Horror video games are very misunderstood. Many limit themselves to offering horror scenarios, without even trying to really scare, others focus everything on amateur tricks, such as jumping on a chair or a little blood, tricks that require a lot of time, but are liked for their social potential. , others still become predictable with such speed that, once they reach the end, the horror is just a distant memory.
Play to write the Review of Amnesia: The Bunker fortunately it reminded us of what true horror can be, that is, the fear of taking a single step or performing a "wrong" action, enveloping us in its impeccable grammar.
Will I open the no?
"I'm breathing deeply." When we saw ourselves playing Amnesia: The Bunker from the outside, we would have found ourselves in front of a person with his eyes fixed on the screen, breathing slowly and heavily, as if he were experiencing firsthand the fears of the character he plays, indecisive. about whether to do it or not. the action developed to overcome the obstacle in question. It's a wooden door, we can open it by throwing a brick at it, but we know that doing so will inevitably attract the monster. So we are there with the brick in our hand thinking not so much about what to do, because we know that well, but rather whether the escape strategy we have developed can work, because the damn monster will arrive. It's dark, the generator is far away and we can't go fill it with fuel. This is how it will come. And we stay there, in front of that door, knowing that if we don't throw the brick, it will appear anyway and we will probably end up badly anyway. Mentally we review the escape plan. We have a weapon, but it is of no use against the creature. We have a portable dynamo, but when charging it it makes a bit of noise and we risk trying our luck before throwing the brick. Unfortunately, we haven't found any tricks to avoid unwanted attention or to make sure you can get away with it. No gaps. He's smart and he's hungry. An insatiable hunger.
By stopping the moment and maintaining an external gaze, we understand that the flow of emotions that we feel faced with another door to open has been generated and studied with a mastery that is difficult to find in other horror games. From this point of view, Amnesia: The Bunker can look down on even very famous titles like Resident Evil Village, which are decidedly poppier and kinder to the player in the way they handle angst. The tension here is palpable, built by many small design details that you hardly notice when you play for the first time, but that come together in one of the most terrifying experiences in recent times, due to its harshness, a kind of Zero point of the genre in which Frictional Games seems to have abandoned the existentialist ambitions of SOMA and Amnesia: Rebirth, to focus on the systemic essence of what defines a horror video game, carefully avoiding the shortest and most banal path, that of fill the experience of jumping out of the chair, to concentrate on generating tension, locking the player in a small and terribly claustrophobic world in which each interaction forces us to unconsciously look over our shoulders, to understand if we have just dug our own grave by acting recklessly. We don't think there is another game where even reloading your weapon becomes a nerve-wracking action. Watching from the sidelines as we play we wonder if we will ever throw that brick, because we know that doing so would untie the hunter, clearly revealing the location of the prey. Our stance itself is the result of that indecision that is tearing us apart, in a game that is literally full of similar moments.
The ABC on Amnesia: The Bunker
Amnesia: The Bunker doesn't have a very elaborate story, nor is it interested in having one. It is established during The first World War. In the introduction/tutorial Henri Clément, a private, is hit by a grenade explosion while trying to save one of his companions. He wakes up in a bunker, where he immediately realizes that something terrible has happened. What happened to him is revealed to him by another soldier, the only living human present, who explains how the officers fled, blocking the entrance with dynamite, after an unidentified monster began killing everyone. The soldier will immediately meet a bad end and Clément will find himself completely alone having to devise a way to open the blocked entrance, recovering dynamite and the trigger. He has a weapon, but as already mentioned, he is completely useless against the monster. He has a flashlight with a dynamo, but it only lasts a few seconds and turning it on can make the difference in the world between life and death.
However, as the introduction made us understand, you have several ways of dealing with obstacles. For example, one of the first things to do is get to the bunker storage room, but the wooden access door is closed. In the introduction the game explained to us that we can open it by throwing very heavy objects at it or by making it explode.
However, looking around, we noticed a grate and decided to open it to see where the duct leads. Will it be access? Amnesia: The Bunker places great importance on observation and finding alternative ways to overcome obstacles. In principle you are free to explore and experiment, with the limitation of trying to make as little noise as possible and be careful with the traps placed to try to stop the monster, but which apparently are only lethal to humans. In each game, objects are redistributed randomly (the map, however, is fixed), including some access codes used to open some doors, so although you can never get stuck, you will have to do some evaluations each time . what you have, a fact that increases the play again.
