Amnesia: The Dark Descent (makers of Penumbra)

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

Over-hyped. It might work for you if you're the sort who finds horror flicks scary.

People say they can't play this game for more than 30 minutes, I'd say it has more to do with the floating fpp and nasty fov than it has with the tension/scare.

you're constantly running from light source to lightsource, unable to stand in the dark because apparently your character has an irrational fear of darkness on par with a mentally disabled 6 year old.

 

[Multidirectional]

apparently your character has an irrational fear of darkness on par with a mentally disabled 6 year old.

Get yourself chased by the living nightmare you can't get rid of, see how you like being in the dark then.

 

[baronjohn]

I bought it and wanted to like it, but I just couldn't. Penumbra was way better.

 

[Destroid]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... rk-Descent

Zero punctuation guy does a fairly positive review of it.

 

[RatFink]

hahaha this is better than actually playing it

 

[Jaesun]

I bought it and wanted to like it, but I just couldn't. Penumbra was way better.

Same here. I found the whole lighting mechanic, and running out of tinderboxes more frustrating, which pretty much made me completely ignore all the "scary" elements of the game.

 

[Phelot]

http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=48795 This thread has a lot of good impressions.

I too wanted to like it and for the most part I do. If you're not scared by video games or in general then it's gonna be a stupid game for you. Otherwise, it's very atmospheric and a lot of fun.

See that saw? Can't use it against the enemies. Why? Because lol.

It's meant to be more like a horror movie then anything else in which there's a seemingly normal bro that is suddenly confronted by horrific things, thus you're not the Doom guy and not capable of trying to kill supernatural creatures with a saw...



In the end, despite all my praise, I do admit that Penumbra was better.

I'd love to see Frictional Games try their hand at another genre.

 

[Luzur]

It's meant to be more like a horror movie then anything else in which there's a seemingly normal bro that is suddenly confronted by horrific things, thus you're not the Doom guy and not capable of trying to kill supernatural creatures with a saw...



In the end, despite all my praise, I do admit that Penumbra was better.

I'd love to see Frictional Games try their hand at another genre.

but you know, after awhile even a normal guy like you would get used to looking at the monster while hiding and not freak out, and eventually you would try to lure it into a trap.

and getting that freaked out by being in the dark (even i like hiding in the dark at times) isnt exactly normal either.

 

[Multidirectional]

I found the whole lighting mechanic, and running out of tinderboxes more frustrating

I probably played a different version. There were way more tinderboxes than I ever needed in my game. I had around 20 spare tinderboxes throughout most of the game.

 

[JarlFrank]

And I thought I was easily scared by games.

That guy starts screaming when he sees a monster that he expects to be there anyway? Also he starts going all nervous when... well basically when anything happens at all.

Probably a troll act.

 

[JarlFrank]

but you know, after awhile even a normal guy like you would get used to looking at the monster while hiding and not freak out, and eventually you would try to lure it into a trap.

and getting that freaked out by being in the dark (even i like hiding in the dark at times) isnt exactly normal either.

Yeah that's a mechanic that I find kinda silly in horror games that try it. I'm a guy who gets easily scared in games yet even I think that the player characters are sometimes incredible pussies.

Okay, seeing a monster makes you lose your sanity, I can understand that. But why do you get even more insane the longer you look at it? If you're sitting in relative safety hiding somewhere, and you've looked at the thing for five minutes, you're going to accept that it exists and it's there. You don't go EVEN MOAR MAD just by looking at it for another five minutes.

Also it's stupid that you can lose sanity by being in the darkness even if you're currently using that darkness to hide. FUCK YOU PLAYER CHARACTER, WOULD YOU PREFER BEING IN THE LIGHT WHERE THAT THING CAN SEE YOU OR WHAT?

 

[Metro]

Just an FYI the game is one of the daily specials today on Steam for $7 or $5 if you have one of the other Penumbra games attached to your account (one was in the Humble Bundle).

 

[CrimHead]

See that saw? Can't use it against the enemies. Why? Because lol.

You should just stick to intellectual endeavours the likes of Call of Duty.

A monster backs you into a corner. Though you've relied on it until now, there is no running away from this encounter, there is only combat. Situated inches away is a table upon which lay various instruments of carpentry. Closest of which is a sharp hand saw.

But you can't have it.

Why?

lol cuz

See the problem now?

And yes, equating basic survival horror gameplay mechanics with COD's hollywood style brain dead shoot outs is perfectly rational.

 

[Phelot]

It's meant to be more like a horror movie then anything else in which there's a seemingly normal bro that is suddenly confronted by horrific things, thus you're not the Doom guy and not capable of trying to kill supernatural creatures with a saw...



In the end, despite all my praise, I do admit that Penumbra was better.

