I didn’t think I’d be best friends with a generator by the end of the week, but here we are. This may be gibberish—I’m tired and scared, and I keep seeing things that don’t really exist in the gloom of the corridor (at least, I hope they don’t exist?)—but as long as I’m here, standing Next to my warm, chattering chum, I figured I’d be fine.
How depressing, then, to know that standing next to a generator for the next few hours is tantamount to a death sentence. Knowing that no matter how safe you feel here, listening to the rumble of the furnace, your survival depends on stepping out to explore the warren of tunnels and chambers that sprawl from your safe space, bleeding like wounds, it’s terrifying Already. For starters, you’ll need more fuel to keep it running. There are passwords to find and tools to recover. A bandage is also needed to stop the blood from gushing from a dusty finger. Because someday there will be blood, comrade – that’s probably the only thing you’re sure of here.
Amnesia: The Bunker does an admirable job of making the titular location feel like your cell as much as your sanctuary, and like the generator, it’ll soon start to feel like one too. old friend. While small and tight, claustrophobic hallways devoid of light and hope, you’ll find yourself returning to places you’ve known with an adrenaline rush and hopeless gratitude. But as you move around the place, its closed little world slowly unfolds, grab the right key to unlock its secrets. So you have to crawl around.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, you have only one target, and that is GTFO. Dismembered corpses, a steady stream of vermin munching on the free buffet are easily distracting, and while you wonder what happened to those soldiers, there’s something else in the dark, something huge and bulky with sharp claws and very good The ears, that’s the most important thing. Hang around trying to figure this out for too long and you’ll be lying among them.
The bunker will feel familiar to anyone who’s spent time with any of the series’ predecessors, though the game’s typical blueprint has seen some minor tweaks since the last time we powered through Rebirth, such as a wind-up torch instead of a dwindling one. The pile of matches we are used to. Yes, the physics are still a bit silly, and yes, you can sometimes get around a specific obstacle (for example, I kept banging a chained cabinet with a brick until it opened slightly, allowing me to grab its loot one), and yes, you’ll be able to interact with eleven props and tools and drawers and cabinets that are completely unrelated to your adventure. But the detailed annotations and world-building are very effective, even if the connection to our protagonist Henry feels a bit tenuous at times.
But sitting at the heart of Amnesia: The Bunker is a wickedly dark premise. Yes, it’s scary — it leaves you breathless in that particular way, because until that moment, you don’t realize you’ve been holding your breath. Although, like any horror game, you might become a little numb to the random big bad. Taking into account other mechanics – such as the need to keep generators burning, manually saving lanterns, you can only find them in a handful of places throughout the bunker , and of course the importance of being as quiet as possible so as not to alert the stalkers – made for some very tense encounters.
The game gives you a gun at the start, but don’t expect to rely on it. I think I only took two shots in the entire game. It’s loud, loud, and usually not worth the risk. So, the old rules apply; hide, crawl. don’t want. make. A. Sound.
We encourage you to experiment enthusiastically, because you never fully know what options are available until you try them out. Frictional completely solves this problem. A few times, even out of desperation and fear, I’ve hit the Combine command by mistake or used the wrong tool, and discovered something completely unexpected. Sure, wooden doors can be blown away with a well-timed grenade, but have you ever tried smashing a wooden door with a brick? How about using that handy bolt cutter on something other than a chain? Sure, kegs of dynamite are great for taking out those dreaded rats…but what happens if you leave one in that ominous hole in the wall?
That’s what makes The Bunker such a delight. As scary as it is, it’s thrilling to find your daring exploration and creativity rewarded in such a fun way. The environmental puzzles you encounter often have more than one solution, and with randomized codes, item placement, and traps, each playthrough should feel unique and exciting.
There are some obstacles. Not being able to re-read the code scrawled on a dog tag is a special kind of oversight (which, by the way, is most likely intentional), so if you grab the dog tag and forget to turn it over, because a big mouse or big boss Hit yourself on the head and the code is lost forever. The rat itself is more annoying than scary, and even if you scurry into a hidden space before it shows up, stalkers can find you, which is exactly the wrong side of frustrating. Where are the Frictional puzzles? ! Of course, you’ll need to unlock certain areas and find certain tools to progress, so some could argue that the puzzles are more organic and ambient, but I didn’t feel held back or frustrated in the least – it was a weird feeling , while playing the game Amnesia.
Those are the little things, though, really. Tiny thrills rather than full-on misfires get all the fun out of a horror adventure. Because I did like Amnesia: The Bunker very much, if not as much as The Dark Descent, then far more than its predecessor, Rebirth. I’d also love to know what other people think of the ending. It’s particularly flat and surprisingly anticlimactic, but even the lackluster ending isn’t enough to overshadow the brilliance of the first six hours or so.
Once, as I stumbled out of the darkness into a huge open crater, the bullets whizzed past my head again, and for a long time the sounds baffled me, wondering what they were. It’s a testament to how horrible Amnesia: The Bunker’s grip is – even when you’re stumbling through soaked trenches at the start of the game, I completely forgot about the war; I forgot everything. Even the reminders of the conflict that surround the wartime bunkers, I forgot. For the rest of the game, the only things I care about are my next save point, my beloved generator, and scary things slamming around in the dark.
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