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There are two ways I can look at this game in retrospect.Β
One way is a game on its own, taken away from the overwhelming influence it had on the survival horror genre in the 2010s, and in that way of viewing it, I would say that Amnesia is really fun and tens for the first half of the game; the rest is still fun but not particularly scary. The other way is looking at it through the retrospective lens of seeing the effect it had on survival horror; that being what I like to call the "Sit and Hide" subgenre. Where you have no real way of defending yourself so your only choice is to hide and hope to god the monster chasing you can go away. This style of horror has been done well Iβm not saying itβs an awful sub-genre, this game did it pretty well like Alien Isolation where it understood that having no way of fighting the monster stalking you makes it scary but still gives the player options of crafting tools to use against the monster by distracting it or scaring it away. On the other end of that spectrum you have pretty much everyone else but for the sake of simplicity Iβll be using Outlast. Outlast is a game made for youtubers and no one else. Itβs a game that saw the meteoric rise of Amnesia on YouTube and wanted to cash in on that surge of popularity and as a result they took all the wrong ideas that Amnesia had.
Amnesia works well because it understands what kind of game it is, itβs not a survival horror game itβs honestly more adjacent to an adventure/point and click game, at least to me. The main objective is to keep moving downwards through this magnificently horrifying looking castle and as you go down deeper and deeper into the darkness youβll need to mix together acid to get past flesh walls or repair broken elevators, and to do so youβll need to read notes to find where in the area items are and solve puzzles that sometimes require you to interact with the environmental physics. Many people call these parts the "boring bits" but I honestly prefer this over the monster stuff, drudging through this moody and dark castle looking for the parts you need while finding notes that reveal more of your lost past and the dark history of Brennenburg Castle was such a fun and suspenseful experience, along with the resource management of having to constantly find oil for your lantern and tinderboxes to light the darks halls of the castle in order to keep your sanity and stay out of the darkness left me feel more than satisfied with the gameplay; itβs horror however was just kinda eh. In-between exploring the castleβs moody gothic architecture youβll have to deal with the monsters that are roaming the dark corridors they inhabit, and besides the first time they show up in the wine cellar; they never they never cease to not scare me.
With their first introduction in the wine cellar they had built up thanks to notes explaining what happened to these kidnappers and the fates they befell them; turning into monster that will hunt you down and kill you, and once you see what these people had become itβs honestly a bit scary and the amazing sound design adds so much to the horror of the situation. Outside of that one section however every other time the monsters showed up it usually just devolved into, me either impatiently waiting for them to leave and despawn so I can get back to exploring, or me getting impatient and just running past them and then hiding in the spot I needed to go to regardless. Once you get a real good look at these fuckers and learn that they despawn ones they finish their very simple patrol it becomes very monotonous the deal with, itβs like the vail just gets thrown away once you get to the second area and by the third area it just becomes trivial. Of course what people find scary is very subjective so itβs 100% a me thing but there's not much I can do about it so idk.
Besides the lack of scares it gave me, Amnesia left me feeling very fulfilled and makes me wanna try out the rest of the series really badly. Iβm honestly surprised I enjoyed this as much as Iβve played the majority of other games like Amnesia and I never really cared for them, and in the case of something like Outlast; for what little time I put into that game I genuinely despised it. So maybe this is one of those cases where Amnesia worked really well but everyone else took the wrong reasons for why it worked.
#π ππ¦π§ππ¬π’π: ππ‘π πππ«π€ πππ¬πππ§π
There are two ways I can look at this game in retrospect.Β
One way is a game on its own, taken away from the overwhelming influence it had on the survival horror genre in the 2010s, and in that way of viewing it, I would say that Amnesia is really fun and tens for the first half of the game; the rest is still fun but not particularly scary. The other way is looking at it through the retrospective lens of seeing the effect it had on survival horror; that being what I like to call the "Sit and Hide" subgenre. Where you have no real way of defending yourself so your only choice is to hide and hope to god the monster chasing you can go away. This style of horror has been done well Iβm not saying itβs an awful sub-genre, this game did it pretty well like Alien Isolation where it understood that having no way of fighting the monster stalking you makes it scary but still gives the player options of crafting tools to use against the monster by distracting it or scaring it away. On the other end of that spectrum you have pretty much everyone else but for the sake of simplicity Iβll be using Outlast. Outlast is a game made for youtubers and no one else. Itβs a game that saw the meteoric rise of Amnesia on YouTube and wanted to cash in on that surge of popularity and as a result they took all the wrong ideas that Amnesia had.
Amnesia works well because it understands what kind of game it is, itβs not a survival horror game itβs honestly more adjacent to an adventure/point and click game, at least to me. The main objective is to keep moving downwards through this magnificently horrifying looking castle and as you go down deeper and deeper into the darkness youβll need to mix together acid to get past flesh walls or repair broken elevators, and to do so youβll need to read notes to find where in the area items are and solve puzzles that sometimes require you to interact with the environmental physics. Many people call these parts the "boring bits" but I honestly prefer this over the monster stuff, drudging through this moody and dark castle looking for the parts you need while finding notes that reveal more of your lost past and the dark history of Brennenburg Castle was such a fun and suspenseful experience, along with the resource management of having to constantly find oil for your lantern and tinderboxes to light the darks halls of the castle in order to keep your sanity and stay out of the darkness left me feel more than satisfied with the gameplay; itβs horror however was just kinda eh. In-between exploring the castleβs moody gothic architecture youβll have to deal with the monsters that are roaming the dark corridors they inhabit, and besides the first time they show up in the wine cellar; they never they never cease to not scare me.
With their first introduction in the wine cellar they had built up thanks to notes explaining what happened to these kidnappers and the fates they befell them; turning into monster that will hunt you down and kill you, and once you see what these people had become itβs honestly a bit scary and the amazing sound design adds so much to the horror of the situation. Outside of that one section however every other time the monsters showed up it usually just devolved into, me either impatiently waiting for them to leave and despawn so I can get back to exploring, or me getting impatient and just running past them and then hiding in the spot I needed to go to regardless. Once you get a real good look at these fuckers and learn that they despawn ones they finish their very simple patrol it becomes very monotonous the deal with, itβs like the vail just gets thrown away once you get to the second area and by the third area it just becomes trivial. Of course what people find scary is very subjective so itβs 100% a me thing but there's not much I can do about it so idk.
Besides the lack of scares it gave me, Amnesia left me feeling very fulfilled and makes me wanna try out the rest of the series really badly. Iβm honestly surprised I enjoyed this as much as Iβve played the majority of other games like Amnesia and I never really cared for them, and in the case of something like Outlast; for what little time I put into that game I genuinely despised it. So maybe this is one of those cases where Amnesia worked really well but everyone else took the wrong reasons for why it worked.