Amnesia: The Bunker

Having played and finished ALL the Amenesia games up to this point (Yes, even A Machine for Pigs) its safe to say I'm a fan, or at least interested in the series. So when Bunker was announced, I automatically was looking forward to it. But to my surprise from the few bits of information I saw about the game, it also for the first time in the series introduces Guns to the gameplay. Also, it takes place in World War 1 inside of a bunker, thats all the information I Knew before I bought it and played through it, but that alone really peaked my interest and sounded very promising and a great concept.

It starts off with a brief introduction in a trench where you immediately get a pistol, this serves as little more than a brief way to show you the various mechanics in the game rapidly and was a nice first impression. Then you get trapped inside of the Bunker and basically the rest of the game is figuring out how to escape. You find a note shortly on that says to escape you basically need to find the Dynamite in the Armoury, and also the Detonator Handle elsewhere.

The game is, as you would expect, pretty dark with light sources initially hard to come by. You are equipped with a rather pathetic flashlight that needs to constantly be manually cranked by holding the Y button. Everytime you do this, it violently shakes the screen and can be jarring and annoying to constantly do. Even fully cranked this flashlight isn't very bright and you need to be cranking it at least once every 10 seconds to keep it usuable. I get what they were going for, its a neat idea, but the animation for cranking it just gets really annoying and makes the gameplay nauseating more than anything. They probably should have toned down the shaking screen effect, its just too much. But it does make for some good creepy atmosphere. Going around in the dark inside this Bunker, slowly opening room by room and exploring, hearing all the weird sounds, and especially the threatening growls as you are too close to a threat.

The game largely revolves around one central Save room location. This is a lantern hanging from the ceiling that you turn on and off to Save your game. There is also a stash nearby, where you can store excess items. But the stash isn't infinite, and can run out. Although even if it runs out ,you can just throw items on the ground next to it and they stay there forever. Besides the safe room, the game also revolves around the nearby Generator. You pour Fuel into this which keeps the lights in the entire Bunker on, which is very useful for navigating through the game since the flashlight is so underwhelming. There is a stopwatch that you can look at to try to see how much time is remaining on your fuel, but I found it too cumbersome to bother with so I just didn't use it, which worked out fine because at a certain point I had so much fuel and the lights were permanently on that it became a non-issue, just a bit of trivial maintainenece to keep running back to pour some new fuel.

The game essentially has one enemy, which you discover soon enough. At first hes not much threat, he just makes noises and scares you with audio, but at some point he actually starts to show up and chase after you, I think this only happens a decent ways into the game once you've picked up some key item. But funny enough the first real chase sequence I kinda entirely skipped, because I could tell it was happening and I ran straight for the save room, saved my progress, and he just disappeared. A bit underwhelming. I didn't even get to see the monster at this point, although you do see him quite frequently throughout the rest of the game. The monster is basically this giant deformed humnaoid type beast that walks on all fours, he can briskly jog across the screen at you, and if he gets too close to you its basically game over. Sometimes you can take damage and escape, but you might as well just let him kill you at that point. He reacts mostly to sound, especially from you sprinting and especially from you cranking the flashlight. When you crank the light, he usually groans in response. And I guess if you do it too much, he almost spawns ontop of you. There are holes in the walls all around the game, and I suppose thats where he can crawl out of. If you stand too close to these holes, or make noise close to them, I think it makes him spawn faster though I am not sure. I found the monster to be pretty damn frustrating, but that is something I will comment on later. Although, something I didn't pickup on for quite awhile is the fact that the lights will flicker and it corresponds to the state of the monster. For instance, fast flickering lights means hes very close to you - slowly flickering means hes far away, and not flickering at all I think usually means hes gone and there isn't much threat to you.

