Holy mother of shitting crikey that was horrible. Paul and I just played through the demo of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and it has to be the scariest demo I’ve ever played, and quite honestly I don’t know HOW I managed to finish it. It’s by the maker’s of Penumbra, but its undoubtedly better… Major demo spoilers below, but go play it for yourself right now.
If you look at the enemies in this game, your character starts to go INSANE. Like, literally. That’s the sort of game this is – you are physically encouraged to stare at the walls in order to stay alive. You have no weapons. You are completely alone, an ordinary man trapped in a hellish castle dungeon, and according to a letter written and left by your former self, wherever you go, you’re being hunted by a “living nightmare”. You can’t fight it, all you can do is run and hide.
Luckily, you can hide in cupboards – something I wish more horror games would allow me to do – and frankly it’s one of the safest places you can be. Light and dark play a significant role, in that the things hunting you apparently can’t see very well in the dark, making you safer. Yet linger there for too long, and Daniel (you) will start getting blurry vision, his teeth will start to tremble together loudly, and he may even lose control of his legs. You have a lantern, which requires oil to light. Save it for when you really need it, please… Don’t do what I did and have it on permanently, only to watch in horror as the oil runs out and you’re left stranded in a pitch-black wine cellar, huge cobwebs hanging from the ceilings, and…what was that!? SOMETHING just opened that door…but there’s nothing there!
The sounds! Good grief the noises. And the water… the final section of the demo has you knee-deep in murky water, apparently some sort of flooded cellar. And something is down there with you. You can’t see it, only hear its heavy, sloshing footsteps. KEEP OUT OF THE WATER! Thank god for dismembered body parts… no other game has made me even consider using a torn-off arm as a distraction… There’s a key moment in this demo which cemented my decision to buy the full game – the thing in the water couldn’t see me… all I could see of it was the splash of water every time it took a step, and I realized that’s exactly what I looked like to it. We were the same. Only difference was I was smart enough to stand on the crates. KEEP OUT OF THE SODDING WATER!
This game is out today, however, BcR may not be reviewing the full version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, because Matt does not own enough underwear.
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I’ve been pretty absent from PC gaming for some time, since moving to Canada in early 2017, because I haven’t had a proper computer to play games on. That has recently changed, since I got myself set up with a new gaming rig that can handle pretty much anything that’s out at the moment. I […]
Format: PC
Year: 2001 – present day
If Return to Castle Wolfenstein was my first date with PC gaming, Battlefield 1942 was when she invited me to meet her parents, and the relationship went to the next level. My god, did I really just write that analogy?
Now and then one can’t help climbing aboard the hype train. You work yourself up into a frothing frenzy in anticipation of some new game whose trailers and screenshots make it seem like the best…thing…EVER. That’s how I felt about Conker’s Bad Fur Day when I first read about it in N64 Magazine (before the internet butchered the magazine industry). They did several preview write-ups about it in the years before it was released, and it changed from being a cutesy 3D adventure, to merely looking like a cutesy 3D adventure plastered with a layer of adult filth. I couldn’t have been more excited to play it. Did it live up to my expectations? Hell yes.
VVVVVV is one of the only 2D platform games that I have completed from start to finish, which makes it special to me. I became obsessed with Veni Vidi Vici, an entirely optional sequence of deadly traps that teases you with a collectible orb right in the very first room, which is blocked off by a tiny box. You can’t jump in the traditional way as most other platformer’s, so the only way to overcome the box is by leaping up through the ridiculously cruel chambers above, navigating your way to the top…and then back down again.
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