Amnesia: Rebirth review — An ambitious but painful epic

Source: Frictional Games

As I sabbatum downwardly to write this review for Amnesia: Rebirth, I wondered what it was going to wait like. I spent around 10 hours with the game, and the ii primary questions — is it expert? Should people play it? — don't accept physical answers.

This isn't surprising though. This has always been the instance with games by Frictional, the visitor that outset released Amnesia: The Dark Descent back in 2022. The studio makes horror games that similar to trick the player into questioning what they're seeing or hearing, and that have abroad player agency. The Amnesia games (including A Car for Pigs, which was developed by Chinese Room) and its 2022 release Soma are experiments in what taking away a player'southward power to fight back or interact with does for both the narrative and gameplay. When all you can do is run and hide from the monsters, how willing are yous to push forward? When being in the dark causes the game itself to distort, tin yous manage to agree it together yourself? Tin can you handle the gruesome, unforgiving worlds you lot're thrust into?

The Amnesia games aren't for everyone. That lack of agency, forth with the bleak, hopeless stories the studio crafts, can't be described as "fun." I know a lot of people who attempted to play The Dark Descent and close it back down after a few minutes. Soma sought to rectify this by introducing a Safe Mode that allows players to experience the game without worrying about monsters, but, unfortunately for many, Amnesia: Rebirth goes back to The Night Descent'south roots by creating something meant to haunt your nightmares.

Amnesia: Rebirth is the culmination of everything Frictional has been working towards since The Night Descent. It creates a space that strips away your bureau and is constantly out to get y'all, but it's upped to an even stronger degree. The game itself is much larger, both in terms of actual size and in ambition, then the opportunities to get players to opt out are merely more varied. There are more than monsters to run from and areas to run through. At that place are more than frustrating puzzles to solve and obtuse pieces of lore to uncover. There are so many pieces that, in the end, you might wonder what it all culminates into.

Amnesia: Rebirth

Bottom line: Amnesia: Rebirth is a wildly ambitious horror title that seeks to be standalone and to answer a lot of of questions posed in The Dark Descent. Information technology'due south gruesome in its fashion and tragic in its story, and whether the hurting will be worth it is up to you.

The Proficient

• Aggressive storytelling and worldbuilding
• Ups the scares compared to the original
• New monsters and mechanics milk shake upwards the formula
• Story is unpredictable

The Bad

• Puzzles can exist convoluted
• Tasks hard to follow
• Too gruesome for many players

Amnesia: Rebirth is a sequel to The Dark Descent, for amend or worse

If you've played a Frictional game before, you'll know what to wait gameplay wise. The protagonist, which yous play as in commencement person, has to make their mode through an unforgiving situation and learn everything almost what they're up against and about themselves as they get. In Amnesia: Rebirth, that takes the course of Tasi Trianon's story. While on an expedition to Africa with her married man Salim and a small group of others, the airplane crashes in the desert and y'all wake without any retentiveness of what happened to your group. Your first task is to just find out what happened, but quickly, information technology becomes so much more every bit you discover that something supernatural is itinerant.

Category	GameNameXXX
Title	Amnesia: Rebirth
Developer	Frictional Games
Publisher	Frictional Games
Genre	Commencement-person horror
Minimum Requirements	Windows seven, Core i3 / AMD FX 2.4 Ghz, 4GB RAM
Game Size	50GB
Play Time	8-ten hours
Players	Singleplayer
Launch Price	$thirty

This all starts off similarly to Dark Descent, minus the pitch blackness, gothic castle, simply information technology speedily differentiates itself. Certain, you might accept to run and hibernate from monsters and constantly keep reupping your stash of matches and oil to proceed the lights on, but Rebirth swings larger. At that place are some new mechanics, including the introduction of a glowing compass that can reveal hidden passageways or portals in certain areas, and one other of import element — pregnancy.

Source: Windows Central

You run into, Tasi is pregnant and the existence of said babe brings her condolement, so you lot tin check in on the baby during frightful sequences to calm your nerves. The pregnancy plays a huge role in the story, and while relying on information technology as an bodily mechanic feels trivial compared to how powerful and life-changing information technology tin exist, the game uses it to its fullest extent. I can't think of other games in contempo retention that put you lot in the perspective of a graphic symbol giving birth or having to chest feed, and considering breastfeeding in public is even so taboo to many, this feels revolutionary.

Then instead of a protagonist that just has to recover their memories and stop the evil that has overtaken their sense, Rebirth ups the stakes. While I'k tired of female characters' motivations being reduced to their children (it's unfortunately common in stories), information technology does its task here, especially with how the child's existence is weaved into not only the larger threat hunting the crew, only also Tasi and Salim'southward heartbreaking backstory, which is revealed as you recover your memories. Information technology also gives the developers the chance to inject some body horror into the proceedings, fifty-fifty though the game is full of it elsewhere.

Amnesia: Rebirth is all about world building

Source: Frictional Games

Every bit Tasi remembers more than about her life and what happened after the plane crash, you learn more than about the world Frictional is presenting, and find it's the same i introduced in The Night Descent. Yous can even so play the games independently, but those wondering more about the expedition Daniel went on in the first game, or the magic that was powering the mysterious orbs and the Shadow will find a lot of answers in Rebirth. Information technology takes its time to explain merely about everything — where the orbs come from, what was going on inside the ancient tomb, and where vitae comes from. Soon the game becomes less virtually Tasi's quest and more near these revelations, before they both come together in the climax. The decisions Tasi has to make will impact everybody involved, including the unknown deity-like fauna that follows you effectually.

Fans of The Dark Descent will enjoy the new story bits, peculiarly because they manage to be both enlightening and surprising.

