Culture

Platforms: Windows, MAC, Linux, (4.5/5).


What's the quickest route to disrupt the tension in any horror videogame, or for that matter any scary media? Top marks if you said combat, because any direct encounter with the relentlessly stalking depraved shadows immediately undermines any fear the developer has woven. I can't be expected to pay attention to the creepy stuff and the oppressive atmosphere during most of 2005's Condemned. Come on, I'm too busy beating drug addicts to death with a table.

 
It took chutzpah to design Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Your only course of action against your impossible, twisted enemies is to run, locking doors behind you, and hiding in damp closets or dank dungeons that could be home to something even more gruesome. You hope against hope that doors you come across are unbarred, and pray that corridors you choose in a heart stopping moment are not simply a dead end.
 

Set in 1839, you play as Daniel, awakening without memories in the Prussian Brennenburg Castle. He is afraid of the dark, terrified in fact, which manifests brilliantly because hiding in darkness is the only way to elude the monstrosities you face. Being in the dark, and looking directly at the monsters for that matter, makes Daniel more and more insane, and it becomes difficult to distinguish imaginary twisted phenomena from very real ones.
 

At its core, Amnesia is a haunted house game, but a haunted house that harnesses all that is immersive about first-person perspectives. Your character will hallucinate, stumble and fall, and the physics system creates environmental interactions that are tactile and tense. Gripping something involves holding the mouse button, and then you move in an intuitive motion, perhaps to rotate a valve or pull a lever. Imagine waiting for a monster to pass, and then ever so slowly edging open the closet door to peep outside, hoping not to witness an open black maw patiently waiting to digest you.