Surprise! I told all of you a little while ago about an upcoming review and well.. here it is! I have written up a nice little review on the Penumbra games, a review that is meant for all 3 games rather than only one of them. With each game directly following each other, I thought it would be easier and much more simple to wrap them up together rather than doing them separately. Simply follow this link to the Penumbra Series review. It even has a small teaser video of Overture, the first episode in the series, entirely recorded and edited by none other than myself. It is not included in the blog title because well.. it was meant as a surprise. Click here to go to the review for The Penumbra Series.
On to more serious things, some of you may remember when I talked about Frictional Games newest project. For those who may be unaware, Frictional Games are the developers who gave birth to Penumbra. After the conclusion of the small episodic series, they announced a game that had yet to be named. Later on, this Untitled game was known to the world as Amnesia: The Dark Descent and I have made my own self promise that the blog featuring my review would be used exclusively to the "promotion" of Amnesia, in an attempt to bring one of the best independent developement company into the spotlight.
Being played as a first person survivial horror, Amnesia seems to follow the same kind of gameplay as Penumbra, offering the player with a tremendous experience in terms of controls. Frictional's new incarnation is about immersion, discovery and living through a nightmare. While little is currently known about the contents of the game, those who have played the previous titles in Frictional Games library can only assume that a night of terror and psychological distress is awaiting them.
That nightmare is that of Daniel as he awakes in an old desolate castle. Without anything to remember for his past, you, or Daniel in this situation, will embark on an adventure through the eery castle pathways, all while taking part into his troubled memories. As we have been taught before; Fear and horror does not only comes from the outside.. but also from the inside, from the dark corners of the human mind.
The world in which we end up is entirely physically simulated, a feature that can be observed in Penumbra as well where objects are held and moved as you would in real life, like a simulation. This means, for example, that when opening a door, you will click (grab) the door and pull it towards you with the mouse, as you would with your regular house door. Along with great 3D graphics and amazing sound works, Amnesia uses a system that is not so common with games nowadays: It has no direct cutscenes. By eliminating these, the immersion feeling is always there, always waiting to drag you in. Whatever happens.. you are there and it is happening to you.
Playing as Daniel marks one the crucial points in the game, which is obviously related to Amnesia and his troubled mind. When you hear a cry, is it really a cry? Are these footsteps real or is your mind playing tricks on you? Who knows what is real and what isn't when you are a man driven by insanity and madness.. Only time will tell, as we walk in this lonely castle.. or are you truly alone..?
I owe big thanks to the Amnesia official website for these paragraphs. Whiloe I didn't copy paste them, I based my blog off of them entirely since it is the best source I can have for the game and didn't want to make any mistakes on what exactly Amnesia is. The Dark Descent will be released September 8th 2010, and will be available at the following locations:
Windows:
- Frictional Games Store
- Gamer's Gate
- Steam
- Direct2Drive
- Impulse Driven
- GameStreamer
Mac:
- Frictional Games Store
- Gamer's Gate
- Steam
- Mac Game Store
- Mac Games Arcade
- Direct2Drive
Linux:
- Frictional Games Store
Unfortunately, the trailer available is one that I have already shown in the past, but I will still put it up here.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Also, please follow these links at the bottom for more information, whether it is about Penumbra, Amnesia or Frictional Games as a whole. A very big thank you to Frictional for offering us yet what will undoubtly be a masterpiece in the survival horror genre, and of course, for providing an accurate website for the game where I got all of this information.
Frictional Games: frictionalgames.com
Amnesia: The Dark Descent: amnesiagame.com
The Penumbra Series: penumbragame.com
