My thoughts on Amnesia TDD

[Wehmis]

Greetings from Finland. It's getting pretty late out here, and I thought that before I go to sleep, I'd share my thoughts on Amnesia with everyone and see if people agree with me. It would also be a pleasure to get someone from Frictional Games to read my amateurish criticism.
To make my viewing point clear, I'm a Frictional Games fan, a hardcore gamer, and a preorderer since the preorders opened, so my expectations for Amnesia were set very high from the start.

The atmosphere of Amnesia was a mixed bag. While the environments were creepier and more atmospheric, and certainly had more thought process and knowledge of architecture to them than Penumbra, I found the office and hallway environments of Penumbra something that I can immerse myself more into, as those are the places we go into everyday. Sure the gothic arcitechture looks cool and all, but it's just not as immersive as the more down-to-earth locations of Penumbra.
Also the immersion was constantly hindered by the lack of any infinite light source, like the glowstick from Penumbra. Sure you can make one with the tinderboxes and a candle or a torch, but I'd just rather run through a dark corridor with the lights off, than to waste tinderboxes and time to light the candles.
I think the sanity system was a rather nice addition, but it could have benefitted from a more quicker phasing of key moments and scares. The sanity meter kind of just was there, and I felt it didn't really affect the gameplay or the scariness of the game that much. For FGs next game, they should develop the idea, and make the sanity affect gameplay more.
Hands down my favourite thing about Penumbra were the conversations you had with Red through the receiver and the Hivemind inside your head. Amnesia had a lot of voice acting, and it was all very good. Amnesia also had some characters you talked to during the game. Conversations with Alexander were kind of one-sided, and not that interesting, but Amnesia came very close to mimicing the great conversations of Penumbra with Agrippa. He was just introduced too late. I think FG should realize, that we as gamers, and fans of their games want someone equally insane to the protagonist to talk to, and share our loneliness with, not just pages of the diary of our past self.

And talking about the diaries... Amnesia had an interesting, although rather uninterestingly presented story. I felt the ending was a big letdown. I'm aware that there are multiple endings, and I saw only the "good ending", but Alexander didn't look very interesting, and the "battle to the death" I was promised at the first moments of the game didn't feel very epic. I was expecting to see some gore at least.

For me Amnesia wasn't as smooth a ride as Penumbra. The main reason was the "combat system" of Amnesia, and the random nature of the enemies. I don't know who scripted the enemies, but it was stupid to have them attack you, you die at an instant, and then the enemy is gone after you die and resume the game. The enemies were frightening the first time around, but they lost their creepiness due to their annoyance factor. I died on purpose many times just so I wouldn't have to try to sneak past an enemy, because most of the time the sneaking option was either impossible or consumed way too much time. On the other hand I enjoyed all the chase scenes. It was intense trying to escape from the darkness in the narrow corridors.

So here are some of my thoughts on Amnesia after completing the game. The game certainly wasn't perfect, but it had that Frictional Games feel to it, and it was fun, challenging and sometimes even frigthening to play through. I hope Frictional Games keeps on developing these excellent independent horror games, and I can't wait to see their next game.