It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Frictional Games, I have mostly enjoyed every single game they have released and have this weird habit of mentioning them in other horror reviews that have nothing to do with them, largely because of their track record. Needless to say, Amnesia: The Bunker was one of my most anticipated titles of 2023. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the hype for me; maybe my expectations were high, but after completing it, I have to say that this is not only Frictional’s most ambitious game, but also their weakest.

The title starts off strong, as you begin your journey in a WW1 trench as a French soldier by the name of Henri with a staggering amount of Nazis trying to blow your brains out. After some interactable montages of sorts, you’re knocked out only to wake up alone in a bunker, where it is very clear that you’re not in Kansas anymore. Without going too deep into spoilers, you’re locked in a bunker where the only exit out has been blown to Hell, there’s something not of this world in there with you, and you’ve got little to nothing to defend yourself with. Your mission from here is simple – get a few components to make an explosive device to reopen the exit and get to the gone.

From the start, I really love how much you interact with the world. Frictional has always had a staggering amount of items you could manipulate, but here they’ve built upon their somewhat annoying method of opening doors (holding the right trigger while using a thumbstick to open and close) and applied them to most of the other actions you take, but instead of coming across as a nuisance it actually added to the immersion for me in a way that hasn’t really been done well since Far Cry 2. This is a world where reloading your revolver is a process of dropping the spent shells and loading each bullet with a new pull of the trigger. The same applies to most of the other actions as well, from using jerry cans to medkits, everything takes a little more effort than usual.

This is easily one of the most atmospheric horror games that I have ever played that exhibits a sense of dread from outstanding audio and a very claustrophobic feel. Not only are the pathways dark and narrow, but they are filled with ambient sounds that rarely let you forget that something is out there waiting for you to make just one wrong move. It took me about an hour to finally get a proper look at the creature, but I heard it early on – so much so that it kind of killed the tension for me at times. Much like in Outlast 2, there is a severe imbalance between the uber-tense moments and the slower-paced segments that allow tension to build. At times, this feels like a constant barrage that never lets up and ends up losing the battle to becoming frustrating as opposed to thrilling.

The game gets a lot of things right, such as the dynamic storytelling that is spread among scripted in-engine cutscenes and the token notes and documents you find in the horror genre. You never have a waypoint or marker showing your objective, but the game still manages to point you in the right direction as long as you’re paying attention. I particularly enjoyed picking through the various written texts here as each one felt worth the time, added some context to the story, and in some cases, was more chilling than the events you actually witness in the game. The bunker is a well-designed, mostly great-looking world that manages to feel massive yet intimate at the same time. I also absolutely love the amount of freedom you have to complete many of the tasks or overcome roadblocks within the world, but it comes at a cost in many ways because every action you take comes with a completely batshit crazy reaction on behalf of the creature that is stalking you.

The build-up to meeting the beast is also one of the best areas of any recent horror game and that is literally the only good thing I can say about him. He is going to stalk you much like the titular Alien in Alien Isolation, who is attracted to sound, comes with an insta-kill attack, and is a complete dickhead. It’s not because he will walk around the bed you are hiding under for 10 minutes straight, will warp from behind you to in front of you like his name is Nightcrawler, or that he’ll pull you out of a hiding space that he could have only seen you in if he had a pair of X-ray goggles. It’s not even that he’s a complete idiot at the same time who will wander around tripping every trap and explosive barrel that I might need to stun him, or roll over to a door that I need to blow apart and get stuck on a busted piece of asset that acts like it’s tied to the beast’s neck, bouncing around making a racket, keeping him in a state of panic. No, he’s a dickhead because he legitimately looks like you attached The Arkham Series’ Clayface to a penis for a neck that has a member of the Flood from Halo for testicles. You could easily compare it to a number of other popular video game creatures – a Great Value version of the baby from Resident Evil: Village, one of the Doom zombie soldiers if you stuck him in the microwave and stretched out his neck, or one of the more humanoid enemies from the Dead Space franchise. Comparing this to the other creatures from Frictional’s works, I can easily say this is the weakest and least spooky of the lot.

