Amnesia: The Bunker

Amnesia: The Bunker is a smaller, more self-contained episode in the groundbreaking horror franchise that shows Frictional still has some chilling, new tricks up their sleeves.

Frictional Games reinvigorates the series that made it famous with its scariest game in years.

Amnesia: The Bunker corrects the missteps of its predecessors and adds in a sense of invention, creating a truly unsettling adventure.

Amnesia: The Bunker is an essential horror game and an inspired next step for the series.

These moments rival those of the best stealth games, when the slightest noise can mean revealing your position to much more powerful foes. Frictional has made a name for itself by creating these moments out of elegant yet terrifying systems. The Bunker’s standout achievement, then, is creating a nonlinear sandbox where you’re constantly learning from your own bad habits. I’ve never been so conscious of how much noise everything makes around me in a digital space, cautiously entering rooms to avoid kicking an empty wine bottle or activating the flashlight intermittently when I knew the monster was near. As McKee described, it’s your mundane actions, in conjunction with the crude and hostile setting, that create a solid ceiling of sound — one that only grows thicker the longer you inhabit the bunker.

Amnesia: The Bunker is a bold new direction for the series, and it chiefly pays off with brilliant scares and disempowerment of the player. The bottlenecked level design can be frustrating though, as can the nature of do-overs with the beast hot on your heels.

Amnesia: The Bunker is a compact, focused and refreshing horror game that brings new excitement to one of horror's modern classic game series.

Amnesia: The Bunker sticks a little too close to what Frictional Games has been doing for over a decade now, but with a more free-form approach to gameplay, the team is back on the right track again. Coupled with an excellent setting, Amnesia: The Bunker represents a vast improvement over its predecessor. You'll still encounter the same stumbling blocks of old, but this horror experience comes recommended.

There are lots of ideas in Amnesia: The Bunker that are truly intriguing. I love the World War 1 setting as a backdrop for a horror story, especially the way it intersects with technology of the era. But the way gameplay elements are introduced as friction meant to induce tension simply feel overtuned. I often felt like I was fighting the game just to get around, which was frustrating in a software kind of way rather than an atmospheric enhancement. I wasn’t scared because I was too busy squinting or yanking on the flashlight’s pull cord just so I could pull on doors and latches. No amount of spooky ambiance in the background could bring me back into the experience.

Amnesia: The Bunker has become one of the best horror games in an ever-changing landscape on par with titles like Resident Evil 7 and The Dark Descent. This game not only is a return to form for Frictional Games but it also paves the way forward thanks to its systems that encourage creative solutions to problems and an ever-changing nature that will keep players on the edge of their seats as they face off against the supernatural threat that's roaming the halls of the bomb shelter.