Amnesia Game Review!

When I first started playing Amnesia I knew of how shocking it was after watching various videos from different youtubers showing how jaw-droppingly scary the experience of playing it was. Even at the start of the game I found that ambient noises were already making me jump and my body was always pumping with adrenaline.

It takes a while to actually see an enemy in the game and by the time it happened I started to feel complacent in the fact that I had not run into any real danger so I was not being as careful as I should have been, when I did run into an enemy I instantly paused the game for time to calm down and a moment to focus on what I had to do. The game is made in such a way that I found myself needing to do this in tricky situations since you need to use 'wit' to outsmart the enemy rather than the usual run-and-gun tactics implemented into most games these days.

This game certainly deserves the title of ‘survival-horror’ with sometimes scarce resources and extremely frightening situations at the best of times. When faced with an enemy you are advised to run or hide since attempts to fight the enemy is usually futile.

Many scenes are obviously scripted which removes a sense of randomness about the game, knowing that each time you play it will be near enough the same... Also, the controls do seem rather clunky, the way you have to manually interact with most objects can become frustrating especially when you are in a hurry; an example being running away from an enemy and attempting to close a door behind you can turn out to be rather difficult when faced with a big monster-type thing appearing at your face when you turn around - saying this, it sure does add to the whole scare factor of the game on a whole. The fact that you can’t fight the enemies is frustrating at times but this again adds to the fear you are faced with in the game and knowing that you can’t defend yourself only makes the game scarier.

Upon completing this game I have found myself drawn to the genre and, despite the negatives I stated, have been inspired to play the Penumbra series, made by the same developer ‘Frictional games’. Kudos to them and I hope to see a sequel as well as the already released DLC for the game, so shall let you know about them also!

I recommend this game to anyone up for a scare.
- Tom John Sullivan

Amnesia Game Website