The game basically has only one enemy, this beast monster. However there is another very short section later on with another enemy, this guy that roams around with a shotgun and shoots at you, but its short lived and a bit of a trivial segment. For the most part, its just you and the beast monster. However thats not the only threat, there are tripwires EVERYWHERE - and this got especially annoying and frustrating and really started to elevate the feeling of the game being more trial and error bullshit than being genuinely scary where I had opportunites to outsmart the situations. It started just being turning a corner and randomly exploding, loading my last save, thinking OK don't do that this time. Turning another corner and triggering some gas grenade, reload last save, OK theres a nade there, and so on. Just a lot of trial and error. The tripwires are always close to the floor, so unless you're staring at the ground the whole game you won't see them. You can't even disarm them until pretty far into the game when you get wirecutters, too. I get what they were going for with the tripwires, trying to introduce more threats to the game, but it ended up being more tedious and obnoxious than anyhting. Maybe they could have stood out more, maybe a glowing red light or something.

Well, saying it has ONE enemy isn't the full truth. It does have rats. A bunch of rats. And they're annoying as fuck. They also graphically look kinda odd, like the weakest link artistically. Kinda lo-fi looking rats, it's weird, a nitpick but still. The rats mostly just sit around chewing on bodies and not much else. If you get close to them they sort of just automatically do damage to you, even if you perfectly jump over them. Its pretty jank. You can find pieces of meat to lure them away, but mostly I just threw grenades at them and that was that. There is one really annoying part with a tunnel and multiple sections of rats that turned into a massive trial and error bullshit fest that almost turned me off entirely from the whole game, dying over and over running back to this spot, learning one tiny new thing each time like oh this time I have to take TWO pieces of meat, oh I can't stand here or else the Beast monster will spawn, etc..

Early on into the game a message pops up which encourages you to basically think Rationally, if something seems possibly it probably is, and to Experiment. Even after beating the game I'm still left scratching my head exactly what they were going with here, because many things which would seem reasonable do not pan out that way in the game. For instance, the generator. There are switches all over the game you can use to turn off lights and power to certain sections of the bunker. You'd figure that by having more switches enabled, and more power enabled, that it would drain your fuel in the generator faster, right? Thats exactly what I thought. So for more than half the game I was going around and disabling lights behind me in sections that I didn't currently need. Well, at a certain point I started to second guess this, and ended up Googling if infact thats how it works. It turns out that it doesn't matter. You can have every single light turned on in the whole game and it doesn't affect the fuel drain. The only thing that matters is that one fuel can = a certain amount of time. Thats it.

Okay...well thats one thing that didn't really reward my rational thinking and experimenting. But thats not all. There is even a huge sign by the generator that says "Keep the lights on at all times, the fucker hates lights" ... well even after beating the game, it didn't seem like the monster cared about lights at all. I turned on every light and he didn't give a shit. I shined the flashlight directly in his face, doesn't matter. I even threw god damn FLARES at him and he didn't care. What the hell was that sign all about? Who knows. Maybe if the generator is off, he spawns slightly faster if you make more noise? Its pretty subtle if thats the case.

This message encouraging you to think outside the box, experiment, and be rational even appears frequently in loading screens. They really push it on you. Okay, so how about those tripwires? What if I throw a box at the tripwire? Nope, doesn't trigger the trap. Ok so thats another blunder and faillure where "If it seems possible, it is" fails. The message doesn't mean anything, it's pretty disappointing.

Even early on into the game I kinda got stuck and caught off guard. Theres a padlocked door, and the only way to open it is to pick up a random brick and throw it at it. I see a padlocked door, I logically think "Ok, there must be a key nearby" So I spent like 20 minutes crawling around in pitch black looking for a key. In real life using a brick would be one of my last thoughts. Wouldn't anyone else think the same? The game needlessly made me waste 20 minutes being stumped right at the beginning of the damn game. Maybe I missed a note or something, But I doubt it.

So it ends up feeling the game doesn't actually reward you for experimenting and using your brain all that much. Really all it means is that you can throw a brick at a lock, and you can eventually use a Shotgun to blow open doors...and that's pretty much it as far as I can tell.

