I have been playing a bunch of 'Amnesia: The Bunker' lately as it turned out to be one of my favorite survival horror games, so I thought I would share my impressions of the game after finishing it twice.
What the game does well:
- Level Design: Multiple routes, objectives can be tackled in different order, multiple ways to tackle obstacles, lots of darkness to navigate, randomized puzzle solutions and lootables keep the game fresh and replayable.
- Enemies: The monster is unbeatable, yet it can be scared off temporarily (so there is some push-pull), and the rats and traps do a great job at adding friction to your progress.
- Visuals: Overall the game looks great, with a consistent art style and plenty of detail put in the environments. Also, the selection of graphics options is neat.
- Audio Design: The directional audio is very clear and makes it easy to figure out where noises come from.
- Configurability: From lots of options for accessibility and graphics to having a custom difficulty mode where you can tune things to your liking, you get plenty of room to make the experience as you want.
What the game needs to improve upon:
- The story is superficial, which limits the player immersion. We never really get to connect with Henri as a character, so escaping the bunker only pays off as solving the game's puzzle and less so as seeing a character you care about making it out alive. The ending cutscene is also rather inconclusive, leaving you wondering what is the fate of the character you tried to save in the past few hours of play.
- The last encounter is the exact opposite of what it should be. Instead of having this final challenge that puts everything you have learned to the test, you get a plain challenge where you just need to kite or distract the monster long enough to move some crates, which is easier than solving the actual bunker areas. The encounter also fails to conclude the fate of the monster in some way, which is a shame from a story standpoint.
- Having a short eerie sound play from time to time in the background would've made the experience even more immersive in my opinion.
- An extra obstacle-type enemy would've been nice in the later part of the game to keep things fresh and get you to dig in those stockpiles you've been making so far.
- Player's actions don't feel responsive enough, as in animations don't start the moment you press the key and you aren't able to cancel what you were doing quickly. It's a horror game and the character should be able to drop whatever they were doing to react to what's happening in an instant. I am not arguing for having faster animations, they just need to start asap and be easily cancellable.
- Guns have too much sway. I had to restart a couple of times because I was missing shots on locks at a few meters away. Aiming while standing still for a while should be precise, there's nothing fun about missing shots because of randomness mechanics in a game where ammo is so scarce.
- Consumable items should have more interactivity with the game's crafting mechanics, so there's more decision making involved when using materials to craft one item vs the other (e.g. using rags to make molotovs vs torches). Resident Evil games do this really well, it's something worth borrowing from them.
- Storage box has a limited space, yet you can pile items on the ground around it as much as you want. This makes no sense to me, the storage should be endless and sortable. Again Resident Evil games do this very well and are worth referencing.
- Contrast (or rather Dynamic Range) in this game is quite low, which makes it look a bit blurry on my 1080p monitor. Contrast and Brightness sliders would be great additions to the options menu so you can adjust the dynamic range to your liking, again similar to how the newer Resident Evil games work.
I hope the developers will consider improving upon some of the mentioned aspects in either this game or their next title, there is a lot of potential here. Looking forward to see what they come up with next!