On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:28:21 -0600, "rms"
<
rsquiresMOO@MOOflashMOO.net> wrote:
"Amnesia: Rebirth" is a welcome addition.
I *bought* Rebirth on Epic! Not long after it came out, during a sale;
and it is the first of the Frictional line of games I've played since the >original Penumbra series (there were originally 4 Penumbra games released in >an episodic fashion -- I played Overture, and I think the next installment, >before nopeing out when the stealth mechanic got tiresome, and never >returned). Rebirth is somewhat split into two halves (I'll try to avoid >extreme spoilers): The first half is focused on African desert ambiance and >exploration, and succeeds well in atmosphere and a sense of place and time, >with a good build-up of tension and simple puzzles. If the developers had >continued with this desert mythology and period environment I'd have been >happy, but the second half breaks with this and introduces an entirely >different sci-fi environment that doesn't jibe well with the first half.
That's a shame. Like you, I started with the Penumbra series but -
unlike you - I stuck through all the games (more out of my need to
complete the games than any great satisfaction from the gameplay). It
was, IIRC, also one of the earliest games to utilize the PhysX engine,
which alone made the game somewhat interesting.* "Amnesia" - their
next game - didn't improve the mechanics very much, but had far better
story, level design and atmosphere. I still didn't enjoy playing game,
but I admired both the developers tenacity and improvement.
I greatly struggled with "Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs", though;
despite some minor tweaks and advancements, the game was largely 'more
of the same'. The same tired sneak-n-hide mechanics, the same
unimpressive graphics, the same vaguely-Lovecraftian horrors. The
franchise no longer felt fresh, and it no longer felt like the
developers were taking chances. Meanwhile, other developers were
either trying new things, or doing the same as Frictional, but better.
Still, I'd hope when I saw "Rebirth". The desert setting - which seems
to be the only bit shown in the marketing - looked intriguing, and the
visuals were no longer quite as much an eyesore as earlier games. As I indicated in my earlier post, I still wasn't expecting the game to
become a sudden favorite, but it LOOKED like a move in the right
direction...
... Now, I'm not so sure.
I wonder if the turn to sci-fi is a reaction to the success of their
earlier game, SOMA, which had a significant futuristic bent.
Mechanically, that game was as dissatisfying as all the rest,** but it
had great atmosphere and a story somewhat deeper than "a man meddles
in things he shouldn't and attracts the attention of an ancient
horror" which makes up to much of the rest of their corpus.
---------------------------
* simpler times, simpler times...
** Interestingly, SOMA allowed you to disable the monster AI, which
turned the game from survival-horror to a very atmospheric walking sim
with some mild puzzling, which I enjoyed far more.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)