Amnesia: The Dark Decent: Do I really have to go in there?

I really don't HAVE to...

Ah Amnesia, the most fun I've ever had getting the piss scared out of me.  This is my second playthrough of Amnesia, which is going to change my assessment somewhat, but I was pleasantly surprised how fun the game remained even with knowing most of what was going on.  But first, the mechanics.

Amnesia goes for a minimalist approach when it comes to mechanics, there's only a few keys to the entire game.  It makes heavy use of the physics engine and "carrying" things with the mouse.  It's very similar to many other modern purebred adventure games and works rather well.  The controls are somewhat difficult which actually adds a lot to the game.  Specifically the way you open doors somehow captures how difficult it would be to open a door while running for your life.  All in all I like the controls quite a lot, event he peek function worked well.   I was never mad at the controls.

 

 

Amnesia is the latest in a line of similarly themed games by the same dev house.  If you feel up to it, check out Penumbra, as it's essentially more of the same. 

But there's a reason why this one caught the attention of the masses and it mostly has to do with atmosphere.

Atmosphere is a difficult thing to cultivate.  Don't try hard enough and you get pretty much nothing, try too hard and it comes off as campy and obvious.  Dead Space 2 had this problem in spades.  It was trying so hard to be scary it fucked it all up.  That and they gave you a gun, that usually helps.  But Amnesia strikes the right chords.  The game is creepy without seeming to try, the setting is as you would expect, but there's always something off about your surroundings.  Certain areas make subtle changes to the formula to enhance the experience.  At one point there's a storage area where the darkness is just slightly more... dark.  Nothing else gets changed but I felt on edge the entire time I was down there.  It's a small change, but it's enough because you're already scared.

Now there is a proper way to play Amnesia.  That way is not in the middle of the day, with the sound on speakers and your music playing in the background, you pussy.  The correct way to play is in as dark as your room can get with headphones on and the volume turned up three notches below excruciating.  That way, there's nothing to protect you.

Amnesia understands that for a game to be scary, you must feel slightly helpless.  This is pulled off rather well as all they give you is a lantern and the ability to hide in cabinets.  The monsters are threatening because they're dangerous.

Fuck

Amnesia also understands that the monster is only scary if it's mysterious and unpredictable.  You can't have the monster in front of the player's face the whole game, it just doesn't stay scary.  The monsters must startle and then remain scary.  The game achieves this by first making the monsters terrifying, seriously good job on the model guys, make it so you don't see to much of them, this is achieved by penalizing you for looking at any monster for too long, and finally by making them smart.  The AI is incredibly good in it's purpose.  The monsters will chase you, for very long amounts of time and then when they lose you, they actively search for you.

Hiding is no guarantee of safety either.  In fact, one of the scariest and most helpless situations is hiding in a cabinet, quietly hiding and BAM, the monster is coming through the door.  You have no where to run and must face your fate.  And, no, you don't save and quit and reload, you pussy.

I swear that door used to be open

The game is not without it's faults though.  Being an indie game, it is rather short, although it going to feel very, very long.  The progression is okay but a lot of the game looks pretty mcuh the same save for the last bits, which change it up nicely.

The game suffers quite a bit from "Adventure Game Syndrome", the main symptoms of this is allowing you to get very stuck for long amounts of time, inane puzzle logic and not so clear objectives.

I had played the game before, and I remembered most of the puzzles and where I was supposed to go, and I still got stuck a couple of times, mostly on the trap door in the Nave, which is incredibly well hidden. 

Now normally I enjoy difficult puzzles in adventure games, but this is not the right game for that.  For it to continue to be scary, you must make progress.  The game relies heavily on scripted monster encounters and set locations, so if you take too long, the monsters might stop showing up depending on where you get stuck.  In addition, you have a finite supply of oil for the lantern and tinderboxes, so you have to keep progressing or you may run out.

Another well hidden bit

But all in all, I thoroughly enjoy Amnesia.  Probably more than is healthy, but what can you do.  It's incredibly pretty to look at and very engauging.  Even the story has some nice twists and turns, even if it uses the oldest plot cliche in history, it's fun to reassemble your memories and damn it feels good to finish a puzzle.  So quit being a wuss and play this game, especially since it's sequel is slated to come out this year.  Now, go play it.

Oh sweet, I have a bag of Milky Ways

 

My personal favorite area

Yes, I did play until the end

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl: Accuracy is for PUSSIES!

This post might be painful for some, and I apologize if I am insulting one of your favorite games of all time, but this is probably going to be pretty rough.  I'm sure you're right, I just didn't "get" the game, or I'm just terrible at it, or games in general, or perhaps you really did sleep with my mother at some point, but I really don't like this game.

