Currently Playing

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• Resident Evil
• Resident Evil 4
• F.E.A.R. 2
• Call of Duty: World at War (Nazi Zombies)
  

It sure has been a while. It's been weird coming back to write a proper article or two... finding half-finished and a few fully finished articles about games long past (and when I say long past, I mean "last year"). But with my recent graduation and full-time work settling in for now, and with a lot of extra time not cluttered up with homework or school projects, I spent many evenings doing... many a random thing. But with Halloween approaching (my favourite holiday of the year), I figured I should at least keep my evenings somewhat thematic and give myself something to work on. I compiled a list that contained as many scary, fear, or freaky games as I could care to dwell on, and decided to play through as many as I could within the month of October. I'll talk in detail about the ones that make me the most frightened, or that I like the best for other reasons.

The first most exciting game to come to my attention by a very long shot was Amnesia: the Dark Descent. Initially I heard about this game from ben crosshaw, and was told by another game-playing friend that it was a lot like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, which is easily the best scary title I've ever played. Since it had pretty big shoes to fill, I decided to see if it came close to matching the high standards I have for it (despite it being made by a very low-grade indie developer).

It not only met my standards, it demolished my standards.

First of all, the only things this game shares with Eternal Darkness are the Lovecraftian feel of the horror, and the concept of a sanity meter, which affects how you perceive what's going on in the game; besides that, too much sanity loss will eventually result in losing.

Secondly, this game is scary. Very scary. Far, far scarier than Eternal Darkness.

The opening titles of the game contain a few direct pleads from the developers, asking you to not worry about things like game saves (when you stop playing it saves your exact position and status), or even worrying about completing the game at all. Just allow yourself to become immersed in the world. Turn off the lights, put on your headphones and put up the sound. Make sure your brightness is properly adjusted (as with many horror games). Ready? Okay, good, we promise we'll scare the piss out of you.

And do they ever. The game is scary because it understands less is more. It understands that showing you less of the monsters you're up against makes you much more afraid of them. It understands that people are the most scared of what they don't understand, and that the monsters of their imagination are far more horrifying than any abomination a creature developer could ever slap onto your screen. So, when you see a monster, it'll be shuffling into a corridor at the other end of a long hallway. It'll be roaring at the end of a dark room. It'll be on the other side of padlocked prison bars. You won't be able to see it very well. In fact, if you do look at it, that increases the chance that it'll notice you.

The main character is a personification of your five-year-old self. If you're stuck in the dark, you get more and more scared until you step into some light or turn on your lamp. If you see a monster, you won't fight it. You will only run and run and run until several million miles separate you and the creature. If you close your eyes and you can't see the monster, it isn't there... usually. The game forces you to follow all these rules, and it works to great effect. After my first monster encounter, I spent a full ten minutes toward the beginning of the game practicing running into and hiding within a closet, making sure I could hit a good enough time such that I could disappear should a monster suddenly drop into the room.

And don't get me wrong. Even though you can't fight them, monsters will suddenly appear often enough for you to be terrified, and run. Monsters will corner you in a completely empty, brightly lit room, and you'll have to find some way to escape. Without looking at it. Monsters will threaten to break down the door and you'll have about 10 seconds to find the best hiding place you can in a room filled only with a pile of corpses and two knee-high boxes.

The sheer panic that comes from having to avoid monsters that you cannot possibly defeat is something that can't be matched by any game. Dead Space, Doom, F.E.A.R., resident evil, ...hell, even Eternal Darkness provide you with an arsenal of guns to face whatever scariness is coming at you. When you're just as terrified and helpless as you most likely would be if you were in that situation, and you have to make do with what you have, a genuine panic takes hold; a baser survival instinct that absolutely forces you to react quickly, or come face to face with an abject horror that the game will never really show you... it'll just make you show yourself what you're the most afraid of.

While the mechanics, physics, voice acting, and story themselves aren't award-winningly produced, the sound design is brilliant and the atmosphere is unmatched by any A-grade title I've ever laid eyes on. If you're looking to play a game that will make you very scared, don't miss Amnesia. It's a $20 download on Steam, and as a bonus, you'll support a very competent indie developer. And don't be warded off by the fact that it's a first-person game... it's not a shooter, as there isn't any shooting involved. It's just a first-person puzzle based ...terror machine.