First of all I must say that I past this game with a friend and later on the humble bundle I had it for free.
In this survival horror the player (Daniel) wakes up in a castle that seems to be abandoned at first sight. When reading the card that is for himself, the player is intrigued to try to perceive what happened. The environment that surrounds the castle is formidable, from dust to small clicks, the darkness surrounding the various scenarios, the low lighting that makes the player feel temporarily secure and the interaction of objects, makes the player always alert around the corner. Not forgetting that the soundtrack of the game also helps a lot in the question of advance or not advance.
In comparison to other titles like dead space, resident Evil, etc. here there is no guns to defend us only the darkness. During the game several flashbacks of Daniel’s past occur giving details of what happened. At first nothing appears to be out of the normal but gradually advancing in the game what seemed to have a happy ending will become increasingly dark until the player draws the conclusion that Daniel is the bad guy.
One of the things I found cool was the system of insanity, if the player spends a lot of time in the dark, he begins to get blurred vision and see things like the beloved monsters in his head. In order not to happen such a thing the player has an oil lamp that spent over time as an alternative to save the oil use matches that can be used in torches, candles etc., fortunately or unfortunately (depend from the point of view) there are many dark areas like in the prison where vizibility is zero and the use of the lamp is the only option. Of course you can always turn on the brightness in order to not spend the oil, but would not that be taking away the essence of what is a survival horror?
Puzzles throughout the game become annoying and sometimes they are not clear how they can be solved, not to mention that the distance between the necessary objectives is absurd. Me and my friend often used YouTube to realize what we were missing.
What I missed in this game was the cutscenes that games usually have. The flashbacks are by themselves game cutsnenes and the player will have to use the imagination to “see” the cutscenes. The voices of the characters are also not very good, sometimes it was confusing who was talking.
In my opinion for those who have the patience to go there over and over again and have to go through the same place that had already been in, etc. I recommend the game.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Yep
Pros
- Environment
- Has some jump scare
- Insanity System
Cons
- Puzzle and more puzzle
- Mediocre voices
- No cutscenes