N E ED TO K N OW

A first-person horror exploration game and sequel to Amnesia:The DarkDescent

DEVELOPER Frictional Games

PUBLISHER In-house

REVIEWED ON AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, GeForce RTX 2060 Super, 16 GB RAM, SSD

MULTIPLAYER No

LINK amnesiarebirth.com ‘sanity’ has been replaced with ‘fear’, reflecting a more modern and thoughtful understanding of mental illness. But it’s just a re-labelling of the idea that if you hang out in the dark or look at disturbing scenes or creatures for too long, you’ll eventually lose control of your faculties. You’ll be scrounging for matches, which can be used to light torches and candles, and eventually oil for your portable lantern. The very limited amount of each you can carry serves to build tension, but both are abundant enough that if you’re tenacious about exploration and stingy with your resources, you’ll almost never run out. The fleshy, chittering monsters often lurking just at the edges of your sight are visually horrifying, using clever design, animation, and sound to get your hairs standing on end. But their behaviour doesn’t present any new surprises and stealth still feels as clunky and random as it did in the previous Amnesia games.

Even so, Frictional has mastered the art of building tension using imagery, music, level design, and sound mixing. Parts of the inuniverse story even spell out how they do this in a way that is both openly self-referential and selfcongratulatory – it comes close to breaking the fourth wall, but it feels earned. The breathtaking story payoffs are well worth putting yourself through the ordeal, too. Their ability to marry deeply personal, relatable fears with cosmic horror is nearly unparalleled in games. While mechanically rusty, Amnesia: Rebirth deserves to go down as one of the most effective and mind-bending horror games of our generation, just like its predecessor. See you on the other side.

Amnesia:Rebirth is a brilliantly told tale of terror worthy of the series, even if the ride is a little old and clunky.

VERDICT 91