The developers behind the Amnesia and SOMA Frictional franchises are back again with another Amnesia game, Amnesia: The Bunker, which is based in a World War One bunker where you battle with a relentless AI-driven monster hunting you down. You need to make sure you keep the light on and all of your attention on your surroundings, or it might be the last breath you take.

You are in the shoes of French Soldier, Henri Clėment, somewhere on the Western Front and the battle line between France and Germany. You enter the bunker with nothing, but soon arm yourself with a revolver and a windup torch. The AI-based monster learns your play style and uses that to its advantage, so no playthrough is the same. It’s something to look forward to as you can’t get used to how the monster operates.

You are thrown into a tutorial level before you enter the bunker, which gives you helpful hints to assist you in battling the monster before you reach it. You are in the trenches of the battlefield, hunting for your friend, Augustin Lambert, who you find at the end of the tutorial in the middle of what looks like a huge crater with a flare lighting it up. You are then given a prompt that says you are alone and to play smart, something you need to do one hundred percent.

You really need to pay attention to the sounds in this one, but on the same token, I really didn’t want to. The battlefield sounds in the tutorial sounded fantastic. The sound of gunfire and soldiers yelling was immersive, and then once you enter the bunker, all of the noises stop, apart from the sounds you make and the monster stalking you, its prey, which is creepy as hell.

The main aim is to make as little sound as possible, so throwing a hand grenade to blow up a door was not the best idea, and it resulted in me having to flee. Everything has a distinct sound that helps to bring immersion into the bunker, and you’ll want to make sure you have your headset turned right up, but you’ll end up regretting it once you hear the monster.

I was a little disappointed with the graphics, particularly given the power of the current generation of consoles. Everything looked nice, and they were going for that realistic feel, but once you see the character models and texturing, that went with the trenches in the tutorial.

It just didn’t feel like it had been done to its full potential. Things like a lamp emitted nice light, but again, it didn’t look or feel real when playing. A little more work done on the graphics would have added that level of immersion to the game, which would add more of the horror aspect it was looking for.

The controls were basic enough on the Xbox Controller and the tutorial at the beginning made learning them much easier. The controls were very basic which is all that needed to be a well-optimized game. You are prompted all the time if you need to do something like spin a dog tag around to get the secret code from the back of it.

Funnily enough, I could never find the run button quick enough when I needed to flee the monster chasing me around the halls of the bunker, and it was suitably mapped to RB. Crafting also has been added to the game, and it was easy as well. It’s as simple as opening the inventory and clicking combine, and then both items would highlight blue, making it simple to make something like bandages when you get messed up.

If you are a fan of the Amnesia games, or if you just love the horror genre in general, then this game is designed for you. It has that old feeling, being based back in World War One, and it has all the technology from back in those days to go with it. The game is smart and keeps you on your toes the whole time, and it took me a few attempts to get through, and as soon as I thought I had outsmarted the monster, it threw a spanner in the works.

Written by: Hayden Nelson