Fans of The Dark Descent will enjoy all of these story bits, especially considering they manage to be both enlightening and surprising. Learning most the "aboriginal" civilization (and whether it'due south still ancient at all) is full of turns that can exist horrifying and disgusting. One sequence, which yous actually have some control over, forces you to make a decision almost the life of another and going the dark route is ane of the most disturbing images I've seen in any game.

But this is all to drive home the series' mythos. These stories take, for amend or worse, e'er been nigh human ambition and denial. They're not e'er near madness, but they use instability to add stakes to characters' journeys and to evidence consequences to some of the more outlandish actions. They're all cautionary tales concerning overstepping our boundaries, stealing from other cultures, and what happens when we lose all sympathy for others in favor of ability.

Rebirth absolutely continues in the path set by The Dark Descent. Tasi is forced to brand tough decisions that could affect the lives of those around her, and sometimes that includes horrendous sacrifices. Information technology sometimes suffers from going too far into a morality direction, giving players choices that they would likely never make, just information technology does allow yous to roleplay Tasi in some subtle ways. This culminates in the finale where you have three possible endings (that I found). Ane of these could potentially be considered the "good" ending, just none of them are happy. Amnesia: Rebirth does hither what the serial has always done well: create a scenario that you can't escape from, no affair how difficult you work. And if horror wants you to debate with some frightening experiences, and so the game has done it.

Does Amnesia: Rebirth'due south ambition get in the style?

Source: Windows Key

If this game can be chosen annihilation, it's aggressive. Frictional creative director Thomas Grip told the Washington Post how the studio felt a lot of pressure to follow-upward on The Dark Descent. It makes sense, since that first title influenced a whole genre, directly inspiring probably thousands of games. A Car for Pigs was dealt a lot of criticism at release for straying from the Amnesia formula (although it yet fits well in the series for its dark atmosphere and how it tackles similar themes), and while Soma is basically "sci-fi Amnesia," it still wasn't a proper entry.

Amnesia: rebirth is constantly trying to one-upward the player and throw something out they weren't expecting.

Press materials telephone call Rebirth "the about ambitious game Frictional Games has done" and at that place's little to dispute that. The quote refers to the assets involved, but that same thought goes for every element — from the story it attempts to tackle to the different environments and monsters Tasi encounters.

Information technology'due south constantly trying to one-up the player, throw something out they weren't expecting, and it works in a lot of areas. As I previously mentioned, the story starts out with a airplane crash and goes into wild territory, from alternating dimensions to underground caves with dark secrets. However, by going hard, it offers upward also much information. There are besides a lot of notes to pick upwardly along the way that either describe what happened to your grouping (and the sometimes intimate relationships between them) along with the people who got into the same trouble decades prior. Once yous hop on over to the mysterious civilization, you'll also exist treated to even more than notes, only they're tougher to read.

This is one of the outset problems with Amnesia: Rebirth. The game'southward goal to explain everything ensures it gets in its own way. The pace is slowed often by an area with a batch of reading textile, and a lot of it can be obtuse. The side characters are tough to differentiate between since a lot of them but show up briefly, and unless you've dug deeply into the story from The Night Descent, a lot of what you'll read won't brand sense. You lot don't need to understand everything to play, but it helps with progression.

When you're not reading or running, you lot'll exist solving puzzles. The game forces the player to break away from the consistent terror for a while to spin pillars and wheels or unlock doors. Nigh of the time, getting through a level involves putting an intricate series of moving parts in their proper place, whether that'southward fixing otherworldly machines or finding materials to make explosives. However, the levels tin be so expansive that it'south easy to get lost in what you lot have to exercise. In that location is a journal that keeps track or your goals, but information technology does this in the class of drawings, which tin can be tough to deduce.

Fans of point-and-click adventures probably won't find the puzzles to be besides cumbersome, simply when I run effectually a level three times looking for a clue, only to discover that I had to, for instance, run a cable through a tiny pigsty near the ground that I could merely see after removing metal rods, information technology goes a bit likewise far.

Bottom line: Should y'all play Amnesia: Rebirth?

Source: Frictional Games

Amnesia: Rebirth is a lot of what Frictional promised when it said it was finally making some other entry in the series. It features a lot of what made The Dark Descent then important, only takes them to the side by side level. In that location are more monsters to run from, more than world building elements to sink your teeth into, and more places for scares.

On a more story-driven level, Rebirth is too a wildly aggressive title. It seeks to explain a lot of what information technology introduced in The Nighttime Descent, revisiting areas just spoken about in that original title and expanding upon the mysteries of what helped a lot of the mystical elements come to be. This, in plow, creates a narrative that'southward dense but never dull.

It as well continues the series' penchant for dark storytelling. The scares aren't just frightening; they're gruesome and tragic. The Dark Descent featured a lot of body horror but some of what Rebirth comes upwards with is nightmare-inducing, fifty-fifty for the toughest minds. You have to make some of the most morally revolting decisions in any game here, and where it leads is satisfying, only might leave you feeling hollow (although that seems to be the intent). Frictional creates horror games that stand out from the rest, and that continues in Rebirth.

All of this is to say that it'south tough recommend an Amnesia game to anyone, and that'south especially true for Rebirth. These are non games for those non set for the type of horror they dish out, and that'll be especially true for this most recent release. It might not be as physically dark every bit its older sibling, but what awaits in the dark will yet haunt you lot.

Amnesia: Rebirth

Bottom line: Amnesia: Rebirth does well as a standalone horror title, but what too makes information technology slap-up is how it ties into The Dark Descent and expands upon that lore. Some of the smaller elements — like the puzzles — only don't live up to the rest of the game's ambition and tone.

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