Hey there, you soggy slopsters. Today I'm back to review the most recent entry in the Amnesia series of games, Amnesia Rebirth. For those of you who are veterans to the internet, you'll probably remember the original game "Amnesia: The Dark Descent", as it was probably the biggest trending video game on the internet in 2011. You couldn't probably look up a twice baked potato recipe at the time without seeing an ad for a gameplay video of a teenager screaming about having piss in his pants from how spooky it was. Every lets player was playing it, reaction channels were reacting to it, people just wanted to consume the fuck out of content relating to the game back when it dropped.
And, even now, I would say it was a huge influence on what modern horror turned into. It literally spawned an entire generation of horror games, with titles like Outlast, Alien Isolation and Layers of Fear taking huge inspiration from the original Amnesia game. I would go as far to say that Amnesia probably helped mainstream/popularize the horror genre into a cornerstone within the gaming world as we know it today. With such a large history behind this franchise, this game had some fat ass shoes to fill, at least in my opinion. So, how'd it do?
Well, it kind of made my penis flappy and not hard at all, to say the least.
Now, I can definitely say the first Amnesia game was a huge success and it jump started horror. The sequel that followed, A Machine for Pigs, was not really very good and kind of sucked fat ass. It had a confusing story that required deciphering a bunch of bullshit, lacked scary enemies, had barely anything to interact with and just honestly didn't have much in similarities with the original title. So, I was on the fence with what I expected from this game before hopping into it. Rebirth definitely is more in line with the original game, but has massive problems still.
The strongest part of Rebirth is most definitely its narrative. You can tell that pretty much all of the focus of the game went into the story. They wanted to tell a captivating story that kept you hooked with interesting characters and backdrop settings. And, I would for sure say that they did a good job here. Not the best narrative in a game, by any means. But, a pretty good attempt that definitely kept my attention while I was playing the game. This was helped quite a bit with the voice acting, which was surprisingly well done. In particular the main character who was voiced by Alex Wilton Regan was excellent, she had one of the best voice acting performances I've heard in a horror game in a very long time. The whole cast did a good job, but big shoutout to her.
Now, having said that the strongest part of the game is the narrative, I do have to say I wasn't a huge fan of how they delivered said narrative to you. The majority of the story is given to you via letters scattered throughout the world that you just pick up and read. There are such a huge fucking amount of them tossed into the game that you'll feel like you broke into your local post office and just started ripping into peoples shit. All of the worldbuilding/lore and most of the narrative is given this way, and it just makes it feel very tedious. It interrupts the flow of the gameplay doing it this way, where you have to just dead ass stop playing basically and spend a large portion of your time playing to read these letters if you want to understand what's happening. So, while narrative is good, the way they feed it to you is not.
An aspect of the game that I think most people will not be happy with is that for being a horror game, it is very dry and lacking in that department. I really think they just focused in with laser beam precision on trying to tell a compelling story that they put everything else on back burner. The game is more of a thriller with horror elements tossed in here and there, with little focus on actually scaring you. The first 3 hours literally has nothing that will make you scared or feeling your taint filled with sweat at how unnerving it is. Now, there is some disturbing things shown to you while you play. But, I never felt like the game was actually trying to spook me very much. Which kind of sucks. There are some cheap jump scares here and there, a fear mechanic that causes images of alien stripper titties alien to pop up and catch you off guard which was lame.
It's disappointing to say the least, because the first Amnesia game was actually scary and worked as a horror game while still having an interesting story. I was hoping this game would reinvigorate the horror genre a bit, and actually try to make up for how fucking terrible the second game was. But, it was just content with being a mystery/puzzle solving game with some dumb ass jump scares tossed in here and there. I mean, there are a few monsters in the game. But, you see them so very little that they're really not much more than an afterthought. Unless your name is Anakin skywalker where you have a hatred/fear of sand, then you're not going to be very tense and on edge from the game.
The final thing I'll touch on are the multiple endings that you can unlock. These were probably one of the worst elements of the game, as they're all very badly done. And, I don't mean that they're downer endings or anything where I'm bitching because not everything is just copious amounts of puppies and kittens. I mean that there is not meat on this bone as far as the endings go. They end very abruptly, and are very short and nothing is really shown or explained on them. There are 3 endings you can get, and all of them are absolutely unsatisfying. I feel like they ran out of resources or time to actually work on the end of the game, it just feels very rushed out. Because of this, it kind of feels like everything you did in the game was pointless and nothing more than a fleeting moment. The game needed closure, but didn't deliver it.
Overall, I wouldn't say I hate this game or think that it's a stinky pile of dogshit or anything. The graphics/world is gorgeous to look at, the characters are interesting, the voice acting is great, the puzzles are challenging and fun. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff to be found in this game. But, if you want a horror game or to feel scared, and if you want a sense of feeling fulfilled by the time you beat the game, then this is definitely the wrong title for you. The monsters are uninspired, the horror is basically just garbage jump scares and it just isn't a good horror game. I would say it fails hard in that regard. But, yeah. Not a bad game or anything, just not what I was hoping for exactly.
Until next time though, doods.
Later!
