Amnesia: The Dark Descent (makers of Penumbra)

[Berekän]

Lego robot is a fag?

 

[1eyedking]

Ah, fuck it.

It's good for what it is was.



PS: I finished it, Agrippa's tonic and all. Really fucking short.

 

[Gragt]

I'm trying. Draw all possible curtains over all windows in the house, close the door, get volume up to the stratosphere. The fact that the weather was mostly cloudy today was also a plus. No pesky sun spoiling my fun.

Even if you can block the light, there is some quietness you can only find at night and gives a different atmosphere.

 

[JohnBeloe]

I never really got the charm of penumbra. It was a first person shooter after all...

 

[Jack]

I recently finished it.
Liked it a lot, but that's probably because I have grown numb over the years,
with so few good games getting released.

Ah, fuck it.

It's good for what it is was.

PS: I finished it, Agrippa's tonic and all. Really fucking short.

Now that's something, coming from you.

 

[Elwro]

I never really got the charm of penumbra. It was a first person shooter after all...

lolwut, you don't shoot anything. Heck, in Black Plague and Requiem you don't even have any weapons at all. You must've played something else.

 

[JohnBeloe]

Bro, it uses the quake engine. There is only so much you can do with that without being a shooter.

It didn't fool me.

 

[Gragt]

Gné?

 

[Pablosdog]

so how long is this exactly? are we talking penumbra length?

 

[Gragt]

Fuck the Storage. I'm not going there again.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Even if you can block the light, there is some quietness you can only find at night and gives a different atmosphere.

True, unfortunately. But during the day, there's no one in the house, so I'm not bothered with anything, and during the night I can't launch the volume high without bothering anyone else, goddammit.

Fuck the Storage. I'm not going there again.

:D

'Oh shit, enemies in the corridors, what in the fuck should I do. Hmmm, right, there's a zone-transition door at the end of the tunnel... Let's try a run for it.

...RUN DANIEL YOU STUPID FUCK FFS YOU'RE ALMOST THERE, YES I CAN SEE THE DOOR HAHA, I MADE IT YOU SHITTY FUCKING MONSTERS

*panting noise gets louder and louder behind you*

*about to reach the door*

*SPLAT*

*Daniel is dead*

That was awesum.

 

[entertainer]

Bro, it uses the quake engine

 

[baronjohn]

At first I thought you could die from insanity, but apparently not. The screen effects just get progressively worse. Also, light gives you sanity too, at least to "heart is pounding and feet are shaking".

 

[Darth Roxor]

Dammit, finished. A shame it was so short.

Also, it would appear it has multiple endings?

For those that finished it...

Spoiler

What did you do at the end? I didn't wait for Alexander to open the portal or toss Agrippa's head inside. Instead, I pushed the pylons powering the portal thingy and broke it. The shadow appeared and swallowed Alexander. It seems to be the 'good' ending, since the next scenes are with Daniel going through some corridors of the castle (up to the starting area), saying that the castle was his 'purgatory', and that by killing Alexander he redeemed himself and the evil deeds he has done while in the castle. 'The greater good' and stuff. Did anyone wait long enough for the portal to open? Because I guess carrying around Agrippa's head isn't just there for the lulz.

 

[Elwro]

Bro, it uses the quake engine

Nah, now it's obvious it's just a troll.

 

[entertainer]

sometimes modding can be bad when people have such ideas:

Can you do stuff other than just make maps? I know that the idea behind the games is that helplessness = fear (and believe me it does) but I'd like to mod in a nice big gun so that I could feel like a man on a mission, rather than a mouse trying to escape.

Or maybe a sword so I could go toe-to-toe with those monsters. Oblivion style combat with blocking and parrying, perhaps? Can you kill your foe before your mind unravels?

 

[commie]

I never really got the charm of penumbra. It was a first person shooter after all...

lolwut, you don't shoot anything. Heck, in Black Plague and Requiem you don't even have any weapons at all. You must've played something else.

He was playing DOOM.

Oh and shit Bryce/drog alt is shit...

 

[1eyedking]

Dammit, finished. A shame it was so short.

Also, it would appear it has multiple endings?

For those that finished it...

I tried all three. The one you saw is the one that fits best. I didn't like any of them, though: too many loose ends to my liking.

The game, overall, is mediocre. Bad puzzles, cheap scares, lots of unexplained bullshit (most stuff in Penumbra is thoroughly exposed, up to some depth of course); you can tell the game was rushed and the developers never had the time to polish it properly (a.k.a. Arcanum). Thus the end result is bad, and results are what matters. That said, it's highly atmospheric and immersive at given points.

I DEMAND MORE CTHULEAN GAMES

so how long is this exactly? are we talking penumbra length?

Shorter.

 

[Gragt]

At first I thought you could die from insanity, but apparently not.

