Amnesia – Why I Don’t Play

This video sums it up pretty damn well:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a ridiculously scary game. Greg is playing it, so I’m getting to watch.

He’ll only play it piecemeal, and mostly during daylight. Scaredy cat.

There was one point at which we’d played for a while, exited out to Steam, and saw that he’d only logged about 2 hours in the game over the last month of play.

For real. Two hours. I think we’ve been playing in 10 minute intervals.

The game (so far) suffers from a lack of comprehensible plot: I’ve been watching almost since moment one, and I can’t keep track of who’s who and who the bad guy is. The plot’s not overly necessary, though. The game is really just a sequence of fixing stuff (puzzles) so you can unlock new areas, find new notes, and… fix more stuff. Meh. The momsters and insanity are the cool part of the game. I hate puzzles, even just as a voyeur.

I’d also probably just end up spinning in circles in the world–parts of that video look familiar to me, but they look like every other part I’ve seen so far. There are the water parts, the dry parts, and the hubs. There’s not much stylistic difference between the areas, making matters worse. Wood-brown, lantern-yellow, and scary-dark.

All that said, the game does the best job of creating a mood of any game I’ve ever seen, and that mood is scary. It’s so fun to watch Greg jump when a cat rubs on his leg, or if I gasp at seeing a monster.

If I were playing, though, I’d totally be like that dude in the video, what with all the squealing and running amok.