TESTED GAMES
Amnesia: The Bunker
This dark and desperate wartime tale is terrifying in all the right ways, and a return to form for Frictional’s seminal horror series
Gazing out across the war-torn landscape, all you’ll see is a distant treeline and grey clouds obscuring the sunrise. But the enemy soldiers are out there somewhere. Enemy soldiers you’ll barely have spared a thought for since being trapped in this terrifying bunker, stalked by an unrelenting monster that can (and will) pop up almost anywhere.
It’s to developer Frictional Games’ credit that, even though the action kicks off in the muddy trenches of WWI, the horror of warfare plays a secondary role to what’s lurking in the shadows. Reminders such as discarded gasmasks, grenades and love letters from back home all ramp up the atmosphere, while ammunition long since abandoned by your compatriots gives some hope that your next encounter with the Beast won’t be your last.
The bunker: relentlessly dank, gloomy and difficult to write picture captions for.
“The spare room isn’t being used by the current tenants but has great potential.”
The bunker’s power generator is your main ally: keep the oil supply topped up and the lights stay lit, which will keep the dreaded hunter at bay; let it run dry and you’ll be plunged into darkness, at which point the Beast will relentlessly track you down. This is also one of agonisingly few manual save points.
Each trip into the unknown takes you further away as you search for fuel and collect tools to unlock new areas, and there are no immersion-breaking minimaps or direction pointers to help you.
Previous series entry Amnesia: Rebirth meandered a bit and arguably overstayed its welcome. The Bunker is leaner, offering a tourniquet-tight adventure in which you’ll struggle to ever feel at ease – even once you’ve picked up a couple of weapons. And that’s despite offering a more freeform approach to objectives, with fewer scripted moments.
The rats that nibble away at your health are annoying, and the Beast’s unerring ability to find you if you make any loud noise can be frustrating. But this game’s dark and terrible story will keep you on tenterhooks until the end.
Vikki Blake