From what I could see, it appears that low sanity won't kill you but seriously fuck up your sense and movements as well as make you ridiculously easy to spot.

 

[RatFink]

I DEMAND MORE CTHULEAN GAMES

this

plus
good demo! that bastard in the water made me slide back in my chair so i couldnt react because i wasnt able to reach my keyboard anymore.
well after the initial scare i tried to throw books and boxes in its general direction to see if i can hurt it. ...i did not hurt it..

also tried to just run through the water at the end and close the door behind me...but that fuck was faster than me and seemed to have tackled me into the door because it basically exploded in my face as i wanted to push it open. ..then it gutted me.

cant wait to get my hands on the full game!

 

[SerratedBiz]

Do horror games make them scared irl? They panically start looking behind themselves and are afraid to go to the kitchen with lights out?

Actually I am, despite the obvious critical hit this is to my manhood. I always explained it by saying I have an overactive imagination or something, and combined with my love for horror (games, movies, the phenomenon).

Sometimes I'd sit in my chair, lay back, close my eyes, then imagine what it'd be like if a ghoul was about to gnaw at me. Then imagine how scary and painful it would be to get bitten on the neck. And how it'd feel when I suddenly jumped up and started running down a corridor, fiend screeching behind me. And WHAM, I'd suddenly get this huge adrenaline shot and I'd feel all scared and shit.

A perfect horror movie would have to be seen in first-person. That's the only way to really get into it. I'm not talking about shaky camera guy "I can't see shit" first-person, but Hitchcock slowly advancing to your doom / get stabbed in the face by a wailing banshee one. And with an imagination like mine, it's easy to be walking around in your house and thinking that it'd be fucking creepy if that madwoman came out of the bathroom with a knife, and actually placing that image in front of you and see it.

Completely off-topic, I know, but I love horror games and despise having such a hard time playing them.

 

[entertainer]

http://beefjack.com/news/amnesia-the-da ... st-canned/

hopefully it sells, got good reviews from what i read

 

[MapMan]

http://beefjack.com/news/amnesia-the-dark-descent-was-almost-canned/

hopefully it sells, got good reviews from what i read

Welcome to the first page.

 

[Kingston]

The game, overall, is mediocre. Bad puzzles, cheap scares, lots of unexplained bullshit

That's what it seems like so far. I'm played up to the level where the thing in the water tries to kill you. I haven't really been scared yet, at the beginning it felt real tense but pretty soon I realised that nothing was going to happen. Big blobs of flesh appearing out of nowhere is not a scare!

Severely disappointed in the lack of puzzles! The Penumbras had good puzzles, so far I haven't noticed anything except "go somewhere and pick up an item." They took the "make-a-potion" thing from Black Plague and dumbed it down or something. I remember that part in BP requiring a bit more thought.

What happened to the physics? I distinctly remember the first time I played Penumbra and noticed that heavy stuff "felt" heavy. You needed to make a larger motion with the mouse and so forth. For some reason I don't see it here, most objects seem exactly the same weight. Maybe I've just gotten used to the effect.

Two possible reasons for my disappointment might be A) This is fantasy-horror, which never really worked that well for me. I definitely prefer Sci-Fi. B) I've played two games that follow the same formula. Maybe I'm noticing the strings behind the backdrop.

I remember seeing a blog post by one of the devs that got me slightly worried. The part that worried me then:

It also describes a lot of the thinking we have had when designing Amnesia. As our project have progressed, we have moved more and more away from gameplay and narrative, instead focusing on the meaning we want to express. This does not mean that Amnesia will be absent of both gameplay and narrative though. It just means that they have been far from the focus during development. The goal (and meaning) with Amnesia is to create a disturbing atmosphere and expose players to concepts about the nature of human evil. All of the game's design has been built around enhancing these things.

Gameplay wise, we have never really thought about how we want to challenge the player, instead it has been all about creating a certain atmosphere and evoking emotions. No puzzle have been thrown in just to drag out on the playtime or just to pose an extra challenge. We have been very careful to make sure that puzzles have relevance to the story and the feelings we want to convey. The is also true for other gameplay elements, for instance how enemy encounters are handled.

They appear to be preoccupied with the idea of making the game a piece of art instead of making it entertaining.

Edit: Anyway, this water platforming thing is pretty meh. I'd stop playing now but I have faith that the game will get better later on.

 

[1eyedking]

Yes, I definitely noticed that. They decided to forsake gameplay and narrative for the sake of atmosphere. And goddamit all if they don't nail it right at the spot.

But it's too short for there to be any sort of impact. From where you are Kingston, it only gets better, the water monster part is the lowest point of the game, and somewhere near the middle, middle-end it's where it shines the most; it's more of a glimpse though: the feeling of immersion lasts for about 3 hours before being shoved into one heck of an anticlimactic lackluster ending.