A few other puzzling things stood out. The game seems to really push the idea of burning corpses. Theres lots of notes about the importance of burning bodies, and rats don't like burnt corpses and stuff...but I never really understod what it was trying to get at? What corpses am I supposed to burn? Whats the point? There are rats, that yes eat corpses, but its not that many times you have to get up close and personal, and the few times I Really wanted to get rid of the rats I just threw a grenade at them. Was I supposed to use some fire and burn a corpse? It didn't seem like a big deal. And you don't get the Lighter until like halfway through the game anyways, I actually NEVER used the lighter for ANYTHING. It takes up an inventory slot, and the game has pretty limited inventory space, plus the Empty bottles and having to craft molotovs PLUS the bottles need to take your fuel...I just didnt find any purpose for the whole Lighter and Molotovs thing.. kinda wasted feature in my experience.

Something else that needs to be mentioned is the fact that every other Amnesia game has an Insanity mechanic, where under certain conditions, usually darkness and scary sounds, your screen will become all warped and you will start hallucinating or experience other adverse effects. However, in Amnesia: The Bunker there seems to be nothing of that sort. I wonder what the developers were thinking this time around, did they suddenly reconsider the whole thing and decide the mechanic offers nothing to the experience? A sort of weird change from the formula, I actually do like the insanity mechanics, but maybe they decided it would just be annoying this time around. 

The entire game takes place inside the Bunker, but at the start many sections are as expected closed off. The main goal is to find the Detonator handle and Dyamite, but of course its not too straightforward. There is an Emergency Shutdown and you need to find a Valve to lift the locks on some sections. Thankfully the games progression never felt obtuse or aimless, at all points I could always tell what I was supposed to do. This is because there are plenty of notes scattered around which tell you exactly what to do, and the game keeps a journal of these notes and there is even a Red thumbnail over the most important ones at all times, which came in handy. There is a map back at the Save room, but I never found the map useful at all, really. It didn't feel required. I felt that the progression through the game was satisfying because I was never left running in circles having no clue what to do, I always had a clear goal in mind and a section to check next. And the actual layout of the Bunker is well done and memorable, each section is distinct and well marked with signage. Armoury, Arsenal, maintainenece, Prison, Soldier Quarters, and so on.

There is a decent variety of items and consumables to find, so explooration does feel a bit rewarding and exciting. There is a light crafting system, where you can combine a few items such as Cloth together to make bandages, or Bottle and Fuel to make a Molotov cocktail, but its nothing too deep. Mostly you're just finding bottles, cloth, bandages, Grenades, Fuel.. and you come across other permanent item unlocks such as the Lighter, Wrench, Wirecutters, Gas Mask (which I never found a need to use a single time), this weird Rabbit Toy which I also never found the need to use a single time, at least I got an achievement for it...  theres also Flares, which I didn't really see the point of and only used a Single time when I tried to throw it at the Beast to scare it away, because the sign saying "he fucking hates lights" - Yeah that screwed me over and got me killed. So much for trying to "experiment". You can also combine a stick with a cloth to make a Torch, but I never bothered to use it as by the time I figured that out I had the generator permanently running and lights on everywhere at all times. So the itemization isn't amazing, and most things are useless or unimpressive, but at least its something. It was cool to run back to the safe room to hoard items, even if most of them ended up being worthless.
When you open the inventory, it shows your hands which indicates your current health, which I thought was kinda cool also.

I played the game on a controller, and I felt the controls were actually kinda clunky. The default control scheme was kind of a mess between the Sprinting button and other features, maybe it was a skill issue but it got me fumbled up and killed a few times. Probably would have been fine on Keyboard & Mouse.

The first hour or two I was impressed with the game, and very intrugied, But shortly into the game I just found myself downright annoyed and pissed off with all the tedium of randomly having the monster spawn ontop of me, walking into constant tripwire grenades, dying and reloading over amd over. Like I said, trial and error. It didn't feel like I was ever being rewarded for my playing, but just I needed to enter a new area, die a few times until I figure out exactly what to expect, THEN I can proceed. Its like the horror equivelant of Kaizo Mario or some shit. I was really hating the game, because I would die and lose like 20 minutes of progress, since the game has no checkpoints and only one save location... But then I changed up my playstyle. I figured, you know what? Ok the game wants to be cheap bullshit, fine, I can do it too. I started clearing no more than 1-3 rooms at a time, then sprinting back to the save point and Saving , rinse repeat. Since I started doing that, the game became trivially easy and I made constant progress. Not only did I begin to predict the monster, his triggers, how to spawn him and avoid him, but also I stacked up so many items and hoarded so much Fuel that I overflowed the stash, and began to just dump excess fuel cans on the ground next to the generator. I was stacked for the rest of the game, From here it just was a repetitive process of clearing a few rooms, sprinting back and forth until end credits.

