Amnesia: Rebirth review: A treasure in the rare cosmic horror genre

Gameplay

The gameplay for the Amnesia series has not evolved much since its inception, and the reality is if you have played a modern horror game, you know exactly what to expect from this title. For Pete’s sake, it was Amnesia: The Dark Descent that invented that style of gameplay and horror experience.

Essentially, Amnesia: Rebirth’s gameplay can be boiled down to explore, see spooky stuff, run and hide.

Is that a little simplified, sure, but it is not far from the truth. Most of the time, the player will be exploring vast areas, unveiling the full story and details of the truth layer by layer. You can do this by collecting writings left behind by various characters from the story that help to build the characters or elaborate on important events in the timeline. When not learning the story in the exploration segments, the player is looking for resources like matches or lantern oil to help light the way.

Most of the game takes place in near pitch-black environments that the player needs to light up in order to keep the protagonist from becoming too overwhelmed with fear. The aforementioned lantern oil and matches are your primary tools to lighting the world up, but those are limited, so resource management is key. You can use matches to light stationary candles, torches, and lamps across the play area, however, that is a resource used for a source of light that may not be as safe as it appears.

Of course, you did not boot up this title for the darkness, but rather the things that exist in that darkness.

The monsters in Amnesia: Rebirth are very similar to the eldritch monstrosities from the first title in the series, in both inspiration and mechanics. They will find you in specific areas and chase you down until they see you dead.

Well, not quite dead, as the game does not actually have hard deaths as most games understand them. If you fail to escape a monster or fail any other way like, I do not know, jumping out a window because the monster was getting too close and you did not know how to escape, your game does not end, but instead the game just shows you some spooky images and puts you at the back at the beginning of the section you are in.

Actually, it is interesting how the game does this, not only to make death feel less hindering to your progress but in every section of the game, after so many fails, the monster or obstacle in that section will actually just disappear, allowing the player to progress with the story.

It is worth noting that this game does have multiple endings, and it is widely believed, but not yet confirmed, that number of fails and time to completion does affect the ending that you get. 

In order to keep from getting reset, the player has two options for avoiding monsters, run or hide. Hiding is simple, you find a dark corner or a spot out of sight, lay down, and stay out of view. Wait and learn the monster’s patterns, find an opening, and move about the room when you can. This strategy gives you the opportunity to find more information on the story or resources that may be around the area you are in. However, too long of an exposure to the dark or the area’s monster could result in death by fear.

The other option is to try and outrun the monster, a viable option due to how you outrun most of the monsters in the game. This does keep players from gathering as many resources or learning as much about the game… or having as much fun. However, it is an option none the less.

There are also puzzle segments throughout the game, although there are not many. I will say that these puzzles can be confusing and not very intuitive because often the answer is never obvious. How do you get down to the radio when all of the stairs leading down there are blocked in some way? Well, you have to find these wheels that are in completely out of the way areas (but not too out of the way to be obvious or notable) and look like normal and unimportant objects and carry them over to this random cannon, then you have to push it down the hallway a bit before it falls through the floor and opens up a path forward.

You might say “Well you figured it out, obviously it is not that hard” and that is where you are wrong and giving me too much credit. I had to look at the walkthrough that Frictional Games sent with the game to figure this puzzle (and a few others) out.

There are not that many puzzles, and only a few are like this, so it is not a huge issue, but it is an issue nonetheless.

I am going to level a small complaint at the game here that I could not fit in somewhere else in the review, but this game has load times of up to 20 minutes occasionally. I was running this on my nearly new PS4 (less than a year old I should say because I am being reminded that is nearly November and I got it back in March so I could play FF7R and P5R) with a 4k TV. The opening load especially when you first boot up the game is unreasonably long. I once booted up the game, got up, started laundry, made a bowl of ramen, grabbed a Pepsi, ate my ramen, drank my Pepsi, cleaned my bowl, threw away my bottle, grabbed a bottle of water, fed my dog, went to the bathroom, came back and sat down only for the game to load for another five minutes.

Sure, this game was probably made with much better hardware in mind, specifically the PS5 and gaming PCs, as it was released on the final days of the PS4’s life. But that kind of load time is inexcusable regardless.