Its basic gameplay mechanics are very similar - too similar, actually - to those of ‘The Dark Descent’ you play from a first-person perspective, you interact with objects using mouse gestures, and you have no weapons. Unfortunately, the game turned out to be a massive disappointment. Both the Victorian London setting and the bizarre subtitle, ‘A Machine For Pigs’, dispelled my fear that it might just be a rehash of the original. Not only was I thrilled to experience the same sense of terror, but I also knew it would be new and different. So, you can see why I was excited for the release of ‘Amnesia's’ sequel. This game's randomly-generated levels and unpredictable enemy movement patterns were essential to its atmosphere of despair, but an array of glitches and bugs, along with a frustratingly high difficulty level, prevented it from reaching the same level of player immersion that ‘The Dark Descent’ achieved. Last year also brought Jonas Rikkonen's ingenious ‘SCP - Containment Breach’. For example, Parsec Productions' free-to-play ‘Slender: The Eight Pages’ (2012) was a refreshingly stripped-down game that left players stranded in a dark forest with a madman on the prowl. On PCs, the ever-thriving indie development scene has provided a bit more hope. Big-selling series like Valve's ‘Left 4 Dead’ (2008-9) prefer the instant gratification provided by a gory spectacle, big guns and cheap jump-scares instead of the slow-burning terror and sense of desperation that once characterised the genre. On consoles, the once-proud survival horror genre, popularised by Capcom's ‘Resident Evil’ (1996) and Konami's ‘Silent Hill’ (1999), has today become a pathetic appendage of the action genre. The game was great precisely for this reason - it regularly gave players a full dose of the adrenaline and fear invoked by our instinctive fight-or-flight response, but neutered any potential sense of empowerment by making it impossible to fight.įast-forward to three years later, and I have yet to find a game that could come close to scaring me as much as ‘The Dark Descent’ did. With no weapons, there was no way to fight back.
When it noticed you, little else was possible than to sprint away in blind terror, hoping that you can find a hiding place before it finds you. As you proceeded down the castle’s winding corridors and stairways, you were cruelly taunted with glimpses and sounds of a deformed, wretched creature. You were given little in the way of equipment or motivation: only a flickering lantern and a vague sense that you should probably get out of there. In the original, you found yourself lost and alone inside an immense, dimly-lit Gothic castle.
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