Started/finished the main storyline of Amnesia today. Not sure why I waited a year to play it, it was fucking fantastic. Penumbra with a few 'run like hell' sequences here and there. Basically, it was what Call of Cthulhu should have been.

Fucking fuck, fuck. Amnesia. Fuck this shit. I'm a grown ass man. I can't be getting scared like this. I've got STREET CRED to uphold. :erg:

you lost it when you played amnesia in the first place

Don't worry Alchy, you only lost street cred on the part of the street that is directly in front of dethtoll's house. Everyone else thinks Amnesia is great.

Seriously deth, you dont like this game? What the hels wrong with you? Are you some sort of PUSSY?



Haha, I kid. Rhetorical question, of course you're some sort of pussy!

dethtoll automatically hates games which take their inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft fiction.

My roommate caught on and now she randomly beats on my door/busts in screaming. I've had three heart attacks so far.


Edit: Just got passed the water chase scene. Holy fuck. I need a new pair of pants.

Depends on how much inspiration. Lovecraftian themes I have no problem with, but anything that is basically straight out of a Lovecraft story itself? Get out. Seriously, there's a hundred trillion and one ways to do cosmic horror, quit using the same old tropes over and over.

It's got atmosphere in spades but generally isn't actually fun to play. It's yet another straight Lovecraft rehash because Frictional is creatively stagnant, with a bunch of terrible design decisions, such as the sanity effects. I hated the night vision in Penumbra- unrealistic and badly done. But now I take a penalty just from hiding in the shadows (nevermind the fact that hiding in the shadows is apparently the whole point)? Sanity effects have never ever been done will and IMO they never will, and it's really obvious the sanity effect in Amnesia is only there to keep players from abusing the night vision. Here's a fucking brilliant idea, Frictional: don't give players unrealistic night vision. It's a shitty gameplay mechanic to fix a shitty gameplay mechanic. And even without the sanity effects the gameplay is unsatisfying and more of a hassle than anything else. I was too busy being pissed off to be scared. I mean, you can't even really defend yourself. What kind of unbelievable pussy can't even grab a nearby crate or something and throw it? Maybe he goes insane because he knows (http://images.wikia.com/amnesia/images/4/4e/Amnesia_Monster.png) how fucking stupid the monsters look.

Oh, and the characters are, true to the game's Lovecraft roots, uninteresting.

I can appreciate your concerns, but the way I see it, I havent had a game of this type in forever. Correct me if I'm wrong. Also, not being able to attack the things adds to the helplessness and fear it creates. It might not be the most interesting character design (the enemy) but I'm definitely no less scared of them after seeing that pic.

The game is very blatantly HPLC though. Like, to a t.

I've always felt that helplessness and fear is enhanced if you DO have a gun and it's not enough. Being totally powerless from the start is not the same as having what little confidence you have destroyed.

I don't think I've ever been genuinely frightened by a game (it's a goddamn game) but Thief 1, System Shock 2, Penumbra Trilogy, and Amnesia are as close as anything has come to feeling genuinely creepy to me. They're all first-person "immersive sims" with incredible/atmospheric world design and the occasional feeling of helplessness. I think if someone took the HPL engine, kept the puzzles/stealth/inability to fight back, and added a narrative with more player agency (i.e. Black Isle/Obsidian style) and slightly more open levels (a city, a forest, whatever) I would actually stop playing anything else.

While I love the hell out of Stalker, Far Cry 2, BioShock, etc, the one area where those games all fail for me is in having an effective way to defend yourself. All 3 games have incredible atmosphere (and completely different in each) but there's never a point where I actually feel overwhelmed, or like the best combat option is to run like hell (aside from maybe once in Clear Sky). One of the areas where Operation Flashpoint is, imho, better than the ArmA games is that it frequently makes you feel vulnerable and makes fighting the worst option.

Well the thing is I dont really know of any sort of mechanic that works like this. And if I'm given a percent of chance, I'll fucking rock it till I get it. Also, having a gun is very empowering. It's totally different when you dont have SHIT. Thief for example got really easy once you learned how to melee, even against a lot of guards. Alan Wake was another game that wanted not to give you guns per se, but ended up just reverting to some gimmick. I dont know if its because they couldnt get it worked out or if its because they sold out on the idea.

If I know I cant defend myself except but to hide, I am scared of the enemy. If all I have is a stick to fight them off, I will fucking fight them off with said stick and I will MAKE IT FUCKING WORK. And if it doesnt work I'll die in glorious battle. Please tell me of a game that properly gives you weapons but then scares you with their ineffectiveness?

