although I reckon you would probably be better off just buying a good book.

 

I agree in most part. But I have to admit that the flooded cellar is really intense. One of the most intenses I ever see.

I would recomend "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" (based on HP Lovecraft world, as you may have guessed) and above all else "Condemned: Criminal Origins"

 

Never played the first one but I played Condemned, that was decent I thought. Lots of head smacking.