It seems that a nostalgia wave of horror is now hitting the current summer of gaming. I say that because it was by pure chance that two of the most influential horror games from the early 2010s came out with new entries right around the same time. The only difference between the two is that one decided to go back to its roots to find the initial spark, while the other tried its best to chase after current gaming trends and turn their single player horror game into a multiplayer experience, not learning the lesson Dead Space learned all those years ago. But enough about Outlast; this is about the new Amnesia game subtitled The Bunker.
The Bunker is what happens when you go back to your roots while at the same time trying to make it more modern without taking away what made it special in the first place. For this game the effect of a single water droplet causing your entire body to stiffen up in fear not knowing which direction it came from. The game is set in the trenches of World War I, and you play a French soldier who after barely surviving another daily round of trench warfare wakes up in the bunker with no memory, right next to both the exit of the bunker and the safe room. So right off the start, you have your end goal in sight, and you know how to traverse the bunker and find items to combine with others until you find a way out. While at the same time avoiding a giant blob monster that if spotted will kill you and take you back all the back to the last time you visited the safe room.
Horror has always been a hard thing to master in video games; as of late, seems to be hard to balance tension and keeping the player’s attention with jump scares every few minutes. The Bunker still has some of those elements, but instead of taking tension away they instead give you a new boulder to dump on top of you, and that is time management. Every time you leave the bunker you need to refill the generator with gas that you find while exploring the bunker, and from my playthrough the gas was finite; which when I learned I changed my tactic from filling it to max before each time I leave the safe room. You need the generator to keep the lights on, so you’ll be able to see the blob monster and have a chance at avoiding it. If the player were to run out, you have a pocket flashlight that you have to “let it rip” however this makes a loud noise that could lead the monster to your current position. This causes another sense of anxiety while trying to find the items you need to escape because you are worrying about the monster and the lights and nearly everything else. The game also gives you a gun with the illusion that it’s useful, which you think you might figure out after the fourth time you get killed, but it’s one of those defensive kicks that you try to do every time the monster is right in front of you.
The game as a whole did keep me unnerved for most of my playtime with it, however, I think that feeling of fear made me numb to the game’s other issues. That being the game is both buggy and also encourages you to break it. Like you have some bullets, and there is a wood door, you can shoot at it or walk around for a few find a brick and chuck it at the door. This was a good design choice on player choice; what isn’t one is when I’m running like a madman back to the safe room and my guy gets stuck in the remains of a wood door, and I’m shaking my mouse like crazy to break myself free to no success. Also, I’ve seen other people say the graphics aren’t up to modern standards, and that really didn’t bother me much because one the sound design is great and scares you like crazy, and also the game is mostly set in the dark so more detail would be a waste, buts just my opinion.
So, after playing the game, I can say that this is a return to form for the Amnesia games, however, it is not as good as Dark Decent was back in 2010, but that can be to how most games latched onto the design aspect of that one game and applied to a large majority of horror games since then. But if you are a horror fan, you should give this one a shot if you have time and patience. However, I should add this warning; the game is on Game Pass for both PC and Console; if you have the choice choose PC because trying to do these complex button commands on an Xbox controller during a tense moment might make the game either frustrating or terrifying depending on who you are.
Score: 8 out of 10
Reviewed on PC (Steam)