Also, (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2092-Amnesia-The-Dark-Descent) on point.

Well it's like I played Shattered Memories recently, feeling it deserved a 2nd chance. And most of it was a good game. But the nightmare sequences were horseshit. It's like, fuck you, why can't I kill you, why can't I even really throw you off very well, get the fuck out of my way, oh I'm fucking lost, oh here we go died again for the 5th time in a row, wait, I've run 5 minutes and now I'm back where I started, what the fuck is this shit, why is my guy such a gigantic blubbering pussy that he can't even defend himself in any way shape or form and just goes BLUHBLUHBLUHBLOO as the same stupid enemy over and over and over humps his back afsdlfjal;dfjal;dfjkadff

Being completely helpless doesn't scare me. It just pisses me off. And I don't play games to be pissed off. I come here for that.

Yes, dear god yes. That's what I've argued (albeit not as elegantly) in the past. That's why I loved SS2 type horror more than Penumbra type horror (from little I played of it).

Amnesia is puzzle-horror, where it's never about surviving a terrifying situation, but about figuring out what the developer intended you to do to solve a sequence. (So you can then solve a puzzle involving missing gears, again.)

So did you plan on making it sound like an extremely stupid idea or does it just come out like that naturally?

I intended it to sound like the level designer is peeking over your shoulder, snickering, asking, "Are ya scared yet? Are ya? Isn't this scary?" over and over.

Sounds about right.

The problem with giving you a gun but it's not enough is that while in theory it should work, in gaming terms it often just results in

"WTF!! This is bullshit!!!
*dies* *reloads*
"AGAIN! FUCK YOU, MONSTER!"
*dies* *reloads*
"OH FOR FUCKS..WHY EVEN GIVE ME A GUN IF THE GUN DOES NOTHING!"

because people playing games are more conditioned for "you have gun, point gun at monster, monster dies": if the gun doesn't do anything, you first think "maybe I missed?" so you try again. Next might come "maybe I'm aiming at the wrong bit?" so you try headshots, and die again. It would probably take me a decent number of attempts before I accepted that the gun was geniunely useless, and then I would be really quite annoyed that they wasted my time making me use the fucking thing in the first place.

If you're going to include a gun at all, it generally needs to be just enough: so able to kill things but clearly (generally via ammo scarcity) not necessarily always the best line of approach. SS2 did this relatively well by including both ammo scarcity and weapon damage, so often avoiding combat by just pegging it away was a better option than gunning it out. Another option is demonstrating that the gun works (maybe letting the player kill some small crap monsters) but not against bigger monsters...but this is tricky to convey. I always quite liked stalker in this respect (at least with various monster-spawn adding mods on it), in that certain foes were pretty much "O SHIT I DON'T HAVE THE STUFF I NEED TO TAKE IT DOWN...HIDE/RUN!", but you knew that if you DID have the right stuff (ok, generally just lots of the big frag grenades) you'd be able to take them out. The concept of "right now, this is not a battle I can win" was conveyed quite well.

TL: DR version is that "survival horror + gun" is a whole different experience to "survival horror - gun" and you really need different approaches for each. Probably. Based on personal opinion, obv (though going by alchemist's post I'm not alone).

Indeed, unfortunately personally I don't give a shit.

My problem with Amnesia's lack of a weapon is that it's just illogical. The game tries to come up with an excuse, but said excuse is so pathetic is barely worth considering(You read in a letter to yourself that you cannot fight the EVIL POWAHS). Anyone in the protagonist's situation would immediately grab a hammer, knife, or even a fucking broom "just in case".

Eh, what's all this about guns. You don't need guns to give you confidence and then make them almost useless to get you back to being scared. The end result is almost the same as not having a gun anyway: your objectives and your approach don't factor in that gun at all once you see it doesn't do anything, not unless you find lots and lots of ammo to dent ghoulies with.

The key over-riding aspect of the horror genre is vulnerability. Amnesia doesn't give you the ability to fight the monsters and hence the vulnerability is implied via a gameplay restriction. It's an artifice, but then so is the clunky movement and shitty controls endemic to the genre. This one is egregious simply because it's a direct limitation shoved in your face.

A game that does guns/no guns really fucking well is Siren: Blood Curse. You're just as vulnerable in most situations, but playing as the girl, who has no means of self-defence, turns it into a ghost run through a second-person Thief. It's brilliant, and scary, and there's no guns. If you don't high-tail it when you run into a shibito, you're dead. Simple vulnerability.