Its kind of unfortunate that the game degenerated into this, but "playing blind" risks wasting way too much progress to random unforseen traps and monster spawns. There are a few rooms that are just pointless and once you go into them, you can trigger some grenade, or spawn the monster, and its almost guaranteed death. Of course you can run in hide, you can hide under beds, or inside closets like classic Amnesia, but he still can sometimes get you, and this wastes a lot of time anyway, sometimes I'd just rather open the Pause menu and Load last save.

The thing is, the game advertises and presents its self as this new amazing twist on the Amnesia formula: Theres guns now! Woah! ...but Not really. You get a Pistol early on, but its not really useful for anything. It doesn't kill the monster, all it does is make him run away for a bit. And it takes like three bullets. Guess how many bullets you get? Yeah, barely any. Maybe in total in the whole game theres like, 12 bullets. I'm not even sure what you're supposed to really use the pistol for. Blowing up explosive barrels and Gas canisters? Shooting the monster away one or two times? It felt largely pointless. I don't think I used it a single time. Maybe blowing up one barrel , thats it. So not really, its not a new spin on the series where you can finally fight back, and its like a Resident Evil survival horror where you actually kill enemies and have guns and combat. Its not like that at all. The gun almost comes across like a marketing gimmick, just some ploy to be able to say "Look, the game has guns now!" it doesn't really offer any meaningful depth to the game at all. In fact, at some point I started just leaving the Pistol in the storage box because I found it so useless and it took up a inventory slot. Thats how pointless I found it. 

With the guns there is a nice reloading mechanic. You hold the button to check how many shots you have, he manually opens it up and checks. Then you press another button to load each bullet one at a time. Its realistic and stresses the importance of each shot, and makes it so you cant run and gun, even if that were a mechanic. I thought this reload feature was a nice touch. Its just too bad the guns don't have much use. 

You eventually get a Shotgun, towards the end of the game. This is down in these Roman Tunnels, with these gaudy weird fantasy Alien ruins... I dont know why the Amnesia developers finds the need to put Fantasy alien elements into these games, its really offputting and jarring and out of place. But I digress. Theres a weird ghostly man down here that sings and shoots at you with a shotgun, and you just kill him and pickup his shotgun. This is also where you find the Detonator handle, after you burst down a door. Thats about all thats down here, its a big foggy maze section with those two things in it and not much else. Some weird ghostly figures walk around also, but I'm not sure if they can hurt you or if its just decoration or what, they don't seem to chase you.

But the Shotgun also is likewise kind of pointless. I only ever used it maybe three times, and only to shoot down some Wooden doors.

So I went from almost hating the game, to tolerating it and almost having a bit of fun with it. But I can't say it was much of a horror experience. All the tension and dread was sucked from the game. The only reason it had any to begin with was the fear of losing progress, the actual monster and general vibe of the game isn't all that dreadful. Its moreso fascinating more than anything. Just the whole setting of the World War 1 bunker and finding all the soldiers notes, how they lived their lives, theres a room full of Soldier lockers where you slowly pickup all their Dog tags with the locker codes, after exploring the bunker, and you come back to this room to open their lockers, read their notes, and pickup items , often mandatory oness such as the Wirecutters, Valve, and others.