I'm a little at a loss for what to write really.  This is one of the first games I've played that I have zero desire to finish, at all.  It's the first on this blog that I gave up before the ending, the idea that I have to play all the way through so I can make accurate and insightful observations is usually enough motivation to push on through some of the less shining games I've written about, but I just can't keep going.

Now before you send me a strongly worded email, I did play this on an entirely vanilla set-up, I didn't install any mods or anything, and perhaps they fix my complaints and perhaps the game really is engaging, and perhaps I deserve to be sodomized with a broken bottle for my blasphemy, but fucking hell the vanilla game is bad.

First things first, the game looks kind of awful.  I realize it's an older game, but it came out in 2007.  That's the same year as Assassin's Creed and Bioshock and this game looks like Half-Life 2.  The area's are kind of bland and the set objects look mostly odd and out of place.  Normally I can look past dated graphics, but something about these ones really take me out of the game.  The game is trying very hard to be atmospheric and the graphics really mess this up.

Very odd indeed

The controls seem a little wonky too.  You have two crouch buttons, one of which also serves as a walk button and the sprint key is "X" which is weird on it's own.  To properly crouch you have to push shift and control at the same time and then use WASD to move around which is an incredibly odd combination of buttons to push.  The game also tries to make heavy used of the peek mechanic by using Q and E as the lean buttons.  There was a similar mechanic in Dishonored, but some how that seemed less intrusive to actually playing the game.

The AI is pretty bad as well.  There's something incredibly strange about the scripting engine for the NPCs, they never seem to act properly.  On more than one occasion, loading a game would completely change AI behavior.  If I saved while 25 meters behind an NPC because I was going to try and sneak up on him and stab him, failed, and then reloaded, sometimes he'd whip around and shoot my face off.  I soon realized that the game doesn't save your "posture" when you load a game, so if you were crouching when you saved, you'll be standing when you load and apparently just standing makes enough noise to alert the guard who will turn around and shoot your dick off, incredibly inconvenient.

But all of this would have been tolerable if a single gun actually fucking worked ever.  This was by far the most rage inducing mechanic I've ever had to deal with in a game.  I know for a fucking fact that an AK-74u can be a mistreated rusted heap of shit and still hit at least a 1" circle at 50 meters.  I know for a fucking fact that a Glock 20c is accurate to the size of a quarter at 10 meters.  There is no rhyme or reason to the guns what so fucking ever.  I stood 3 meters away from someone, and I know because I turned on the rangefinder, lined up a perfect, straight on headshot with the iron sights and it fucking missed. 

I can suspend belief that not everyone is a dead eye with a gun, but if you're going to play that card, give me a leveling mechanic so  the character can actually get to a concomitant level.  I even looked up how to make the guns actually work, which in return told me to up the difficulty to "Master"... I was already playing on Master, this blows.  The game demands that you stay out of the center of firefights.  This is a good idea, it makes the game tense and difficult, but if I can't hit a fucking enemy from 10m away with a fucking MP5 or a 74u, this shit is not going to work.  The game wants you to stay out of the middle and shoot from cover, the guns demand that you put barrel to skin because even if the barrel is 1/4 of an inch from the person, it's going to miss.

Forums told me it would get better, that the weapons in the beginning are designed to be shitty so you'll learn how to manage yourself in combat, to them I say "Fuck off".  Once I got to the town with the "Bartender" in it, I blew all of my money an modern Enfield rifle, widely regarded as one of the most accurate assault weapons in the world, so accurate, in fact, they had to make the rifle certification test harder in the British military because it was so easy to get shots on target.  So easy to get shots on target and to handle, even the Queen of England fired one and hit the target.  Cant he Marked One hit a target 30 meters away with this marvel of modern technology?  No, no he can't.  But you can be sure as fucking hell that the AI will score a headshot from their tower 130 meters with no direct line of sight, through nine trees in the 1/10 of a second that I popped my head out from cover. And that's where the game ends for me.

 Aside from all this, I had no idea what the story was, seemingly important NPCs kept dying on me when a scripted fight decided to restart it's self in the middle of my conversation, and again when I was coming back through a different area.  If the guns were the only issue, I would probably press on, but it's not.  I'm struggling to find any redeeming qualities and I'm coming up rather short.  This game really isn't for me.

4 seconds away from getting killed by an enemy I can't even see from here

Useless ammo

The shot I took after this, while crouched all the way down went at least 3 feet wide