Amnesia: The Bunker Review

The original Amnesia: Dark Descent was kind of my white whale in horror gaming. Having bought it on Steam, OnLive (remember that kids?) and through a Humble Bundle at some point, it took me literally years to find the time to sit down and play it fully, finding it to be really rather good. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with this latest release (though both Machine for Pigs and Rebirth have suffered the same fate to this day), and so as soon as I was able to, I jumped into The Bunker – and boy am I glad I did.

Frictional Games have crafted a tightly paced, semi-open horror adventure that is a must play for anyone looking for something tense to fill an evening or three. The atmosphere in Dark Descent was excellently crafted, and here, Frictional have managed to subvert expectations again and make something so simple sounding into a genuinely frightening time.

That simple concept? Escape a WW1-era bunker by finding two items; dynamite, and the handle to set off the detonation. Of course, actually finding these is trickier than it seems thanks to locked doors, collapsed structures, and misplaced keys.

Oh, and the massive fuck off monster that hunts us down at every turn.

In The Bunker we’re constantly under threat from some otherworldly being that is able to literally pop out of the walls almost anywhere, at any time. The sheer sense of dread is palpable as we hear it scurry about unseen around us, over us, and next to us. Keeping quiet is key as the monster doesn’t tend to come out in the light. Make enough noise however, and it’s more than keen to brave the brightness to chase us down.

Not only is this terrifying, but some classic horror tricks are masterfully used here. The lights flicker like mad to show off the monster being near, while when it screams the screen blurs and shakes making it harder to see where we’re going as we try to escape.

It will occasionally pop its hand out of one of the many holes in the wall to grab us unaware, but for the most part it’s actually pretty easy to keep it at bay as long as we dawdle around at a leisurely pace.

What’s that? We’re also under a strict time limit thanks to those lifesaving lights running on a generator that we have to keep topped up with fuel that we find around the bunker lest it run out and we get plunged into darkness? Shit.

Said generator is in the save room and can be turned on and off at will to save fuel, but attempting to traverse the bunker in darkness is not only dangerous but hard to do as it’s so damn dark. Early on it wasn’t uncommon  for me to just about get to the objective only for the lights to fail, forcing me to be slow and steady before inevitably attempting a (usually failed) sprint back to safety. Not that anywhere is safe – even the save room can be invaded if we don’t shut and lock the door in time.

All of this a tense set of decisions before venturing out; lights but use fuel? Dark, but maybe monster food? Is it worth revisiting an area to unlock new doors that might hide useful items but risk getting caught?

For the first 90% of The Bunker, these questions and more were asked constantly. We can save at the save room as much as we want but if we die before making it back we’ll have to reload the last save and redo whatever it was we just did. Initially this can be a tad frustrating, but quickly I grew to appreciate the need for this system. It really added to the terror as I’d spent 45 minutes scavenging and progressing and didn’t want one wrong move to undo it all.

We are able to fight back somewhat in The Bunker though, albeit in typically slow and almost useless fashion. The monster can only be temporarily halted via gun fire, grenade, flames, or gas, and of course these are in very limited supply – at least without spending more valuable time searching around, putting yourself at more risk of being caught. There are also smaller foes at certain points, with flesh eating rats blocking pathways or corpses that hold locker combinations or keys, but again dealing with these usually entails attracting the big bad due to the noise. Further in, we gain certain items to that help us move a bit more silently (torches and wrenches are life savers) but again, sometimes that monster will just get bored and pop out to say hi, usually just as I cornered myself yet again.

There is a slightly open-ended approach to puzzles in The Bunker mind you. There are some doors and lockers that can only be opened one way, but there are also examples where an almost immersive sim approach can be had; do we shoot the lock on a door, wasting a bullet and attracting the beast, or do we wait it out and find an alternate way in later. Or can we trick the monster into smashing it down for us at the risk of needing to stay close by? Wooden doors and barricades can be smashed by picking up and throwing cinder blocks, but also we could use the explosive barrel to block the monsters hole in the wall and have it blow it up as he pops out, saving us the bullet.

It’s not as expansive a ruleset as a Dishonored or Deus Ex, but it’s a neat touch in an already excellently crafted game that helps ground us in this world that bit more. The physics-based interactions of prior Amnesia games return here, so even opening and closing a door becomes a puzzle under pressure.

I had an absolute blast with the The Bunker, really enjoying the tension, the scares, the mad dashes and last ditch efforts to survive. Which made it all the more of a shame when the final 10% fell a bit flat.

Once I was able to get into the Roman tunnels, it gave off an air of ‘shit’s about to go down’. For one, we’re granted a second save point at the entrance, and two, there are some weird and wonderful things going on as we delve deeper. Without wanting to spoil too much, there’s a new threat introduced as well as an effectively done visual effect that definitely caught me off guard once or twice.

But, this new threat was dealt with within minutes, and even after I’d grabbed the item I was in the tunnels to retrieve, nothing else happened. I simply retraced my steps (after a quick detour to a hidden area that lead nowhere) and went back to the main save room with zero risk. After this follows a rather frustrating ‘boss’ encounter that took me far too many attempts before realising it was actually an incredibly simple solution. And fin.

This final section took a bit of the sheen off of an otherwise excellent horror adventure, though to be fair by this point perhaps Frictional were thinking we could use a break from all the constant harassment. Maybe so, but one final heart-in-mouth moment could have sent me home with this as a contender for the top of my list this year. As it is, The Bunker is still an excellent horror, just one with a slightly weak finale.

Conclusion

Underwhelming ending aside, Amnesia: The Bunker is an excellently crafted survival horror, with plenty of tension, dread, near misses and clever puzzles to keep us coming back for more.