I breathed out a real-life audible sigh of relief, after charging through tunnels, slamming doors shut behind me, when I made it to the final door. It's so ridiculous that my chest tightened when not only do I hold onto a fairly firm grasp of the fact that it isn't real, but I've played it before and know exactly what's going to happen. The sequence gets even better, having trained you to this incredibly cautious approach, desperately staying out of the water, by following it up with no bloody choice but to just sprint through it in absolute terror. Then you realise if you throw a book as far as you can, it'll charge off splashing in that direction, affording you a chance to jump into the water and run toward the next safe surface, while your real-life arms almost cramp with the tension of getting it right. Fall off a crate and it's just utter, utter panic, frantic scrambling to try to jump back onto something sticking out of the water, as you hear the splashes getting closer and closer, and dammit you can't get on that crate what about this one argh it's hit me I can't take another quickly get on the fucking crate! It'd be a fair game if one of you weren't a feeble human almost paralysed by fear, and the other a monster capable of ripping you to pieces with a few lazy slashes of its invisible claws. But if you're stood on a crate, no matter how nearby the splashes, it can't see you. There's something invisible in here, and it can hear you. Make a single sound and you see splashes in the water coming toward you. It's one of the best moments in all of gaming, in fact. The sound effects are leaden, overbearing, and the forced glimpses of the monsters take away their fear-inducing power.Īnd then I went into that corridor full of water. It endlessly wrenches the camera away from you to ensure you stare at the right doorway at the right moment. But in reality Amnesia operates with the same paranoid of an Activision shooter - fear that the player will miss out. In my memory, the opening of Amnesia was all about vague suggestions, subtle background fear, glimpses out the corner of my eye. This surety became stronger with the first couple of appearances of the lumbering, undefeatable enemies. I became almost immediately pretty sure that it the magic was gone, that the fear wouldn't be there. It also feels oddly primitive in the way it keeps interrupting the tension with sudden white light filling the screen, then some rather dubious over-acted voice-overs barking expository past moments as your movement is restricted. As I once more began my confused exploration of a decaying cancerous mansion, unsure who I am or why I'm there, the smeary, low res text and the shadows in corners seem extremely forced, unnatural. So I just adore that Amnesia began with a request that such players check their dumbassery at the door. No, you finished the game, as the creators intended you to do so. There's no phrase in all gaming that makes me bristle more than "I beat the game." I always imagine these people walking out of cinemas and punching the air in victory - "I BEAT THE FILM!" - or throwing a book across the room in a frenzy of success. But what I think what made it feel so much of its own, distinct from what "survival horror" had been before, was its opening statement appealing to the player to not "play to win". But putting them all together in one place felt really, really fresh. I can't argue that any aspect of it was original: sanity meters had appeared before, physics had already played significant parts in first-person gaming, and hiding rather than fighting has been a recurring theme throughout gaming. I'm sure there are ways to trace it back via your Resident Evils or your Silent Hills or whatnot, but for me in 2010, it seemed to come from nowhere other than a jagged-sharp left turn into a dark, dark dungeon, from Frictional's previous Penumbra series. At the time the graphics and physics on offer were really astonishing work for a tiny indie team, but what about almost a decade later? Can it still make me do that bum-clenched mad panic thing where I lean in forward in my chair in an effort to get away from the monsters faster? Or will it seem a little quaint now?Īmnesia felt like it came out of a unique space. But we all know how games age, and the magic can wear off. I return to Amnesia: The Dark Descent with one question alone: will it still scare me?Īmnesia scared the bejesus out of me in 2010 when it first came out. Past Perfect is a retrospective column in which we look back into gaming history to see whether old favourites are still worth playing today.
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