I don’t want to say that the developers carbon-copied Alien Isolation, but this is a game that is going to draw comparisons and suffers in the same areas. You are armed, but you basically shoot crayons and would be better off if you just threw the gun at the creature. Additionally, you’re going to need to start fires regularly to clear paths forward and until you get a lighter, your only method to do so is to shoot something combustible and ring the dinner bell at the same time. You really can’t even scare off the predator, only slow it down and hide, hoping that the AI doesn’t trigger something stupid that’s going to get you killed (Spoiler: it does that more often than not), and that’s assuming it hasn’t already taken out everything in the area randomly on its own. I don’t want to say that the Alien was perfect because it killed me a number of times it shouldn’t have, but this was on a whole new level. One where it goes from amoeba mode to beast mode in a split second, most of the time without due cause.

I can appreciate the desire to include some of the staple mechanics from the old-school survival horror greats, like the locked save points, an inventory system that uses a stash box, and the constant backtracking, but these are dated concepts that rarely work well in modern titles. This took me about nine hours to complete in total; had I not been ripped to shreds by the beast as many times as I was, or backtrack after every little bit of progress to save my game, it would’ve taken me a third of that. The inventory system is also a bit problematic and the direct result of many trips back to the safe room since you can only carry a very limited number of items, some of which can be combined, but items that generally are not counted in your pockets in other games count here. If you want to time how long you can keep a generator going, you’re gonna need the stopwatch. A flashlight is an absolute must, even if it is easily the worst flashlight in all of gaming due to the fact you have to crank it, making massive amounts of noise to keep it going for more than a few seconds. Your pistol, health items, keys, and everything else all take up a slot, and as yet another staple of the genre, supplies are extremely limited.

The limited supplies are very successful in creating tension, but it really locks you down in terms of being conservative with your items. Since you need jerry cans for a number of reasons, I always felt like I needed to save them, so much so that I opted not to use the generator unless I absolutely had to. Almost everything has a dual purpose, and you never really know when it’s okay to use something – I was always questioning my decisions and even ended up reloading a save. I wish that the items were available in greater abundance so I could really dig into the sandbox of the world because I wanted to do a lot more of the “can I do that” mechanic. Coupled with the fact that everything you do makes a ton of sound, I really felt like I was held back from diving into the freedom element. It was almost like being locked in a spacious mansion that was converted into a prison with all the amenities of home, but handcuffed to the toilet.

There is a lack of polish in a number of areas as well. Not only is the creature dated-looking and unimpressive, the character models are very stiff and look like a step back from Amnesia: Rebirth – so much so that they could easily be mistaken for PlayStation 3-era visuals. I also had many instances of the beast’s large arms or head clipping into my hiding spot, only to trigger him to find me when there was no way in Hell he should have. There is also a pretty nasty stutter when switching between wings of the bunker that drops the game to a -2 frame rate for about 15 seconds on the Xbox Series X. This is also yet another horror game where there are times when your hands do whatever action is taking place, but others where you have a gun in your right hand, a flashlight in your left, and you’re carrying a lever with your penis. I really have a deep seeded hatred for this and it instantly breaks immersion for me every time I see it.

Is Amnesia: The Bunker a bad game? I wouldn’t say so, but it does fail to live up to the pedigree that Frictional Games has established for itself, and is easily the weakest game in the series. I definitely want to see where the next Amnesia takes us; I still think they would do amazing things if given the Silent Hill license, and I can recommend this game if you’re a fan of the horror genre, but I wouldn’t go in with high expectations.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Outstanding Audio Design
• The Hands-On Approach to Most Actions
• A Tense Atmosphere from Start to Finish
• Freedom to Accomplish Your Objectives in a Number of Ways

Cons

• The Beast
• Lack of In-Game Resources
• Tension Can be Unbalanced at Times
• Some Visual Issues
• Dated Mechanics

Amnesia: The Bunker was developed and published by Frictional Games. It is available on PC, PS4, PS5, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of Amnesia: The Bunker, check out the official site.

 

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