I have done very little research on Amnesia but understood it such that the first one is regarded by many as one of the best horror games to come out in recent years, while the second one is considered a butchering of the original and created some controversy with the developers of it, whom iirc aren't the same as the ones who made Dark Descent.

Amnesia has been on sale quite a few times now though. I've gotten it form Humble Bundle at some point, but I know I don't have the balls to play it. Besides, I've watched a playthrough.

Just curious. For those of you who play Dark Souls, do you like to go for The Depths or Darkroot Garden first?

I went to the Garden first but I'm just cool like that.

This is madness. Recommending things based on things you read on the internet is not a thing. And throwing out random judgement and comparisons for something you haven't played at all is even worse. What in the world.

the fact that you typed those about a game you haven't even played is sort of mind-blowing to me.


Same here. I loved loved loved the first one but sadly didn't have time to play the sequel before I lost access to a PC.


Amnesia is not a jump scare horror game. It is scary in another way. Why don't you just try playing it for a little and if it's too traumatizing you can just uninstall.


The fact you haven't played Amnesia is showing so hard right now because you are putting it in the same sentence with Dead Space. They are as far apart from each other as games in the same 'genre' can be, and what makes Amnesia scary doesn't exist in Dead Space (which I didn't find to be even a little scary of a game actually.

I've read dozens of reviews (professional not user) for each, I've watched people play through both games in entirety, and frankly I've been playing the first game for the last hour. It's not like something is going to surprise the heck out of me at some point here.

I have yet to see something that makes me think the games are scary. I might just be completely desensitized, but I might as well be playing Dead Space. I've never gotten it.

Furthermore, I don't have to jump off a cliff to know it is a bad idea. If you take the inventory system, the lighting system, and the insanity system out of the first game, what is left to scare people?

I say get the first game because it's systems are fun and make for a good game. The second game took out those systems..... oh well.

So I've not played the games myself but wouldn't doing this pretty much invalidate the whole point of playing a horror game? I mean if you've already experienced the games second-hand then doesn't that remove a ton of the experience from playing it yourself? Are the games particularly non-linear? Cause watching full play throughs just seems a little self-defeating ya know?

I am not able to remember the puzzle solutions after having just watched them once (or frankly most of the encounters), the game is actually decently hard in some areas just because of the light/dark mechanics, and spoilers don't bother me.

For an equivalent, go watch someone play through Doom 2. Then try to tell me exactly what happened at every part after having only seen it once. You forget a ton. It's why I still jump at stuff all the time.

Since the first game is only supposed to be about 8 hours, and i was very on the fence for it, watching a playthrough was worth it for me. Doing the same for the second game convinced me not to buy it...... so it works.

Edit: Also my philosophy is basically that scary things are scary the second time around after you give it a while. It's not like I watched a playthrough and immediately went out to play the game. I gave it a decent amount of time and waited for the game to go on sale.

dead space pissed me off when I headshot the first zombie and it didn't die, and I wasted all my ammo trying to kill the first three damned zombies.

Never picked the game up again.

Basically more or less what Fenix said, I was going to go on a minor rant about Mjack's usually way of judging things but I ended up not having the time to do so and the conversation sorta moved elsewhere. Its not just Amnesia either, its the case on several other topics, but there's quite a bit of judgement that happens without ever having played a game... but in this case a huge chunk of the game's draw comes from actually sitting there and playing through it yourself; No matter how many youtube videos you watched on a game or how many reviews whether 'professional' or not it still is not the same as sitting there and experiencing the game for yourself.

((Completely unrelated note: The game rating and game reviewing systems currently, even the 'professional' ones, are a bloated and commercialized system and are in fact a very poor way to get the feel for anything anyway. At this point if a game doesn't get an 8 its a **** game instead of actually using the scale as it should be used.))

Back to Amnesia though, I almost compared it to Dead Space as well (I had actually typed the words out) in my comment above when I said it was a Myst offspring but I changed it because, while Dead Space jumps to mind first due to being horror, the two games are nothing alike. A third person over shoulder shooter full of jump scares is not a first person exploration and ambient horror game. One game is about blasting waves of enemies and killing them by shooting the most appropriate areas of each given enemy and gorey monsters jumping at you from holes in the wall or ceiling...the other is about the story and the feel of exploring through the area and avoiding the enemies and the darkness whenever possible. Comparing the two like they're the same shows that a person has little knowledge of either.

Sure you dont have to jump off a cliff to know its a bad idea, but that's not the best metaphor for the situation. You watched a youtube video and read an article where someone said jumping off a cliff is bad so you took it be bad, final answer, you never considered that there are people out there who want to bungee jump, hang-glide, or just plain cliff dive. The world isnt as black and white as you always paint it Mjack, and even less so when you're tying to describe something you've not even experienced yourself, its why a lot of your reviews and opinions end up coming off as shallow or pretentious.

Edit : There have been a few replies since I started writing, incorporating them now.

Yes, yes it does. Especially in a game like Amnesia where the point is the story, the exploration, and the puzzles ... sitting there and watching it in a video (and not just part of it but the entire game) isn't just self-defeating, but it neuters the entire experience.

My answer to this is more or less a repetition of my comment above; watching the entire game to decide that you do want to play it neuters the entire experience of the game. Its not like watching a trailer to a movie to get an idea of the movie and then sitting down and committing two hours to that movie, you're essentially watching all the twists to see if the movie is exciting enough and then watching the whole movie and feeling unimpressed that the twists werent good enough... of course they weren't, you looked them up first.

