Amnesia: The Bunker is the fourth game in the Amnesia series developed and published by Frictional Games and the first one I have fully completed. It is a first-person survival horror game where you play as a French soldier in World War I. You need to escape a bunker, but is the game better left locked in one?
The game is set in 1916, during World War I. You play as a French soldier called Henri Clement. After running around the trenches and attempting to rescue a friend, you awaken in a bunker.
This is where the game mostly takes place. You need to discover what is happening and escape from a creature called “the Beast”. To do this, you need to find dynamite and a detonator handle. This is where the game allows you to choose where to go. Mostly.
The previous games in the series are linear, and this one tries to be an open-world type game with emergent gameplay elements. While it succeeds in this in places, it still feels pretty linear and with the feeling of being on a railroad.
I like how the story requires the player to discover what is happening. This is done by reading notes with some environmental storytelling. Most of the time, you won’t know what is happening apart from the fact you need to escape.
The setting of World War I doesn’t feel prominent enough. While you see the trenches, bunker and more, it still doesn’t feel like you are playing as a French soldier trapped inside during 1916. It could easily be set nowadays. For a bunker, there are no rifles or other types of guns. Except for one revolver and a shotgun. Which is weird. While there are plenty of grenades, food, and bandages.
The gameplay is faithful to the survival horror genre. Resources are scarce, death is easy, there is an item box, and you can only save the game in two places. Finding maps and studying the large office map is a focus of the game.
You have limited inventory space. This can be expanded by finding bags. Doing this gives you one more slot, which doesn’t make sense. You will need to drop items you don’t need, and most of them aren’t essential to the story. There are just there to help you escape the monster.
Using items take several button presses to add realism. For example, to reload the revolver, you hold down the X button and press the RT button to put in a bullet. This requires using both hands, meaning you are likely to be in darkness as you do so.
Through your ventures from the administration safe room to parts of the bunker, the Beast will be after you. The Beast can hear and see you. So making noise and running around can end in a quick death. You can fuel a generator to make it easier to see and get a warning of when it will attack. Yet, doing so doesn’t mean you can’t die. Something which I had to learn the hard way. They give the impression that light harms it, which it doesn’t.
For the most part, you can run around, and when you hear the Beast coming, either hide or throw a grenade, smoke it, torch it, or shoot it. The items to do this are plentiful, so you always have death insurance. As long as you are quick enough. Bullets are rare, and you quickly realise they are so scarce that you will use them more on locks than for defence.
The other enemy you will face is rats. These rats aren’t too much of a problem as they will likely be distracted by a corpse. The game encourages you to burn them to prevent rats. You don’t have to. Rats are always in the same places. They may follow you around if you are bleeding. Except if you kill them, they won’t come back. Most of the items found in the bunker don’t work on them. They aren’t distracted by noises, so bottles, boxes, or other noisy items are useless.
Like a Metroid game, Amnesia: The Bunker blocks areas by items. This means that the whole open world mantra feels false. They claim they are making a sandbox game, yet it is much of a sandbox as any other game. Deciding when to use a piece of equipment or when to blow a barrel doesn’t make it a sandbox game. Blocking areas by items means you will likely always take the same route if you play the game again.
The starting areas of the game set in the trenches look awful, and it doesn’t give the feeling of the First World War. The PC version looks slightly better than the Xbox Series X version I played. Thankfully when you get in the bunker, the game looks better and has a suitable eerie feeling. This is down to the darkness the game requires you to play in. If you set the gamma higher, the game looks worse, and the need to get fuel for the generator becomes unnecessary. It doesn’t help when the torch you are given is basically worthless.
If you want an easier time, setting the gamma higher will do that. Even if it makes the game look bad and raises the question, “Why play?” I recommend playing the game in its recommended gamma setting.
The rats and corpses in the game look pretty good, but not much can be said about the Beast. It is horrid and not in a good way. It is large, so its ability to crawl out of small holes is odd. It looks so misplaced to the rest of the scenery that you don’t feel scared of it. You feel dragged out of the experience when you encounter it.
Why they decided on a large creature as the main enemy is a mystery to me. It doesn’t even really make thematical sense within the lore. How does a man turn into a creature of that size? Strange alien floating rocks, Roman ruins, and funny water don’t explain it. They should have used a more human-sized creature.
If you want to check your health, you raise your hand and look at how many bloody fingers you have.
I appreciate that objects can be manipulated even if there is no reason to do it. You can use barrels and boxes to block holes and create obstacle courses. Except you won’t, as doing so takes more time than is worth.
I enjoyed the lack of a user interface, which adds to the immersion. You have to pull out your revolver to check the ammo remaining. If you want to check your health, you raise your hand and look at how many bloody fingers you have.
Amnesia: The Bunker uses minimal audio. There is some voice acting, and it isn’t overused. Most sounds you hear are artillery in the background and the Beast scuttering around. This is useful as it helps you detect trouble and adds to the tension and danger.
A neat effect in the game happens when you shoot your weapon or cause an explosion. The screen blurs, and you hear ringing in your ears. Giving the impression of shell shock.
Overall the audio design is good and adds to the feeling of loneliness and terror in equal measure.
I feel they could have added a shout or whistle mechanic. Which could be used to distract the Beast. However, it would probably mean you would use the items less.
The game doesn’t overstay its welcome. I completed the game in under ten hours. I could have finished the game quicker, but I wanted to find all the notes, bags, and open all the lockers. The time it took me to complete the game included all the multiple deaths I suffered. These deaths result in replaying the same sections over again. Deaths were mostly my fault for exploring too long before returning to the safe room.
I missed some notes in the end, even though I checked everywhere. The bags also bugged out and reset my inventory space halfway through the game.
The final encounter against the Beast really ruined my opinion of the game. All the techniques you have learnt or used are forgotten. The game changes the rules, and the Beast doesn’t behave like it did before.
The game has two endings one where you kill the Beast and one where you escape. I got the escape ending, as trying to kill it was too frustrating to try after the tenth time.
Once you complete the game, it tells you that you should play again. This is because items and locker codes are randomly placed. I didn’t check if important ones are randomly placed, but I suspect they won’t. This isn’t a good enough reason to play the game again. The bunker has five main areas, and if they were randomly joined up in each playthrough, that would have been a more interesting mechanic to implement. However, I doubt that is the case.
The game feels overpriced for the length and replayability that it offers. In maybe ten years, I will replay it.
I have mixed feelings about Amnesia: The Bunker. I haven’t played any games in about two months, and this game made me want to play and review it. That is good, as not many games can do that.
However, the emergent gameplay and sandbox elements aren’t present enough in the game to make it feel any different to any other Amnesia game. Even though I have only ever played some of the first game, this doesn’t feel much different.
I like the new direction the developers have taken the series, and it will be interesting to see how a sequel or the next game will build upon it.
Information
Developer: Frictional Games.
Publisher: Frictional Games.
Platform: Xbox Series X.
System: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series S and X.
Release: 6th June 2023.
King Toko 
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