I'd love to see Frictional Games try their hand at another genre.

but you know, after awhile even a normal guy like you would get used to looking at the monster while hiding and not freak out, and eventually you would try to lure it into a trap.

and getting that freaked out by being in the dark (even i like hiding in the dark at times) isnt exactly normal either.

I thought, and I certainly could be mistaken, that you play as a mentally disturbed person to begin with, so I don't know.

I guess in the end it's just a gameplay mechanic kind of like being able to hold hundreds of pounds of stuff :D

 

[Multidirectional]

Well I'd rather have no combat ability at all than the likes of combat from Penumbra 1. That was horrifying in a very bad way. On the other hand, if they made combat fun, game would lose all the chances at being scary. This dilemma was probably the very reason for ditching combat altogether.

And I thought I was easily scared by games.

That guy starts screaming when he sees a monster that he expects to be there anyway? Also he starts going all nervous when... well basically when anything happens at all.

Probably a troll act.

I thought he was faking at first too, but by the end of video I was somehow convinced he is really that big of a pussy. I know people who find games like Doom 3 or FEAR too scary to play, probably the reason why I was able to believe his fear.

 

[DefJam101]

Have to say I would find that water-filled cellar sequence nerve wracking. You guys are just far too jaded.

 

[Wilco]

Have to say I would find that water-filled cellar sequence nerve wracking. You guys are just far too jaded.

Just completed it now, I was actually sweating while I was running from that thing.

 

[TheLostOne]

I played the game in the dark with headphones and it scared the shit out of me.

I guess it's a bit like comedy. Different types of humor work for some people and not for others. This particular brand of horror worked for me.

 

[SkepticsClaw]

The nyctophobia (thanks Wiki!) in the protagonist I don't think is particularly stupid. Fear of the dark is hardly rare, and it can even be debilitating. I vividly remember when I watched The Exorcist for the first time when I was 12 - I could not turn off my light at all for at least a week without the most intense sense of literally paralysing, spine-crawling dread you can imagine coming over me. I had to have light so I could reassure myself there was still nothing there. Rational? Not at all, but that's half the power of it; it comes from a place in the distant past before we'd even learned to think.

I thought the video was fuckin great though. If it's an act, it's a funny one. If it isn't - well, that's just priceless. And I think I want this game, it looks pretty creepy to me. Probably if you're the kind of person who naturally empathises with fictional situations and has a low suspension of disbelief threshold (as I am) you'll probably get a lot more out of it.

 

[Gragt]

Besides the character just suffered total memory lost and has no clue about what he is doing in that place. It's not far-fetched to imagine he is in a rather fragile state and developped a fear of the dark.

As a side note, I used to be afraid of the dark until a few years ago. I always saw shadows moving around, heard weird noises. Each time I thought it was a facehugger … It stopped when I got ferrets and I knew it was them moving around and making noise at night.

Except that time when one of them played on my bed in the middle of the night. This woke me up and I opened my eyes just in time to get a small animal jump on my face. I probably woke up the whole building with my scream.

 

[Luzur]

Have to say I would find that water-filled cellar sequence nerve wracking. You guys are just far too jaded.

Just completed it now, I was actually sweating while I was running from that thing.

i was more annoyed, god damn doors all the way while you have that shit breathing down your neck with instant death.

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

From the post over at Frictional Games' blog:

When counting all online sales as well a the Russian retail copies, we have now sold almost 200, 000 units! This is a tremendous amount and more than we ever thought we would. Our "dream estimates" before release was something around 100k, and to be able to double that feels insane.

With these figures at hand, we must confess that it gives us new confidence for the PC. The sales that we have had (and are having) are more than enough to motivate developing a game with the PC as the main (and even only) platform. Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth. We think that other developers that consider making their game exclusive to a console might want to think again.

There is another really important thing that needs to be taken into account: If we have had a publisher and sold according to current figures, we would not be in the state that we are in now. [...] We would probably just have paid back our advance, and just recently been receiving royalties (at a much lower rate, like 25% of what we get now).This does not mean that publishers are evil, just that one should think carefully before signing up for anything.

The whole piece is well worth reading, especially seeing as their games appear to be (and deservedly so) quite popular around here.

 

[Achilles]

I'm really happy for them, because at first they seemed a bit bummed by the mediocre sales. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool but it takes a while to show tangible results. Given time I think they'll do even better, maybe double that sales number.

It's also nice to see that their success has renewed their faith in the PC platform. I can't wait for their next game, I'm sure it will be even better than Amnesia.

 

[Twinkle]

Though Amnesia was somewhat disappointing for my taste, it's nice to see them alive and kicking.

 

[Gragt]

I feel like replaying that game with the commentary mode on, but I swore I'm not going near the cellar again. Sure, I feel ok now, having completed the game and knowing more or less what's gonna happen and how to deal with it, but when I'll be reaching the cellar, I'll remember why I swore I'd never play that game again, and especially that part.