Review Amnesia: The Bunker

Frictional Games, with the release of Amnesia: The Bunker, broke with its usual template for creating first-person psychological horror. The linear stories and scripted narrative events that the studio perfected in Soma and Amnesia: Rebirth are a thing of the past! Instead, you'll get an (on average) five-hour campaign that will keep you in constant suspense, fear of death while playing cat and mouse with a huge and bloodthirsty beast literally feeding on your nightmares. In the role of a mouse - our protagonist Henri Clement, a French soldier who received a shell shock, found himself in a bunker during the First World War.

How I adore and respect developers who do not get hung up on a long-established formula, are not afraid to go to something new. And especially when they do it perfectly! For example, without such experiments, Resident Evil would still have fixed cameras. But no, Capcom made a number of creative decisions that have allowed the series to become one of the most influential horror franchises of our time.

Amnesia: The Bunker starts out very differently from past Frictional Games horror games. This is not some kind of another story in which people go beyond the physical world and plunge into their own minds, or leave the body altogether, digitize, as it was in SOMA. To begin with, the game shows the horror that humanity finds itself in, entering into bloody wars. A few seconds after starting the game, you find yourself on the Western Front, in a place where people grind each other, firing thousands of bullets and other projectiles. It's a different starting point for Frictional games, but heck, it fits in more than ever with the concept of reality-based horror.

real horror

At the start of Amnesia: The Bunker, you're descending a trench on the Western Front, peering around corners and dodging bullets from German soldiers. And you can even return fire. It's a breathtaking and adrenaline-pumping action game with a focus on the horror that's happening all around you as both allied and enemy troops die in the hundreds on the battlefield.

In Bunker, you are constantly fighting for your life. Waking up after the trench section inside the bunker, you will soon realize that the officers left this place, fled to the surface, and because of some terrible monster, they blew up the passage, sealing you in the claustrophobic bunker. This is another big deviation from the usual course. Your soldier is the only character in this place, so, as always, the cool story of Frictional Games is told through notes, notes, and old photographs (which are, in fact, clues).

Some people may not like this approach. The gradually falling veil, revealing the mystery of everything that happens in this bunker through numerous recordings, is really exciting, but it may not seem to be up to the level of previous Frictional works. For example, SOMA, in which human nature was the source of that very horror.

The initial stage in the trenches is a great preparation for the coming horror. Amnesia: The Bunker is the first Frictional game to properly equip you. You get a clumsy revolver, you are asked to shoot at the enemy, each of which dies from one hit. In the starting location, the power of the pistol was specially overestimated, but as soon as you find yourself in the bunker itself, for a dangerous monster, a revolver is nothing more than a piece of metal that temporarily slows down the beast.

This is the main theme of Amnesia: The Bunker. You need to avoid meeting the monster by any means, be it grenades, explosive barrels, fire traps or the same gun. The key is to collect resources and move them to the Admin room (your hideout), but you will have a limited number of inventory slots. You have to constantly struggle in search of how to properly prioritize the collection of items. Will you take a grenade that will slow the monster down, or a canister of fuel for the generator, so that the beast's scaring light does not go out in any case?

Bunker is one long puzzle. You are told that you need dynamite and a detonator handle to escape, the latter is locked behind a door with an access code that can only be obtained at the communication center, but to unlock it you will need a specific key located elsewhere. The bunker forces you to constantly return to previously visited locations, go back and forth to collect key items. It may seem depressing, but given the length of the game, in principle, it did not bother me at all.

Limitations in level design

However, Amnesia: Bunker can be disappointing due to its somewhat cramped level design. The space is divided into four key areas: Repair Shop, Residential Apartments, Prison, Arsenal, and Administration. In each of these parts, you have relatively little space. After all, the Bunker is designed to be a claustrophobic place. Although, these areas can be studied in different ways. Everything changes as you move from one particular area to another, as you encounter bottlenecks that limit your creativity in facing the beast.

One of these bottlenecks is a tunnel filled with rats, which is impossible to pass without a torch or meat to distract the bloodthirsty rodents. There are shortcuts you can unlock to cut down on long journeys anywhere from the safe room, but choke points are frustrating and limit the game, which says right from the start - "if you think something can be done this way, it's probably you don't think so."

Since the beast is a constant threat, every second and decisions are of the utmost importance. The aforementioned generator is a genius move from Frictional - as long as there is fuel, it will be constantly on, it will keep the light, and this, in turn, reduces the threat from the monster. But if you move around the bunker in complete silence, and the generator is discharged, then the beast will begin to hunt for you literally throughout the bunker. Captivating and truly intimidating!

However, this loop has some drawbacks. For example, after the fifth death in the tunnel with rats, I just ran through them without fear of taking any damage. It's probably not what Frictional intended, and definitely something that takes down some level of Bunker's intimidating vibe.

Amnesia: The Bunker is a major change in direction for Frictional, who I consider to be masters of horror. The formula works, although it has relatively minor drawbacks. However, these annoying bottlenecks limit The Bunker's creative freedom.