Posted on: October 16, 2023
Burrito
Verified ownerGames: 1491 Reviews: 47
Frictional takes on Survival Horror
The 'Amnesia' series taught us to expect cycles of rising tension, punctuated by periods of either relief or a monster showing up to wreck our day. 'Dark Descent' and 'Rebirth' avoided just being excellent walking simulators by virtue of some lite strategy surrounding light control. In 'The Bunker', I got murdered, from full health, in a calm moment, when I stood next to a hole The Hunter happened to check. It happened shortly after that again, in a different place, because I wasn't checking my six often enough... again in a moment I thought was safe. In total I died forty-some times in my playthrough, and each one was a combination of my own fault and The Hunter's excellent, not-giving-any-chances predatory skills. If the other games have tension meters that look like capacitor discharge graphs, all escalating buildup and release, 'The Bunker' is a flatline running near the top of the chart. There's one place the player can feel relatively safe, with the tools they need to plan out what to do next and what resources to commit to the next leg of their almost entirely self-directed mission, but the player may spend 5% of their time there. As soon as they unlock the door, before they even step out of the 'safe' room, all bets are off. The bunker itself is heavily Jaquayed with some lite tool-based Metrovania area locks. It's not an A-to-B-to-C affair, there are navigational options. You get to learn your procedurally generated purgatory well enough to sprint it in the dark. And sometimes you will. Heavily recommended. It takes what worked already and tweaks it into a familiar yet new set of scares. Doesn't render The Dark Descent obsolete... but The Dark Descent couldn't replace this one, either.
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