I urge you to play Amnesia: The Bunker

To understand that so special in new amnesia, let’s go through the story of Frictional Games a little. It all started with the Penumbres, which shot well due to a unique interaction with the outside world, which eventually entrenched in all the studio games, as corporate handwriting. However, all the players also agreed that the combat system turned out to be a curve, a scythe and simply uncomfortable, which is why the developers made a “brilliant” conclusion to cut it out of continuation . And surprisingly, the players were satisfied with this decision. Play became worse because of the impossibility of fighting the stinks, and the developers have freed resources to make all the remaining elements of the game to the level better, instead of finishing the fighting. At this moment, the developers did not yet understand that While looking for silver, they found a huge piece of platinum, After all, no one has yet tried to make a horror without any opportunity to confront the threat.

After no, in every sense, the Penumbrays Troundel, which was essentially just a set of rooms with puzzles, exploded a real atomic bomb, destroying horror for several years ahead – Amnesia . The developers brought a formula for fear of what you cannot withstand to the ideal. And amnesia came into the dawn of the Lettspleev, delighting the audience with genuine (albeit hypertrophied) horror that the flyers’. In parallel with this huge pace, the Unity game engine gained its popularity, and a little later, Greenlight appeared in Steam, which merged into one terrible cocktail and gave rise to a monster called Indie Horror on Unity. The trend was set – in the next few years, all the horrors were the same concept – the escape from Bucky and the screamers.

It is worth paying tribute – the design of the monsters of amnesia is truly terrible and I think even with a revolver in my hands would be quite scary

Meanwhile, the developers created their new masterpiece – soma . And they got a great game again. However, the "games" in the usual sense in it became less. I really liked Soma, but a sad tendency can be traced in it that Frictional Games is less and less considered a gameplay to an important component of their games

The next is Amnesia Rebirth . https://21-casino.uk/ For me, she became a moment when I finally became convinced that the developers decided to focus on terrible walking simulators. Frankly – in the game I withstood for less than an hour, since my head literally got me from stuffy walking. To my surprise by reviews in Steam, the game was accepted positively, but against the backdrop of past victories this reaction can be called extremely restrained. I think that the developers noticed how the direction they had chosen are not there somewhere, which came out radically not similar to everything that was before-Amnesia: The Bunker .

Only you and me stayed

The actions of the game occur during the First World War. We, being an ordinary French soldier, find ourselves in the thick of events, but the military routine soon quickly stops the wound of the protagonist in the head. After that, he wakes up in the bunker, from which, as his last inhabitant tells us, most recently everyone ran away, filling the passage along with him. Our new friend soon takes a creature very quickly, which caused such a rapid escape of everyone else from this place. From this moment to the very end, we have one goal – get out of this hell.

The atmosphere in the bunker is very dense and tangible. An ideal sound design paired with visual-careful visuals creates a feeling that a little more and you will smell this bunker, this musty smell of dampness with machine oil and gunpowder. And thanks to such a deep immersion, the munging of the monster somewhere behind the wall is felt truly terribly, you feel its dimensions, its presence in space and the distance to you, although this is just a sound with a visual effect of crumbling dust. In general, the whole game makes a huge bet on maximum immersion, absolutely all interactions with inventory items are very high -quality animated, whether the use of a first -aid kit or another key, the environment looks as maximum and realistic as possible, and with the main character you are very quickly synchronized, since you have a common goal, although the sounds of the artillery, which violate the silence of the bunk, are almost immediately given from timeUnderstand that when you get out of hell underground, you will simply return to hell on the ground.

Now this is Immersive Sim

“Most of the problems can be solved
several ways. If you
It seems that something can be done,
Perhaps you don’t think "

In Amnesia: The Bunker, the gameplay cycle is clearly allocated throughout the passage – in a safe hub we refuel the generator, take the necessary things from the caches, persist and go for a sortie in one of the four sections of the bunker, do it, we collect the lut. Not only the illumination of locations depends on the generator, but also the aggressiveness of the monster. If, with the illuminated bunker, it can get out only if it is very angry, then as soon as the light goes out itself and begins to scour along the corridors. In the first few times, the heart leaves the heels from such blackouts, especially when you understand that it is five meters from you, but you can’t even shine, because the flashlight on the Dynamo typewriter is very noisy when charging. The sound in the game is given a lot of attention, since the monster focuses on the ears more than on the eyes and in moments when the warm rumble of the generator stops sounding, I got into the skin of my avatar so much that I tried to close the doors as neatly and move the objects that prevent me from passing, as I did, if I were in the position of the protagonist of the main character.

Many of the above will draw parallels with Alien: Isolation, but the approach to the game design in these games is very different. I really like someone else’s like adaptation of the film, but as a game I could not master it, although I tried 3 times. The main problem was, before each plot of an important door or an object appeared a stranger and you had no choice but to sit in the next room for 5 minutes and wait until it leaves. This did not cause fear, it just annoyed. Here the appearance of the monster is not tied to script events and when it crawls depends on many factors. And even if he gets out, no need to sit the closet until blue, since we have enough ways to solve this problem – revolver, grenades, stretch marks, gasoline, raw meat, empty bottles and even the beloved plush toy of the monster. All these methods drive the creature for a while from the location, and the runaway monster can take out several closed wooden doors, for which you so wanted to get. Also add here that during the hide, you can get a stretch, touch a very loud bottle, slap the door, or you will just begin to bite the local rats of mutants, after which you will bleed, attracting the monster, and when you bandage it, you’ll fall into horror, because you just threw an empty tin can of bandages in complete silence. As you can see, there are really a lot of variables and at every meeting with the monster you have to improvise and there is no guarantee that everything will go according to plan, and in such situations you have a couple of seconds to come up with a “plan B” and all this under adrenaline being in the head.

All this is just an example of interaction with the monster, and the variability of interaction can also boast of the environment of the bunker. But do not allow yourself to overestimate expectations, there are not as many interaction and their variations as in the reference prey, Deus ex and so on. Still, this is a game created by a relatively small studio, which almost all the time of existence was engaged in walkers with a minimum number of gameplay and The Bunker, I think, it is worth perceiving as a pen in a new genre for itself. Hence the disadvantages of the game in the form of a modest duration and lean ending without a hint of climax. But this does not make the game bad, but it makes it good that the fact that This is the most terrible and deep gameplay in terms of Frictional Games. I am very fed up with horror for all my game experience, but Amnesia: The Bunker is the first game that frightened me after Re7 .

However, something went wrong

And now we have such a picture – a new horror comes out with an interesting gameplay and an excellent atmosphere, gets high grades from the players: 93 – PC Gamer, 8/10 – IGN, but as a result, everyone is just all the same. No discussion, and sales did not allow the game to light up even in the last place of sales leaders. Why it happened? Well, for the most part, the developers were promised, without providing the game of proper promotion. The news about the game came out, as if between the matter, they say, “there is a new amnesia, but you do not pay attention,” and the release date of the release and news about the release (if it was at all) washed away by a powerful stream of new announcements due.

In general, what I divorced all this booth – Amnesia: The Bunker offers us a rather unique (among horror) and the extremely immersion experience of interacting with the game world. And what the developers see – bad sales, complaints about the duration and that they did not make The Dark Descent 2 again. It is easy to conclude that such games are not needed, and while many parasitize the formula of 10 years ago, Frictional Games decided to get off the beaten path and offered us a new way to be afraid. And I persistently suggest you try to play, in extreme cases you can always refund, but if you like horror, then I think that for this approach it is worth voting with a ruble … or tenge. I think that if the developers continue to move in this direction, then we will get even more great horror with a real gameplay.