Regarding Doom 2 : I may not remember the placement of every single enemy but I'll remember a whole lot, too much to make sitting and playing through it myself as fun as it would have been without watching it first. This is why I've always had bad luck with starting new characters in games like Fallout or Elder Scrolls, etc: when you take way the exploration factor of being new and wandering the world, and boil it down to 'I need to X then go do Y, and then go do Z' you turn the experience into a extremely linear and way less enjoyable experience compared to what its supposed to be.

I'll repeat myself. If it's only scary the first time around, it's not scary. It's surprising. It's been a month to a month and a half since I've seen any form of actual gameplay. I've forgotten quite a bit of the plot and I don't remember the vast majority of the solutions. If it can't scare me at all after that time interval. It's not scary.

Just as if you went back through the game a second time, it hopefully wouldn't all of a sudden be a bland walking adventure for you. As the game's reputation proceeds itself, something would probably still scare you if you found the game scary the first time. The thing isn't that I'm saying it's not that scary or that only a few parts were scary. I just don't find it frightening at all. Once again I blame television. Particularly Chucky and Kreuger.

I'll repeat myself. The point of Amnesia is not jump scares (hence why your comparing it to Dead Space is such a poor decision) or to scare you with the same thing multiple times. The point is the exploration and the puzzle solving and to watch the game in it's entirety first and then play it is to deny yourself of the experience.

To judge a game based on your poor watered down experience is just as bad as to act like you know everything about a game because you read some online reviews.

To further repeat myself: playing this sort of game a second time often falls short of the experience you had the first time... so yes watching the whole thing on the internet then playing through it would very much push it towards 'bland walking adventure' territory even if it had a reputation that proceeded itself. This is why people don't like spoilers posted before they get a chance to watch a movie or play a game because accidentally gaining knowledge that they otherwise shouldn't have had yet robs them of some of the experience.

I will continue to maintain that if it loses all horror aspects because of that walkthrough I watched over a month ago, it's not scary. Even when it comes to atmosphere, you don't suddenly lose all of your atmosphere in a second playthrough to the point where one of the scariest games on the market suddenly can't scare you at all. Zero scares. Not even just the little bit creepy.

It doesn't work that way, and that requires a suspension of disbelief I am not willing to make.

Now if you want to say it isn't as scary or that it didn't scare you as much or that it is neutered somewhat the second time around, that is perfectly believable. I'm not even going to argue against that, because it is true. But scariest game someone has played -> zero scares..... not really. Too much of a leap.

Both Payday the Heist and Payday 2 are on sale for 2/3 off (5 and 10 dollars) this weekend.

I've spend over 100 hours on the first one, and it's very much worth the $5. The second one.... I've spent about 20 hours on it and they really screwed it up compared to the first one. It's still decent, but they changed a little too much for the worse, and the thing was glitchy at last check.

This whole post is you doing that thing you do where you keep arguing a point that isnt what the other person is saying. You make up what you think the other person is saying in your mind without reading their post and then you keep arguing against that point even though its not whats being said.

a game on my wish list is on sale and I'm totally broke until next week...can't even afford a $5 game >_<

What game ?

Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure lol

Okay, I'm sorry, but this statement is even dumber than that stupid deck you crushed me with two or so days ago. You are literally saying that the internet is a worthless tool for finding out whether you would enjoy a game or not. Even if you just limit it to making a recommendation based on reviews only, I'd still disagree, as that in itself means that every review is effectively worthless, and I'm pretty sure I've found use in a lot of them. Saying "I haven't played this universally despised game, but I don't think it's a good purchase" is entirely legitimate.

HOWEVER.
mjack, I don't care what you define as scary, but it's flat out wrong. I'm going to throw out an absurd example, but it's more for my own amusement than anything else.
"My hands trembled as I stabbed him over and over, but I've gotten used to it by now."

Amnesia uses shock value to some degree, but the majority of the game atmosphere comes from not knowing. Of course you ruin everything for yourself when you void that part of it all.

Okay I will not reply to mjack because Bounty Hunter already said most of what I was going to say and mjack isn't making that much sense anyway and he seems to be arguing (about things he doesnt know much about) just for the sake of arguing.

Huh? I think there are a lot of people called Fenix or variations of it on Modo/cockatrice/DotP and I don't remember playing any magic this week so it probably wasn't me. The only reason I am doubting myself is that you said dumb deck, and playing dumb decks sound exactly like what I do. (If it was on MTGO, I am Fenix7)

nonononono, you misunderstood me. I also could have used better wording, but what I meant to say is that using someone else's opinion that is based on stuff they read on the internet while you yourself are on the internet is madness. I am arguing that "I think this game sucks because I read a review that said it was X and Y so I don't recommend it to you" is an absolutely useless thing to say.

I didn't mean to say reviews are worthless, sorry if it read like that. Also considering the fact that I was a game journalist for 6 years that wouldn't be a smart thing to say. I do read some reviews myself, but I think the vast majority of game reviews on the internet are not good and judging something relying only on them is not smart. What is even WORSE is judging something based on someone else's understanding of a review

re: Amnesia

What Mown describes in the spoiler is pretty accurate. By the way, by delving into docs and files of the game I found out that in fact there are 2 types of monsters in the game, normal ones and some other that have a flag called hidden (iirc). The latter are completely invisible and dont do anything, until your sanity drops below a certain threshold and you see them. So when your sanity is low in addition to all the UI changes you also actually hallucinate monsters. I found that brilliant.

Also, for those interested, I think thisis the best Amnesia: The Dark Descent review on the internet.

: popcorn : should totally be an emoji, if it isn't.