The game
Henri Clément is the protagonist of Amnesia: The Bunker, new chapter in the Amnesia series. The protagonist is a soldier stationed in France during the First World War who finds himself trapped in an underground bunker and who must investigate why it has been totally abandoned and his exit blown up. The plot in broad terms is all here, and I avoid going into it further so as not to anticipate anything. The events are narrated through the many documents scattered within the rooms that make up the bunker, because human interactions are practically non-existent. The map is divided into four zones, plus a central one that serves as a waypoint for all the others and is where you’ll spend most of your time. In fact, within this area there is the most important save point of the entire game and you will find yourself passing through it quite a few times.
MX Video – Amnesia: The Bunker
Amnesia: The Bunker, as it becomes clear from the very first steps, is a survival horror à la “Alien Isolation”. The player is constantly hunted by a creature called “The Beast” which cannot be killed in any way, but which must be escaped by hiding or simply running away. Furthermore, to make things a little more sparkling, the developers have seen fit to insert a petrol generator which is used to power the lights and which must be constantly replenished with fuel to keep it lit, through the many tanks that can be found around for the bunker. The duration of the generator charge depends on the difficulty level on which we have chosen to set the game, but be aware that this cannot be changed until the start of the game. There are three levels and two more will arrive later in a patch: the Shell-Shocked difficulty which will be even more challenging than the highest difficulty, and the Custom difficulty which will allow you to choose the various settings. The Dacile difficulty is instead the one dedicated to players who prefer to follow the plot rather than wasting hours redoing entire sections of the game. There are no checkpoints or automatic saves, and it is possible to save only through the few lanterns located in areas quite distant from each other. This results in, if you die, you have to do entire sections all over again. The second difficulty, Normal, which is the one recommended by the developers to enjoy the game to the fullest. The third one is the Difficult one, dedicated to those players who love particularly demanding challenges.
The game is 100% about exploration. There are no more or less explicit traces or suggestions that indicate which way to go. There is only one map placed in the Administration room, which is not even allowed to be carried around but must necessarily be reached to consult it. It then becomes essential to read the various notes scattered in the various rooms, because they are the only way to be able to progress and understand what happened inside the bunker. Amnesia: The Bunker it also has a procedural component: the various codes used to unlock lockers or doors are randomly generated every time you start a new game, as well as the position of the various objects. This guarantees a very high replayability and the impossibility of resorting, at least for these elements, to game guides that reveal the codes to use. Even the solution of the various puzzles is never a single linear one, but it is possible to choose different solutions which also lead to different reactions from the surrounding environment and from the Creature in particular.
I personally found Amnesia: The Bunker a very difficult game even at the Normal level, which requires some time to master the mechanics and which risks quickly becoming frustrating for those who, like me, prefer a more relaxed approach to the medium. I found a large gap between Easy and Medium difficulty, the first really too easy while the intermediate one perhaps a little too difficult for my personal tastes. I played Amnesia: The Bunker on my Xbox Series X connected to a 5.1 surround system, and I have to say that the spatial audio was done really well, so much so that at one point I couldn’t quite tell if the sounds were coming from the game or from the rooms in my house.
Amore
Pure terror
– Amnesia: The Bunker starts with a bang, the atmosphere is gloomy and anxiety-provoking at the right point. The practically total absence of the soundtrack helps a lot in the complete immersion in what is the reproduction of a First World War bunker. The same thing goes for the total abandonment of the player to himself, reproducing the anguish of being in an unknown place without knowing exactly what to do to get out.
Story told properly
– All documents and notes that are scattered within Amnesia: The Bunker they manage to tell a story so well that is not told in any other way. In the Bunker there isn’t a living soul (or almost), so the only way to be able to understand something is through the notes, which can also be found with a certain rhythm and ease. The sense of immersion is therefore total.
Portable light and generator
– I really loved the fact that I had to manage the lighting by counting the seconds. The idea of equipping the player with a portable light that runs out after a few seconds and needs to be recharged is wonderful and gives that extra sense of danger that increases the anguish even more. The management of the generator is then another very successful mechanic: once the light goes out, the difficulty increases progressively; so you need to keep it active as much as possible.
Very high replay value
– Another strong point of Amnesia: The Bunker are the procedural and random elements, capable of guaranteeing a high rate of replayability. All the codes and the locations of the objects change in each game, so that it is impossible for the “curious” to go looking for them on the internet. This randomness also drives extreme exploration.
I hate it
Control system not too precise
– The game has a very inaccurate control system: having to open doors by holding and pulling or pushing doesn’t work very well, as well as the whole system that allows you to select objects to use them is not optimal. I found myself at the mercy of the monster several times because I was unable to close a door in time due to these problems.
Terror ends soon
– After the first impact with Amnesia: The Bunker, which literally paralyzed me with terror even though nothing had happened yet, it all ends very soon. As soon as you understand the mechanics of the game and the movements of the creature, which are more or less the same at least at the Normal level, the game loses all its feeling becoming super predictable.
A little too much backtracking
– The fact that rescues are only possible with the use of lanterns, and that these are always placed at the end of each of the areas into which the map is divided, leads the player to return very often to the central area, then to go back on and back in the same areas, which gets a bit boring in the long run.
Let’s sum up
Amnesia: The Bunker strong part, it catapults the player into a gloomy and distressing atmosphere, but slowly the atmosphere gives way to a much less terrifying reality, made up of some problems and a lot of backtracking. But if you’re a lover of exploration, you’ll love this. In any case, if you have a Game Pass subscription and you like survival horror, you should definitely give it a shot.
7.5