![]() It instead makes its presence known by leaving behind a pulsating, flesh-like organic residue that is harmful to the touch the manifestations of which are usually paired with a loud roar and a violent shaking that can cause damage to surrounding structures and may result in their collapse. ![]() The Guardian's true nature is ultimately unknown as it doesn't assume a physical form, with it being variously described as a "beast", a "brooding abomination", a "shadow cast by the Orb" or in more abstract terms such as "a living nightmare, breaking down reality" or "the universe catching up with itself". It hunts down, and usually kills, those who come into contact with an Orb without being sufficiently initiated into the Mithraic arts and capable of wielding its power. And after a hard day at school or the office, isn't that all we really want?Īmnesia: The Dark Descent is available to download for PC, Mac OS X and Linux from tomorrow.The Shadow, also known as the guardian of the Orb, is the otherworldly and mysterious guardian of the esoteric Orbs. It's a brave experiment in the genre, a more solid package than the Penumbra games and stops at nothing to make you truly, deeply uncomfortable. Still, fans of horror gaming should definitely have Amnesia: The Dark Descent in their lives. It's more than just a missed opportunity - by the final third of the game, as you reach the true heart of the castle's darkness, the monsters start losing their mystique and becoming 3D models. The horror peaks whenever you're forced to deal with some new, unknown element, and those situations can be counted on the fingers of one hand. What I would say is an issue is the plot's resolution, since Amnesia does mystery better than it does concrete answers, some of the voice acting, the odd bit of uninspired level design and lots of the puzzles being too simple to involve any thinking.Īmnesia's overwhelming confidence and competence as a horror game takes it so, so close to being excellent, but there's just not enough content. It's relatively short, clocking in at about eight hours, but since it's being sold for $20 ($18 if you pre-order) I wouldn't say that's an issue. At the end of my game I realised the prudence in flicking the lamp on and off to conserve oil, which actually results in a flicker-cam straight out of any horror movie.Īmnesia's problems are all to be found outside the horror. The times when you get annoyed with this system are outweighed by the relentless atmosphere of danger it creates, with you fretting over your supplies and wondering whether to light that torch and lose another hiding place. Best sewer levels ever, though!Īgain, that might sound annoying, but Frictional has executed it almost perfectly. But both tinderboxes and lamp oil are in short supply. Your enemies against the darkness are tinderboxes, which allow you to light candles, fires and torches, and your lamp. If Daniel's sanity drops too low he'll start to slow down and gibber to himself, and you'll get some serious lag on your mouse-looking and a hazy Vaseline sheen applied to the screen. Leave him in the dark (like you often have to do to avoid monsters) and his sanity drains. He's brave, resourceful and smart, too, but also distinctly unhinged. While monsters make for almost all of Amnesia's high drama, some extra moment-to-moment tension is added by your character's aversion to darkness.Īmnesia's Daniel is a card short of a full deck. In one room I spent 10 minutes nervously sprinting from safe place to safe place to avoid a monster, except there was no monster. And while monsters are relatively rare in Amnesia, which saves them from ever becoming irritating in the way they would if the entire game was built around them, the game does a great job of making you feel that any of them could appear at any time. You can distract them by throwing things to create noises elsewhere, but it doesn't always work. You never quite learn the limits of their vision. They frequently appear and disappear when you're not looking. Because something is less scary once you understand it, many of the monsters are unknown quantities.
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