Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Gameplay #2) - Morbid Morgue
0Inspired by the Giant Bomb podcast discussion following news editor Patrick Klepeck's recent playthrough of the game, I decided to finally start making my way through indie developer Frictional Games' celebrated survival horror title Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which I bought when it came out two years ago but for some reason never got around to at the time. Although I have certainly been at least moderately frightened by various horror titles in the past (and YouTube is full of "watch-this-kid-scream" reaction clips featuring this particular game), Amnesia honestly doesn't scare me at all. To be fair, the gothic environments are atmospheric and the game artfully maintains the illusion that grisly monsters could emerge from the dark shadows at any point. Crucially, however, the somewhat Lovecraftian enemies aren't nearly as scary to the player as they are to the slightly unhinged protagonist himself, and these creatures all too soon (not to mention all too often) reveal themselves to the player in all their low-polygonal monster mundaneness, instead of remaining a more intangible but distinctly unnerving threat lurking in the dark corners of Castle Brennenburg (which would have made the game better). Not giving the player any combat abilities was undoubtedly a clever design decision, but in practice the gameplay soon becomes very focused on a few core procedures (i.e. methodically searching rooms for valuable objects and hiding once in a while to avoid detection) rather than on being immersed in any kind of sustained state of anxiety and horror. And while the sound design is great from a purely technical standpoint, the supposedly spooky noises and sudden outbursts of the game's predictably dissonant score are simply not original, unexpected or eerie enough to catch me off-guard. Disappointingly enough, even the infamous water monster scene (assuming it's the one I think it is) turned out to be a lot more silly and annoying than it was scary.
I must admit I'm a little puzzled as to why Amnesia has garnered such a reputation for being unusually frightening. A partial explanation for the praise of Amnesia as an almost overpowering experience could be the fact that many younger players (i.e. people below 30) simply aren't accustomed to survival horror as a distinct genre. Self-described genre fans such as Patrick Klepeck aside, an ever-increasing percentage of players got into gaming only after the Resident Evil and Alone in the Dark series began their transformations into decidedly more action-focused affairs. These poor impressionable youths were presumably not prepared for the kind of slow-paced, unabashedly action-free gameplay which Amnesia delivers, but which isn't that exceptional in the context of the genre as a whole.
But even though other games such as System Shock 2, good old Silent Hill 1 (which I played for the first time relatively recently and was genuinely freaked out by) and arguably even some of the more cerebral titles such as Pathologic are ultimately superior as far as horror experiences go, Amnesia still provides some pretty neat gameplay which manages to keep the player engaged via atmospheric exploration, compulsive scavenging and simple but at least moderately engaging puzzles. Taking care to check every chest and drawer in the vicinity is almost always rewarding the player with additional items (mostly oil for your lantern and tinderboxes) or a bit of optional lore, and there's generally a nice balance between moments when you're simply exploring and other times when skillfully avoiding enemies is the primary concern. So while Amnesia doesn't make me scream (even in a good way), I'm still having fun with it. Indeed, you might even call the game relaxing...