You can’t let out a breath. The creature is only inches away. Its sole purpose - to feed off your terror. And so you crouch in the dark, trying to stop the fear rising, trying to silence what lies within you.
Love this game. Not as good as TDD but almost just as good.
Rebirth is a great experience overall, although different from The Dark Descent. The chief differences are that the gameplay is even more linear than it was in the first game, and the story is presented different such as using a voiced protagonist and cutscenes. The game may be more or less scary than the first depending on who you ask.
The story is awesome and weird with twists you won't really expect. It ties in and expands on the original game's plot in a few ways. The voice work is as perfect as it was in the first game, especially the protagonist. It's fun (or scary) to explore the many different environments from a bright desert & creepy fort, to terrifying catacombs and alien landscapes. The mechanic where you have to use matches that burn out quickly is fun and scary. There are some sequences that are far more thrilling than anything the first game had. The puzzles are straightforward as always. The graphics are gorgeous and will keep you immersed, either giving you eye candy or creeping you out. I only encountered one major bug where a door got stuck.
The more game-y parts are unfortunately lacking. There is no health meter because instead of "dying" you get a cutscene where you run away in a fugue state, making failure "canon" to the story. A neat idea, but it makes the game less scary. There is no sanity meter, standing in the darkness simply has an immediate effect and if you stay too long you start getting a jumpscare hallucination which is just annoying. The lantern burns out so fast that it's a chore to keep it fueled. As for the plot, it gets a little heavy-handed in a few moments. Those are the only gripes I have with this game.
Rebirth is an excellent game through and through, but if you're specifically looking for more of The Dark Descent you are going to be disappointed. All of the people that played the game for less than two hours and left a negative review are certified morons and should be ignored.
This game is better than Machine for Pigs but not great as The Dark Descent and SOMA. However, it still recommended to play.
Not as good as The Dark Descent, but a fine successor. It is very different, however I don't think this is a bad game. The theme of motherhood is portrayed well imo. It isn't very scary, however there are definitely some intense parts. The story was overall good, it was pretty bad at the start but it gets better the longer you play. It is hard to compare this to Soma, as they tackle very different themes. I bet the majority of people will say Soma is better, and I can see why, however I don't think this game is necessarily worse. I guess one word to describe this entire game would be "different" when comparing it to other FG titles.
frictional games you did it
This was astonishing. It combined all the good from previous games. It had some of the tension of The Dark Descent, the disturbing elements of A Machine for Pigs and the great narrative and cinematic aspect of SOMA. The story was interesting and it had a lot of things to read. The events had sadly no impact on the ending, and a little more of the scares could have been great, but Frictional Games evolved in the last 10 years, and instead of doing the same formula twice, they came up with ideas that could still make players uneasy while keeping the storyline intact and adding exploration. Players' taste should evolve alongside with appreciating the narrative and the plot alongside the creepy parts which definitely are there! Solid 8/10 for me, can't wait to get back into modding with this one.
Awesome sequel
For those who giving lower than 7 are noobs and envious. This game is masterpiece.
The new Amnesia is without a doubt a very successful piece from Frictional Games, and its plot perfectly complements the story of The Dark Descent, because the player gets where it all started - to the Algerian desert. There are also links to The Dark Descent (Alexander von Brenneburg).
Technically, the game is a combination of Amnesia and Soma. You will sneak through dark rooms and corridors in an effort to avoid the monsters, flee frantically either in front of them or in front of the old familiar red slime. Lots of interesting puzzles and 4 possible endings of the game await you.
The game literally fascinates me with its audiovisual side. Of course, it's miles away, The Dark Descent, but it doesn't matter at all, because that Amnesian ghost is still present and can scare and entertain you at the same time.
The only thing that forces me not to give an absolute rating is the fact that the system of saving game positions has not changed since the time of Penumbra. The game cannot be saved in the game and no position can be loaded in the game.
After my initial playthrough, I gave this a positive review on Steam, also giving it a 7/10. Now that I have cooled down, I must say that Rebirth was too disappointing for such a rating.
As much as I wanted to love this game, I just can't *not* notice how much it falls apart in many aspects.
Asides from a single area or two, the horror is alright, but fails to impress me. Definitely didn't become a horror masterpiece, as the advertising suggested. The monsters are functional, but the main enemy being a generic Rake monster was just lame. The other of the 2 enemies was fine, but the design didn't really stick with me like Dark Descent monsters, or anything designed by FromSoftware. To give the credit though, for that one map (the Fort living quarters), the FG magic was back at full force. It was super tense and I wish the entire game was like that portion. Although it wasn't without its issues, because for some reason there are 2 safe-rooms in there that are in no way separated from the dangerous areas. It's oddly jarring, I'm quite confused as to why they did that.
The fear mechanic that this game uses (a replacement for both health and sanity from the first Amnesia) punishes being in darkness way too fast, and because your light sources are ridiculously short-lasting, this system just distracted me from being scared. I had to focus on it too much to notice a lot of the scares. And the lantern was a joke with its short range and super narrow light. The fact that they made many areas of the game completely unlit for this kind of gameplay is embarassing. Making the screen pitch black without any lighting whatsoever is throwing the baby out with the bath water when it comes to horror.
The other 3 mechanics that this game introduces just make me sad. The laying prone mechanic can be completely missed. "Press X to touch belly" sounds like a joke, but it's real. I had no idea what it did for most of the game. The locket mechanic looks awesome but it's terribly underutilised. It's basically "press C to open door".
The game is also really linear, asides from one hub area. It often makes the progression feel artifical, as if you were being led by hand. I can't say it helped the horror aspect.
To throw out a bunch of positives; I loved the designs in many areas of the game. The alien world looks awesome. The voice actress of Tasi is just lovely and her work is probably one of my favourite parts about this game. Throwbacks to Dark Descent made me really happy and were super engaging and intriguing. Unfortunately, that can't be said about the rest.
The story of this game is a huge miss. In the second map, you get a huge exposition dump, after which I had pretty much the entire story figured out. From that point on, unlike in Dark Descent, I wasn't learning what happened, but HOW it happened. The game basically spoils 2 out of 3 most imporant aspects of its story right at the beginning.
Worst yet, all characters are cardboard cut-outs. Even the protagonist can be boiled down to a single sentence: "I am Tasi I must birth baby". The main antagonist is cartoonish and her motivations can be summarised as "I can't have baby I must steal baby". Since the game focuses on these two characters, you can imagine how engaging the story is. Furthermore, the baby is a textbook case of a MacGuffin. The fact that the game revolves around it was a stupid decision, because being concerned about a baby isn't something that will scare people who don't have children. The game can't make you care about it (or any other character, for that matter), so the whole plot falls flat as a result.
The only parts of the story I actually enjoyed were the alien lore and bits which expanded on Dark Descent's story.
Oh also notice how the game is title "Amnesia: Rebirth"? Well, Tasi's amnesia is mostly irrelevant to the story. Unlike in Dark Descent, it's just a cheap way of kicking off the plot. Furthermore, there's no rebirth in here. The game should be called just "Birth". I was expecting some sort of a grizzly story similar to "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". But no, the story is basically about Tasi having a baby in bad circumstances.
The endings are all crushing once you think about what they imply, but I can't say that they didn't feel lackluster anyway. The game just kinda stops and that's it.
I wanted to love this game, I really did. But ultimately it's a disappointment. It is also not a bad game, but I can't say that it's better than "fine".