Whew.

This game is easily the most unsettling thing since the Blair Witch Project. Why? Because they share exactly the same characteristics: Watch them alone, at night, in the dark, with the sound on, and you'll get freaked out. Watch them during the day, lights on, with others/while others are near, and you won't understand why people get scared by them so much.

But I digress, let's have a looksie at the different topics:

GRAPHICS

Graphics wise, Amnesia isn't anything special. The graphic detail in the game is nice enough, but that's about it. Amnesia excells at its monstrously agonising use of light and dark. Creepy hallways, dark cellars, misty sanctums, it has it all. The environments look properly creepy and terrifying, even with the light of your lantern. The heavy use of light and dark is part of what makes the game to terrifying to begin with, and it manages making you feel uncomfortable during the entire time just fine. How can you tell? Because you stay in well-lit areas longer than you have to and cast a deep sigh of relief whenever you find one.

Total: 7/10

GAMEPLAY

In terms of gameplay, Amnesia doesn't pull any punches. There's no tutorial level, there's no holding your hand. You start the game, you're on your own. Of course you get the occasional tips and hints, but there's relatively few 'safe' encounters. Your character, Daniel, picks up a lantern early on in the game. Oil for the lantern, combined with tinderboxes for lighting additional lightsources become your most vital resource. Managing your oil well is essential and key to survival. Having no oil means no light from your lantern. Why is that bad? Because of the game's secondary mechanic: Sanity. Daniel's sanity will drop if he spends time in the darkness or witnesses unsettling events and looks at monsters. If his sanity drops to 0, he will go insane and attract the attention of monsters, renderng him exetremely vulnerable. Staying in the light restores that sanity over time. Tinderboxes help you light other sources when your oil runs low, or can nullify the need to use the lantern entirely if you light things tactically.

Like a true survival-horror game, Amnesia has you face monsters. However, there's a slight catch: you cannot defeat them in any way. You must run, hide, and use your wits to shake them off. Monsters will alert the player by growling when they're near, and from that point on, it's up to you to spot them before they spot you. Hiding in the shadows is the most effective way to lose them, but it will slowly drain sanity. Once a monster does pursue the player, though, they must run and hide and shake the monster off. This can be done by barricading doors, slipping into closets and more. Once the monster loses Daniel, it dissapears from the map entirely.
All these factors, combined with crafty use of sounds and random spooky events (your typical doors swinging open, gusts of wind,....) really make Amnesia have a haunting and dangerous atmosphere, even in the safer areas.

Next to its base mechanics, Amnesia is a puzzle game. While the puzzles are nigh-kindergarden level at the start, they get increasingly difficult as time goes by. Not only does this provide a challenge, but combined with the aforementioned factors, the game turns into a nerve-wrecking rollercoaster of navigating through the dark mazes, being stalked by monsters while desperately conserving your oil and searching for your pieces to the puzzle. The only downside is that, while the game does provide you with hints, they diminish rapidly during the last parts of the game, almost forcing the player to consult a guide to advance properly.

Total: 9/10

SOUND

It's quite neat to see how a game can do so much with such little sound. Every now and again, the player hears unsettling sounds, like footsteps, growls, splashing sounds, roars, women pleading etc,... A haunting tune plays in nearly every area, getting progressively more agressive and stalking as you delve deeper into the game's levels. Upon spawning a monster, the game's tune immediately switches to a very creepy melody, which changes into a high pitched burst when a monster gives chase. Not only to these changes in tunes provide vital information to the player about monsters being near, it keeps you on your toes during the whole journey.

Total: 8/10

STORY

Of course no game of this genre would be complete without at least a basic story. Luckily, Amnesia does semi-well in that regard. While it's in no way a best-selling novel, it fills the role quite nicely. While roaming the levels, the player picks up notes and diaries, slowly piecing together the events that led to the protagonist's current situation. The use of flashbacks and small cutscenes is also seen abundantly, giving you more and more of the story's details as you progress. Not until youve been in the last few levels do you finally have the whole puzzle laid out before you.

Total: 7/10

CONCLUSION

Amnesia is a game about immersion. The developers created this game to creep you out and give you scares beyond belief, and they managed that incredibly well. Before you start the game for the first time, the developers even advise you to play it at night, lights off, headphones on and gamma just right, for better immersion. It goes without saying that if you play this game without heeding this advice, you'd effectively ruin it for yourself. I don't advise this game to any of the faint-hearted or easily scared. Perhaps you could play it during daylight, but then again, you'd be better off spending your money on another game rather than playing this one in Faceroll/Kiddie-mode.

If, however, you're a stout adventurer and insane or bold enough to delve into a world full of darkness, creeps behind every corner, nerve-wrecking hours of running and hiding, and you wanna get a serious test of your nerves, look no further. This game was made to make you look around the corner twice in the dark, and you'll do that every single time after you've completed it.

TOTAL: 78/100