Score
✰90%✰

Amnesia is an amazing psychological horror game that should be tried by anyone who has even the slightest interest in this genre.


Great atmosphere
Sound
Voice acting
Scary as hell


Some small glitches
Motion sickness can be a problem for those who suffer from it
Scary as hell :(

First and foremost, Horror games always tend to follow a set format to make them good. Like the fact that RPGs will be very story and dialogue based, Horror will focus on suspense, sound, and visuals – along with a jump- scare or two, and maybe some heads exploding. These are all utilised to have you squirming in the grip of fear and guts, should the game be any good.

Now Amnesia – it's an amazing horror game. It doesn't rely on jump scares and gore. Amnesia is different in the fact that it focuses on the staples, which are sound, atmosphere, and shadowy rooms. The spin here is that your main character does not have a weapon. So instead, the purpose is to be able to survive with your very vulnerable character. The fact you have no weapons is what makes this so pulse pounding – because you can't kill what is chasing you. You have to run, and hide. The whole play-style is based on surviving passively. You're eventually always running away from something. This helped to spawn a whole new sub-genre of horror games, when previously, they weren't so popular.
The graphics are simple in that they don't use anything outstanding, quality wise.

They give you exactly what you want without any awe inspiring effects. You have a range of different environments within this one place, going from church like vibes, to libraries and creepy subterranean cellars.. As for the visuals, for example, the scariest two things about the graphics is the distorted blurring when your character loses sanity, and the invisible monster where you can only see their splashes in the water. Alone, these things are not so terrifying, but combined together … it's amazing. The signature monster itself is also considered not so scary. If you Google it, you're not going to be so impressed by it. The game MAKES the monster scary – with the sounds, the shadows, and the sanity meter. If your character sees too much scary ♥♥♥♥, they lose sanity and can pass out. You don't want to pass out when something is chasing you. Nope.

A minus for this game is that if you suffer from motion sickness, losing sanity is the worse thing that can happen to you since the blurring out is slow, and spins the camera.

When you consider traditional horror movies, I think Amnesia is scarier, because with a movie, you're just watching and witnessing what happens. In a game, everything happens to you. You're the one running away to not die. You're the one who feels helpless and scared without protection, so you have to be smart and practical. There are mods that can add mechanics that help you kill the monster, though honestly I prefer to play it without them – even though some of them are actually well designed. It's cool that Frictional Games allowed modding to happen, and brought these out themselves. Unfortunately, maybe the mods were added too soon for this horror game, since they can take away the suspense behind everything if people want to play with mods. Some will even add the mods before they've completed the game. Turning the main monster into a MLP creature is not quite as … intimidating.

Looking at music, it changes with the scenario. If it's an open, quiet area, it sounds calm, albeit with the slow, minor tune that can pick up and make your spine tingle. If you're moving faster, it increases, you hear a heart beating faster. If the monster is nearby, the music changes again, becoming louder. If you're being chased, it adds to the fear factor by becoming more pulse pounding. Without the music, this game would not have had half the impact it does. The game affects your brain as well as your eyes. In most horror games, you can predict what is going to happen based on the music. However, Amnesiac beats this by tricks like changing the music on the moment, rather than giving you a long build up. They also change the music even when nothing happens – so it screws with your mind. You can't rely on the sound to tell you about the monster all the time. The music itself could be considered the game's main jump-scare.
The voice acting as well is quite important. Your character Daniel is a scared and possibly insane man trapped in a dark story. You feel his madness in his words. The breathing, the panic, the sadness, the anger – it brings Daniel to life and creates tension, since when your character gets scared, it's easy to get scared with them. The monster's growl makes your skin crawl – and possibly would also make you alt F4/tab out the game if you happen to be a nervous type. The voice acting is great. His breathing, his panicking, all adds to the effect.

The story-line is not complicated. You start off without understanding much about what is going on, and you learn through progression and past segments what the plot is. I won't spoil anything, but the slow progression, along with the atmosphere, the music, the voice acting, the losing of sanity – you'll follow a descent into madness. The story isn't pushed into your face. It comes in moments, it comes slow, so you're able to take your time to look into it. You could choose to play flashbacks or not, which is good for people who want to follow it, or skip and go into the game itself. The one thing I disliked was that with some flashbacks, it gives you a white screen – triggering out like a flash-bang. The intensity can hurt your eyes. They could have maybe dampened that a little to make it less troublesome for your eyesight.

There are small bugs within the game, such as accidentally falling through the floor. Although they worked on these bugs, sometimes if you go too deep into a corner you will still fall through, and probably die. The monsters can bug out too, sometimes they will appear behind you and there's nothing for you to do except to try turn to face it.

Honestly though, anyone who has ever shown an interest in the horror genre, or who wants to dip their toes into it, would be well worth off getting this game. Even after the years that it's been released, it still holds up as possibly one of the best horror games of all time. It's had so much attention and dedication from people inspired by the music, inspired to make lets plays or stream on Twitch, it ended up becoming popular, and helping to spawn a whole new pathway for horror.

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