Light is precious inside the castle as leaving Daniel in the dark for too long will trigger his insanity, making the management of your lantern’s oil an ongoing struggle. Of the three games in the collection, The Dark Descent is the most systems heavy with an inventory, resource management and the aforementioned puzzles. The gameplay of The Dark Descent also inspires a twang of the old ways though to a lesser degree thanks to some devilish puzzle design. In 2019 this story feels unintentional olde, a quaint throwback to before tropes and cliches overran the genre and a story of a man reclaiming his memories, no matter how frightful, felt fresh. The tale The Dark Descent spins isn’t a hugely surprising one but it leverages its horror tropes to great effect, creating a slow, creeping sense of dread and uncertainty. Readers of Lovecraft’s work will undoubtedly feel right at home with the premise and the inevitable horrors that await players as you uncover more of Daniel’s memories. Prompted by a message from your former self, you’ll need to screw your courage to the sticking place as you descend deeper into madness in order to stop the machinations of the castle’s owner and your former mentor, Alexander. You’re dropped into the amnesic shoes of Daniel, a young Londoner who awakens in a decrypted castle in the late 1830s. Kicking off the collection is The Dark Descent, considered by many to be the crowning jewel of the series. Time may have been unkind to these titles but they are considered classics for a reason and there is never a bad time for new audiences to gain an appreciation for older art.Įspecially in this case as Frictional Games’ seminal work has gone on to inspire dozens of critically acclaimed horror titles of recent years. The limitations of the console aren’t the issue of the collection though and provided you’re only intending to play it in a darkened room on your TV, as seemingly intended, you’ll have a much better time with the Amnesia Collection. So unless you’re packing a decent set of headphones with you while playing on the go you’ll find the experience severely lacking. The speakers on the system are generally fine for most experiences but just like the subtle use of darkness, the games here utilise soft, creeping sound design to get under the player’s skin. Handheld mode doesn’t just impact the Amnesia Collection’s atmosphere through poor visibility either. These are incompatible states of being and result in the game being incredibly difficult to play on the go. The games in the Amnesia Collection almost exclusively live in the dark and use the absence of light and depth of shadows to actively enhance the player experience. The Switch’s screen lends itself best to bright experiences as details are often lost due to glare while playing darker titles. It’s when you try to take it on the go, a major component of the Switch’s functionality, that things fall apart. There’s also the minor gripe of being unable to switch between games in the collection once one has been loaded into, forcing you to hard quit the game to jump between them. The art direction of each still holds up well all these years later but you may need to tweak your TV’s settings to avoid losing half the details to motion blur. Which is a shame as a remaster would serve these titles much better than a simple port. Which is both a blessing and a curse given the ages of the games all three run smoothly but muddy texture work and some aggressive motion blurring are prominent throughout. When playing with the Switch docked you’ll have essentially the same experience anyone playing the collection on the other consoles or PC will have had. In practice, however, the realities of the console’s handheld limits become an insurmountable issue for the Amnesia Collection. In theory porting every known game to the Switch is a brilliant idea. In theory, porting the Amnesia Collection to the Switch is a brilliant idea. Is the collection of classics still worthy of its status among horror fans or should we start to forget about Amnesia? Amnesia Collection Review Now, finally, Nintendo fans have the chance to experience what many consider to be some of the best experiences in horror gaming. Since first releasing on the PC this collection of Lovecraftian nightmares has been ported to both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The games are still a masterclass in setting a tone and turning the screws with their melancholic mood but time has eaten away at these titles like an ancient horror slowly chewing on a man’s sanity. It feels almost blasphemous to describe one of the most iconic horror trilogies in gaming as quaint but at almost a decade old the Amnesia series is starting to feel just that.
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