Amnesia Quick Review

I have played many video games over the years. Some good, some not good, and some terrible to the point it hurt. Some games are scary, some try to be scary (RE5) and some make you want to poop your pants with how scary they are. Amnesia is one of the poop pants games. Other games call them selves ‘survival horror’ when they are actually ‘there are people here trying to kill you, and you don’t have a butt load of ammo’ games. They are not scary. Suspenseful, yes. Tense, yes. But, they are not scary. Amnesia gives you no weapons, makes the dark hurt you, has a limited amount of lantern oil, and even looking at the enemies hurts you. Well, not really hurts, but causes you to go insane, and I think that can kill you eventually. The graphics are not crazy amazing, but are only ‘rather good’. Don’t go in expecting Crysis, and you will be fine. It looks good, and runs great on my some what powerful computer (x4 1.8Ghz, ATI 4550, 4 GB of ram, W7). I don’t have fraps on, but it is very smooth. Loading takes slightly longer than I would like, but I prefer a game to have no loading. But, there are some down sides, at least for me. I found the game to be very tiring. After playing it, I almost always feel tired. Why? Because this game is just that intense. You don’t know what bad guy is going to pop out of now where, you don’t know how long your lantern will last. So, I recommend you have a lot of energy, and its not too late at night when you play this one, because it will cause you issues.

RE4 was scary, because there were tons of bad guys trying to kill you, and your power was limited, and it was dark. Amnesia is scary because there is nothing you can do about the bad guys, who when they see you try to kill you, because you have no weapons, and they kill you fast. Amnesia brings something that modern horror games have lost; being scary, and having a sense of weakness. And the game takes place before the American Civil War (I think) so, don’t expect to find a machine gun any where near by, because you wont. There is some acid, but its not what you think.

Play it, you really should.