After so many years have gone by, Frictional Games makes a return with a new title for their Amnesia series. Fitting it with both the storyline and as a notch towards the series reality, they simply gave it the title Amnesia: Rebirth as the classic series is brought back. As a fan of the original trilogy, I was excited to see a new game in the series coming out and I have to say that I wasn’t disappointed. However, I wasn’t exactly enthralled with the game either. So, let’s break down why I think Rebirth is worth playing, but you shouldn’t rush to get it.

Story

Waking on the remains of a crashed plane that you were on with a whole crew of historians and archaeologists, you find that you are alone. Soon realizing that the crash happened near a desert cave and village system with hidden secrets to discover, you make your way through in hopes of finding the missing crew. One by one, note by note, the truth will be pieced together as each crew member is found - more often dead than alive. But it seems you aren’t alone in this place, in both the spiritual and physical sense, and something strange is going on. Using the clues you find and clinging to hope, you must press onward if you want to have any chance of escape this desert.

Gameplay

Staying true to the styles of the Amnesia series, the game starts out with simple movement and look around moments. While the scenery and story pieces you come across may not be simple, navigating your way through it all is. Using a sound queue that you will end up getting used to hearing very often, you will be guided to the first cave entrance from the plane crash. Here you learn that the sound queue you were hearing is your fear and it starts to take over your character if you stay in the dark for too long. Letting the fear consume your character for too long will result in jump-scare-like hallucinations, but at least it lights up the too-dark-to-see areas with a purple hue. Honestly, the way this sound is introduced, I thought it was the sound of my character boiling in the desert.

To combat the fear mechanic in the game, you will need to stay in the light as much as possible and this is done with the natural sunlight, matches that you can find and use to temporarily light the space around you or multiple sources found all over the place in every dark area and a lantern that you will need to fill with oil that you find. You are going to want to save resources as much as possible when it comes to light sources, so make sure to use matches more than the lantern and light area sources as you pass by them. You can only hold up to ten matches, so if you find another pack you will want to light sources around you before picking them up as each pack gives you three matches, sometimes less, unless you are full.

Filling the lantern is the first time I figured out that this is the type of game that wants you to open your inventory to do and use anything you find, regardless of it being story-related or not. You will not be prompted to just use essential items so if you have something to help solve the current puzzle, you will need to pull it out first and then place it where it goes. This means everything from putting oil in your lantern, grabbing a key to unlock a door, and anything you have that may be unique to the current puzzle your solving.

As far as enemies go, there is no combat and only hiding. At first they will just be seen here and there, but when they give chase you will need to get out of sight or leave the area if possible. You can simply duck behind environment pieces to hide, but there is also a tucking button that helps you hide unless they end up looking straight at you. Getting caught is really just getting hit until you die since they don’t grab you or anything, but they also don’t give up on the chase easy.

I would say the death mechanic is the most confusing to me. When you die there are the flashes of movement through areas that are sometimes familiar and sometimes not. I believe this is the story version of your character losing her mind and backtracking to where she came from as you often come to at an earlier part of the section, but then there are times where I came to and I was right where I needed to go. So, I can’t honestly say I know if there are just parts that dying helps you or if it is a randomized direction the character takes or what exactly happens, but I can confirm that dying means your character is about to move about the map and you have no control over anything going on.

The last thing to mention is that you have a particularly interesting tool on your wrist throughout the game. This tool opens a rift in specific areas of the game that give you shortcuts through the regular areas or can take you to what I have nicknamed the “otherworld.” Part of the game will take place in this “otherworld” area and that’s where the story details get strange yet clarifying.

Visuals

Environment-wise, the graphics were pretty awesome throughout the whole game. It drove the experience of fear and guidance with the way the settings were created in both the regular world areas and the strange otherworld one. The character models were a bit basic, but the alterations made to pull off the madness of the enemies were well done as well.

Sounds

This game is practically based on sound queue’s and they definitely did a great job matching everything up to help you move forward while instilling fear in you, even if just for a moment. There wasn’t a lot of music played, making the quiet either provide an eerie feeling or let it get filled in by the surrounding area’s sound effects.

Replayability

When it comes to the end, there are multiple endings available to choose from. Luckily, if you just hit Continue on the main menu after being the game, it loads up the final section of the game and allows you the chance to just see all the different endings for yourself. Granted, there are actions that have to be taken to pull off these endings, but you don’t have to replay the whole game to do them.

Other than going back through the last area to see the different endings, there isn’t much of a reason in the game for players to go through it again.

What Could Be Better

I hate it when games have you collect key items for puzzles or literal keys for locked doors and don’t just use them where they go. Making me open the inventory just to pull it out and place it seems like a “do it yourself” attitude when it really just gives me more steps to process through for little-to-no reason. It doesn’t aid the gameplay experience to make me pull the tool or key out of my bag to progress through the game, so if I have what I need on me, just use it when I am in the right area for it to be used.

Some maze-like areas of the game were too easy to get lost in. While the first one did end up just being my own fault for not understanding the area or lighting enough sources in the space, there is one particular dark maze area that I still don’t understand how I got through it. If you are going to make players do strange actions to progress through a convoluted section, you need to make them more lit up naturally because I quickly ran out of light sources to use and just kind of guessed my way through it. It is also the area where I mentioned that after I died I ended up where I needed to go with no idea where it really was.

Conclusion

Amnesia: Rebirth is definitely an amazing return to the series! I enjoyed my playthrough of the game and how crazy the story turned out to be. Having the different endings easy to experience was also a nice touch because I got to see if I made the right choice the first time (which I did). There are some annoyances, confusions, and issues with the game, but at least none of them were because of glitches or bugs, but rather just intricate level designs. Again, I do recommend any horror fan play this game, but just whenever you get the chance to get around to it.