Amnesia: Rebirth certainly has some big shoes to fill. The sequel to not only one of the most influential horror games in recent memory, but also one of the scariest games ever made.
After having just finished Amnesia: Rebirth I am somewhat sad to find out that some fans of the series were not happy with it because I honestly had one hell of a good time playing it.
I believe what may have disappointed some with this game were the expectations one could genuinely have had when you keep in mind that Amnesia: The Dark Descent is highly regarded by both critics and fans alike. Add to it SOMA, another loved game by the developer Frictional Games and you can understand why Amnesia: Rebirth had some big shoes to fill. My personal advice when playing this game is almost like the one you see by the developers themselves when you first start the game, which is to immerse yourself as much as you can. I did this by using a good set of headphones, setting up a good time when you will not be disturbed and most importantly, enjoy the scenery and the ambience that were wonderfully created.
Talking about scenery, I love the graphics in the game. Sure, they are not your state of the art, photorealistic visuals you would see in AAA games, hell, I found out this runs on the same engine of the original Amnesia which released about 10 years ago (although heavily modified). Regardless of the engine used to make the game, each area is full with detail. They don’t just look good but most importantly, they feel like they have history to tell, like many events have happened in these places.
The first area you see upon starting is the Algerian desert. The desert is like you would expect it to be: vast, but oppressive. It is beautiful but empty (not in details). It is certainly not the friendliest of places, but considering the other places you will end up on, you’ll be happy when you manage to get back to the desert.
Without going into the plot, pretty soon into the game you’ll be able to travel across some rifts/threads that appear, much like in Bioshock Infinite, and with that you’ll end up in much more interesting and darker locations. I loved the creativity that went into each of these places that it just makes me want to play trough the game again, this time taking even more time just enjoying the scenery.
Well, ambience alone isn’t enough to make a good horror game, so I’ll cover both gameplay and story together since I fell like they are somewhat intertwined with each other.
I have to be honest, with the plot itself I do have some issues. The story per se was enjoyable but I’m not found of our main character.
You play as Tasi, a french engineer who is out in an expedition in the Algerian desert in the year of 1937. Soon after starting you wake up in a plane accident where you seem to be the only one there. Pretty much, you wake up with Amnesia.
She is not all bad, but there are times she just won’t shut up, and I should add that she’s not like Nathan Drake (from Uncharted), she keeps talking to herself, sometimes for long periods of time, about her husband, but even worse than him, she keeps talking about (or to) her unborn child. That’s right, she’s pregnant and that leads us to gameplay.
Besides what you would expect from a horror game where you can’t fight back, like hiding and sneaking your way through the enemies; what I would call the prominent feature of Amnesia: Rebirth is the mechanic where your character starts getting scared, like some sort of panic attack when you stay too long in a dark environment. This by itself is fine but to calm yourself down you can go near a light source (more on that later) or put your hand in your belly and talk to your unborn child. In the beginning it was kind of cute but not long after it was getting on my nerves. I thought that if you “neglected” your child I might be locked into a bad ending but honestly, it doesn’t alter anything, so it’s more of an annoyance than anything. Luckily, since you already know that, you can just ignore it.
My other pet peeve, although much smaller, is with inventory space. To try and make it simple, let me explain it this way: as light sources you have a lantern, which requires oil you can not too often find scattered around; and matches, which go off very quickly, but are much more plentiful and, in my opinion, much more useful, as you can use them to light torches, candles, etc and by so, having a steady presence on light in your vicinity.
My complain is that you can only carry ten matches at once. In my opinion that’s too little, especially because if you are through looking for them, you will find a bunch but just won’t be able to gather them.
Talking about gameplay, we have to talk, at least a little, about the puzzles. I liked them. While the puzzles in the original Amnesia were a little too hard for me, in there they strike a nice balance. They range from simple and easy to convoluted and hard. In honesty, there was just one puzzle which I think I wouldn’t ever be able to solve without the help of a guide but I did use some “help” in another two.
There is another important thing to mention about gameplay which I understand can be divisive but I honestly had no problem with, in fact, for me it was much appreciated. Amnesia: Rebirth has something of an adaptive difficulty. What do I mean by this?
When you enter the panic attack state I mentioned earlier, be it by standing too long in the dark or by being attacked by an enemy you see a bunch of flashes on your screen and “die”. You don’t really die, you just see a montage of weird things and a re put back where you were or near, but that’s nothing new, that’s just a checkpoint. But here comes the twist, depending of where you “die” or how often, the game will put you ahead of where you were before, so pretty much the game will help you skip some chase sequences, or traversing some complicated areas. Not only that but if there is an enemy in your way and you can’t sneak your way past it, after failing once or at maximum twice, the game will get the enemy out of your way.
I honestly liked it because I went into this game more for the atmosphere but with the exception of a single area (a maze), when failing, if given a second chance I believe I would have been able to pass through the area without much trouble. The problem with this is that it encourages you to just go head on because it is actually quicker to just “kill yourself” and then go straight to the end of the area or skip the enemy entirely.
Lastly there’s the sound. The audio effect were great to enhance both gameplay and immersion but as for the music I have to admit it didn’t make much of an impression on me. It surely improved the experience, so I guess it did what it was supposed to do, it just wasn’t remarkable.
In the end I very much enjoyed my time with Amnesia: Rebirth. Even with a few shortcomings I can easily recommend this for fans of horror games and fans of story focused games alike. It managed to get me so engaged and immersed I would not notice the time passing while in this world.
Mayonaka Reviews 