Amnesia: The Dark Descent Demo released
redeemed_darkness
Join Date: 2003-01-21 Member: 12565Members
Join Date: 2003-01-21 Member: 12565Members
Comments
Gonna be a lot of long and scary nights for me.
It's like Myst had a horrible squirming lovechild with.. lovecraft.
Hm, weird.. lovecraft, lovechild. Coincidence? I think not.
A game where test how many 5 year old'ss you can take on? Blizzard steals and reuses a lot of stuff don't they <img src="http://members.home.nl/m.borgman/ns-forum/smileys/awesome.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
I'm excited.
What has Amnesia done to be different?
[edit] Okay, so it's a glitch. I googled around, and some people have been getting it too. I tried updating my graphics drivers, but no dice.
I got through the first segment of the demo without too much hassle and it was really atmospheric and cool. I'd really want it to work and I'd definitely buy it. Gonna have to try it on my tabletop puter...
Final Boss: Chris Hansen
Pros:
Keeps me on edge
The smooth interaction with objects, actually allows some big interactions with stuff like hefty rocks and wooden logs.
Good shadows and lightning
Puzzles that actually make sense. "The staircase broke partially from the earthquake, find a way up again" *stack crates and jump back up*
If you stand in the dark, you go insane slowly, but it gives you a sort of nightvision so you don't randomly die trying to find a candle when out of oil for the lamp
To avoid enemies you can sacrifice different things (keep sanity with light, but get detected much easier or hide easily but go whacko from sitting around in darkness)
Really creepy at times
Good paranoia sounds
Relatively short and interesting text entries that can be used as hints on how to progress.
Chase scenes
Safe zones
Cons:
The areas are pretty small and often require pause screen loading to enter.
Not actually been scared outright yet, only "oh ###### what is going on, blarg im dead" and then I got a hint of what the hell happened.
Unavoidable damage at certain parts it seems
Not too pretty at times when things are properly lit (not often that is)
Standing in the dark makes you go insane, and the only cure is to make progress. Big dark area to cross + no oil lamp = An automatic increase in insanity (I guess it kills you eventually)
Some puzzles with cranks might tear up your mousepad as you circle the mouse like a madman on speed.
It was worth 16 dorrars so far.
It's not perfect, the blurry video when scared can be annoying and it's not the prettiest thing out there, but what it does, it does well (give you the heeby jeebies).
Since you spend your time avoiding conflict, hiding, and running away I feel like they really needed to pull off everything else. I just felt like I was a pacifist version of sam fisher and was transported to hell or something.
If it's like Penumbra you can just ignore him and run by him. Which was one of the things that really annoyed me. When you figure out how stupid the AI is you can just exploit it and the scariness goes away.
You <span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>cannot outrun the splashy monster. Even at full pelt it'll catch up with you.</span>
--Scythe--
You <span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>cannot outrun the splashy monster. Even at full pelt it'll catch up with you.</span>
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To whom it concerns re: <span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>splashy</span> monster... warning, spoiler contains a puzzle solution...
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'> Unfortunately, I knocked off a body part accidentally when I jumped on a crate with them, causing me to believe the resultant special splashing was just a random 'ambient' occurrence. But I noticed them and I didn't like them on my box so I proceeded to throw all of them out into the water. Then I made no connection between the subsequent splashing which again seemed random as I was busy looking for some way out. So I, too, tried to make a break for it and failed miserably, lol. Then it tells you how to solve the puzzle after one death! That's no fun! QQ </span>
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>No idea what you guys are doing wrong, but you can definitely outrun the splashy weirdo, I ran from the gate back to the lever to open that gate and it couldn't even catch up... Sure it sounds menacing with it screaming and grunting behind ya, but it is not faster then you.
You guys weren't running, I guess (shift will save your day)</span>
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'> Unfortunately, I knocked off a body part accidentally when I jumped on a crate with them, causing me to believe the resultant special splashing was just a random 'ambient' occurrence. But I noticed them and I didn't like them on my box so I proceeded to throw all of them out into the water. Then I made no connection between the subsequent splashing which again seemed random as I was busy looking for some way out. So I, too, tried to make a break for it and failed miserably, lol. Then it tells you how to solve the puzzle after one death! That's no fun! QQ </span><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You can turn off "hint on death" in the options.
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'> and no, you can't run faster than splashy. However, it gets slowed down by crates and stuff in the water. So if you jump over the barrels rather than throw them out of your way, it might be sufficient. It also stops chasing when not in the water so jumping on stuff slows it down too.
</span>
@ Swift: Well, the devs say at the very start not to play to win and to immerse oneself into the universe, exploiting such things go against that.
Next up: The multiplayer teen slasher game! Players are supposed to split up so they can be individually murdered; sticking together in order to take advantage of strength in numbers goes against the spirit of the game.
I don't know how that works in Amnesia terms, but if it's possible to make the game un-scary without actual bug exploiting or cheating, that sounds like a design snafu to me.
but because the game is indie and took a long time to develop you're supposed to ignore that.
</span><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<span style='color:#000000;background:#000000'>Well it wasn't able to catch up to me at all. It was right next to me, when I jumped into the water and ran back to the lever to open the gate. I did ran trough the water, not jumping on crates.
And when the lever was pulled, I did the same thing again towards the gate. In both instances it didn't catch up. So it is either just as fast or a little bit faster but splashy's path-finding needs some work
Splashy 2 was pretty cool though, here ya can't try and outrun it. But then again... Once you start throwing flesh into the water, the suspense does die down some.</span>
Horror games are so hard to make. If it isn't done right, experienced FPS-ers can easily exploit things. Remember loud-noise-spawn Imp from Doom3 and shotgunning them down before they can do anything? Spawncamping FTW <img src="http://members.home.nl/m.borgman/ns-forum/smileys/tongue.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Amnesia does a very good job though!
Scared ######less and loving it
loved it, super scary ,
sound and music are very good.
and i really liked the tension between wanting to see where u are going +staying sane but not wanting to waste the lantern oil + tinderboxes
great atmosphere, some of the voice acting was hit and miss tho.
but definitly do the dark room + headphones thing.
also;
apparently mat was too scared to play it. :P hehe