The graphics are decent and servicable, but nothing mindblowing or breathtaking. I can't say the monster was really that horrifying, it just did its job of being a threat, but its not like I'm gonna have nightmares or think its a particularly creepy design or anything. Kinda just looked like a mutated Bear or something.  The game is fairly dark so its not like you can see much anyway, But the enviornments are well detailed, with lots of World War 1 objects and subtle storytelling about all the various soldiers, its really cool that the game takes place during WW1 - not many games are in this setting, let alone horror games.  The game uses the typical physics system that they've been using since Penumbra. Where you have to manually grab onto items and swing them around, grab onto doors and open them with momentum, open chests and drawers and so on. Its a good system and makes the games in the series standout from other horror games, so it's just a staple of the series at this point. Although sometimes the physics were really clunky trying to move around the world, like getting stuck on random objects and random things being on the floor in your way and needing to fumble around with moving them around.

Maybe a highlight of the game is when you go to the Prison, and there you find a German prisoner locked inside a cell constantly yelling out in German, He sounds terrified and desperate. The surrounding cells are empty except a few corpses and small items, but there is a table by this German prisoner with a key item you need, the Wirecutters. Theres a grate nearby and to open it you need the Wrench. So that sends you back to the main hub to go to the Wrench location. Of course there is note you find that gives you directions, and you make your way elsewhere, towards the Chapel. This is another standout moment, where you find the Beasts own personal hideout, full of mauled corpses. Theres a decimated Priest inside the Confessiona, where you get a key to the Pillbox and there you find the dogtag with a code for the Locker for the wrench. So you eventually get back down to the Prison, unlock the Grate, and there you find controls to open up all the cells -

But when you open the Prisoners cell, the Beast shows up and instantly starts to maul him. Of course. I actually got curious afterwards and looked up if you can "save" him and you kind of can. Apparently if you shoot at the beast, or run up and grab the item and quickly close the cell you can save him from being attacked, but nothing unique happens. He still just continues saying the same lines forever. You do get an achievement, though. This is the only other living person you see in the entire game I'm pretty sure.

Other than that the rest of the game is going around finding more dogtags, opening up more lockers to get items to eventually go to the Arsenal to get the Dynamite and Detonator Handle, blow open the wall, and fall into a final arena where you are forced to encounter the beast. This part was also trial and error...  Its this fantasy style alien arena where the monster spawns and just chases after you and theres no obvious escape. At first I had no idea what was really happening, that took a few deaths. Then, I figured maybe I'm supposed to climb on these boxes and jump over this railing area, but how are you supposed to do that with the monster chasing at you? Thats a few more deaths. Eventually I noticed the bridges were made of wood so I baited the monster to it and threw a grenade at it, that blew it up and he fell down into the darkness and I got an achievement and then the Railing area busted open and thats bascially the end of the game.  This final monster arena is maybe a bit underwhelming, like thats it? I dunno it left me desiring something else. So you leave the arena and climb out of the bunker and are finally outside and fall into a WW1 Trench in a puddle of blood and gore , dead soldiers all around you, and Germans close by yelling closing in on you. Almost a spin of irony as if to say "Wow being out here is worse than being in the Bunker!" and then credits roll.

After the credits it reveals that actually many things are randomly generated - The codes, items, even the tripwires... Okay, thats kinda interesting.. maybe it explains why 90% of the boxes are empty, and why the tripwires are so random and annoying.. Not sure if that was the right play, like who is gonna be replaying this game over and over just because it has a few things randomized? Its both good and bad I guess. But ultimately thats Amnesia: The Bunker. I hated the game before this, Amensia: Rebirth. The setting was terrible, the writing and main character and plot was very bad, but the gameplay wasn't annoying or tedious and was very simple. Now the flipside of the table here with Amnesia: The Bunker is that the setting is amazing, the writing and plot is very gripping, however the gameplay can be tedious, obnoxious, and annoying with the trial and error deathfest bullshit. Its like this developer just can't catch a break and make something that truly shines in all areas, like they initially did with Penumbra and Amnesia The Dark Descent. I'm not gonna say this game is bad, but for awhile there at the beginning I was honestly a bit miserable playing it, before I started doing the cheap constantly running back to the save room trick. It's also a VERY short game, a typical playthrough probably is around 3-5 hours. I beat it in 6, I guess I was really taking my time. I'd say the length is fine, though. Horror games don't need to be super long.  Its close to being a good game, but I can't say my playthrough was amazing the whole time. Its lukewarm and mixed for me. 

6/10