A lesson in terror
As mentioned, each game system is intended to create tension, even to the point of presenting itself as pleasant. Take the damage system as an example. When Clément gets hurt, he starts losing blood. Then some image distortion effects are activated and his movements become slower. So far we are within the standards. It is the consequences of the wounds that in a sense are unprecedented, because treating him quickly not only serves to prevent him from bleeding and restore him to full health, but also to prevent traces of fresh blood from forming which, I guess, what, attracts the creature towards him, revealing his position. The game makes it clear right away, so there is no doubt, so every time you suffer an injury, the tension increases exponentially without there being even any inherent danger, especially if you don't have healing items available. Another truly worrying system is that of generators. The only thing the creature really fears is light, so keeping the bunker lit is essential to being able to survive longer and explore without immediately feeling hunted. Too bad the electrical system is connected to generators that must be manually recharged with fuel canisters found around the bunker.
So, from time to time, you have to back off to prevent them from going out. The small size of the map does not make the operation particularly onerous in terms of time, but finding yourself with the lights suddenly turned off, perhaps because the pocket watch that they provide us just to have a reference in this regard is not synchronized. Well, it inevitably creates a state of confusion of "what do I do now? Do I continue searching in hopes of finding another generator or do I go back to the last one I visited?" Then imagine if you run out of fuel, knowing that the creature becomes more aggressive as the bunker remains dark.
What makes everything even scarier is the fact that rescues They are not free and dying can mean losing several minutes of gameplay. Sure, we have the dynamo flashlight (as the game progresses you'll also find other sources of emergency lighting), but turning it on is like drawing a blinking target on your back, especially when the generators have been off for a while. So the game invites us not to make any noise, but at the same time it does everything possible so that we do not take a breath, because it is not possible to stop for too long. We have to solve puzzles, but we also have to stock up on fuel and other tools, despite having a very limited inventory (only six spaces). We confess that at certain moments their nerves were really tense and in some cases we even had to stop the game to go drink some water, such was the accumulated tension.
The answer
For those wondering, from a narrative point of view Amnesia: The Bunker simply creates a plausible scenario under the given conditions, without falling into existential or other dilemmas. Some soldiers built a bunker in the wrong place during a bloody conflict that had already tested them and taken them to the limit of their strength, and what is told in the documents found in the game environments is the conscience of the men of the monster's existence, the ways in which they tried to stop it, the desperation at its apparent invincibility and, therefore, the flight. Obviously there are details and considerations, there are some surprises, but that's it.
Therefore we are faced with a pure and simple representation of horror, which is all the more effective precisely because it gives no definitive explanation of the nature of the hunter. After all, the protagonist is also simply a soldier abandoned by his superiors, who fled to save themselves and the survivors. At the end there is a moment of confrontation, but without any explanation. The crux of the entire game is survive to, with the facts told in the documents and the construction of the bunker, full of tunnels dug by the monster, whose entrances are always clearly visible (to greatly increase the tension) and corpses, some of which are recent enough to hint that the monster did not act, but continues to act, which makes the experience even more terrifying.
An effective response
After several hours of play, Amnesia: The Bunker seemed like the answer Frictional Games to those who complained about how SOMA and Rebirth put narrative before horror, that is, how they diluted the scariest moments into more relaxed structures, punctuated by the story they told. Here the focus is really on pure terror, from which you are almost never distracted throughout the adventure. If we want the relatively short duration (when you know what to do it takes little time to complete it, also considering the limited dimensions of the map) it is also explained by the fact of not being able to maintain the tension for hours and hours for a purely practical matter. Going too far could backfire and lead to abandonment, as some may find it simply unsustainable (it's still not exactly a healthy walk... but there's always the possibility of history mode, which allows you to dedicate yourself to puzzles without risking your life with every step).
In this sense, The Bunker is a very balanced experience, which you enter with relative calm and which keeps you alert until the end, when you finally manage to release the accumulated tension death after death, open door after open door, recharge of the flashlight after charging the flashlight. That said, it's also fair to warn that those expecting an experience in line with the latest Frictional titles may be disappointed, because we're on a very different level here. Let's say that The Bunker applies all possible techniques, apart from jumping on the chair (which in a way is the shortcut of those who don't know how to design horror games) to present itself as a kind of design bible for its reference genre. . This is what it wants to be and what it manages to do perfectly, resulting in one of the most gripping horror experiences in recent years.
Conclusions
Tested version PC with Windows digital delivery Steam, epic games store, playstation store, Xbox Store Holygamerz.com 9.0 Readers (21) 8.2 your voteWith Amnesia: The Bunker Frictional Games he returns to pure horror, expanding and reworking the theoretical base that he had already illustrated with first Penumbra and then with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The result is one of the most terrifying experiences in recent years, playable, very elaborate in design and hard on the player, to the point of being avant-garde in its distressing apparent conceptual simplicity. In reality, it is a very elaborate title that leaves nothing to chance and is based on an already very solid foundation, which is the development team's experience in the genre.
PRO
- Take the tension to the stars.
- The player is free to experiment with different solutions to overcome obstacles.
- Impeccable environment
- Mechanics designed to perfection.
AGAINST
- If you're expecting a narrative side to SOMA or Rebirth, you'll be disappointed.