When it does gives you a more mature character and guns, there's very limited ammunition a la SS2. But of course there's tons of melee weapons around so you can just bludgeon shit if you're careful. But - you can't kill the shibito. They get back up soon enough. So you still have to be careful if you need to backtrack. That's doing it right, because you're always going to be on edge. Plus the shibito are somewhat slow and avoidable, and not as annoying as SH4's ghosts. Instant bonus points there because it's a very, very fine line to tread.

Frictional's games have this issue where they pace their puzzles and encounters in predictable patterns, and once you get used to these, the vulnerability is removed since you've got a safety blanket now, knowing when to expect what.

Yeah well, I just ran out of fucking oil for my lamp then I opened that door in storage. Ive never shut a door so fast in my life.


Also, one of the key elements that make Amnesia so scary is the LACK of confrontation with the "monsters". If you look at a monster long enough, you suspend your disbelief. Eventually, if you are exposed enough to something, your imagination can't take over, and you become complacent with the intangibility or what is happening. Amnesia, however, uses very sparce interaction face to face with monsters. Another great thing is the fact that looking at the monsters shoots your insanity up, so you literally have to look away when you are hiding from them. Again, removing the element from your perception, allowing your innate fears to replace what the game simply could not reproduce. This is far more effective than jump scares. You'll find this to be true in horror movies as well. And its an interesting phenomenon because I myself have no spiritual belief, and the reality of any sort of supernatural force is lost to me. Science simply says no. So I'm not one to jump to these sort of horrifying conclusions in my imagination, and even then, I'm not one to be scared. In real life, for example, whenever I heard a strange noise or saw a shadow in the dark as a child, I would always pursue it, hoping I'd actually find something supernatural. And I didn't do it in the "turn all the lights" way, I would literally creep in the dark to try and glimpse something, not turning on lights as to not scare it away or destroy the illusion. After years of finding jack shit, I became disenchanted with the idea of anything supernatural. However, given the right narrative and motivations, I can enjoy a game such as this, even if the puzzles aren't the best. I don't care if I'm doing yet another gear puzzle, its doing it with such perfect atmosphere and tension that makes it worth while. If you dont understand these concepts, this game just wont work for you. Edit: The engine also does a great job at feeling tangible. I love the interactions with the world. I love being able to slowly creep a door open.

To wit, I'd like to say that the sanity effects in Amnesia work damn well for me. However, I've done way too many hallucinogens in my time and have spent a fair amount of time in mental wards, too, so the whole process speaks to me on a deeper level. It helps that the effects are also grounded in that they dont necessarily make shit up, but simply warp your perception of whats actually there, again allowing your imagination to fill the gap. I can however relate to those who dont get the insanity part, it would therefore destroy a large part of the game mechanic.

For me, however, its terrifying.

(http://youtu.be/QSNiIgoiDRA?t=5m41s) This part, is what I was referring to above. Don't watch if you havent played, that is if you intend to play. The funny part is that he didnt even experience this event the same way I did. He (as he often does in his LP) completely misses the scare of opening the door and seeing that damn thing walking towards you. I shut the door in his face and stood in horror as he banged it down.

I quite liked the way that Resident Evil 1 did it, which was with having guns but having the ammo being scarce. The later games went with greater ammo placement from memory. Though code veronica was a real bitch ammo wise (to the point that the game was unbeatable unless you had x amount of ammo by the end of the game).

I still remember my first play through of RE1 and adjusting to the whole conserving of ammo factor was just completely alien to me as not alot of games did that that I had played before it. Nowdays I've learned to use the melee weapons alot more (especially when playing any of the Silent Hill games). Nice little learning experience.

Despite that huge number of sales, what I think is more interesting is how good the monthly sales still are. Not counting any discounts, the monthly full price sales lie at over 10 000 units. This means that less then every 5th minute someone in the world is buying a copy of Amnesia. This is totally insane to me. The figures themselves are far beyond any guesses we would have made two years ago. It is also insane, because this number is actually higher than it was around three months after initial launch. That a game can still be going this good two years after is truly remarkable.

Amnesia is as of writing the 2nd most popular game at <a href="http://www.moddb.com/games/top">ModDB </a>and sports <a href="http://www.moddb.com/games/amnesia-the-dark-descent/mods?filter=t&amp;kw=Search+...&amp;released=1&amp;style=def&amp;theme=&amp;type=">176 finished mods</a>. Not only do this amount of user content lengthen the life of the game, it has also increased the amount of YouTube movies made with an Amnesia theme. There are lots of popular Let's Play channels that have devoted quite a bit of time with just playing various user-made custom stories. As mentioned earlier this have probably played a large role in keeping our monthly sales up.