2/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Amnesia: The Bunker.

Amnesia: The Bunker is a mixed bag for me. On one hand the level design and progression structure lead to some great highs for the game as you go through this metroidvania-esque labyrinth in an isolated war bunker. And on the other hand the game suffers from some of the most frustrating AI and unfun counter intuitive gameplay moments that really just bring the entire experience down as a result. To start with the good stuff, the atmosphere of this game is great, particularly the sound design. This is a game that takes place during World War 1 in an isolate bunker in the middle of a war torn battlefield and it feels like it. Occasionally you'll hear bombs drop, or gunfire above you that shakes the environment and makes you feel that much more isolated. The blood curdling cries and heavy footsteps of the beast lurking around you as if it knows your every movement really helps build up a lot of tension, as the visual design of the creature itself is genuinely horrific. The constant need to refuel the power of this bunker and allocating resources to maintain it can be a struggle, and when the power does inevitably go out the small wind up flashlight being your only resource adds a lot to the creep factor. There's so many unique and interesting mechanics at play here, but they're all at the service of a really mediocre and unfun experience. Amnesia: The Bunker reminded me a lot more of a Resident Evil game, than it did Amnesia, and that's not for the best either. In Resident Evil 2 you're placed in a big area with tons of locked doors and items to be found in different areas that are used to slowly progress through the game. Resident Evil games typically nail the metroidvania-esque nature of it's level progression and this game felt like it was going for something similar, but never ended up getting there. The police station feel of Resident Evil 2, along with the constant looming threat of an always active immortal enemy lurking in the shadows is very much present in this game, but much like everything else about the bunker, it doesn't really meet the mark and that mostly has to do with how this game's Beast functions. The Beast is the constant roaming threat of this game, and I can't emphasize how constant of a threat they are. It feels like every movement you make, the beast is somehow right around the corner no matter what. Hey do you want to charge your flashlight? Do you want to sprint for a little bit? Do you want to open a door? Did you accidently step on something that made too much noise? Too bad because this creature will lurk that area for the next 30 minutes now! GOOD LUCK! I kid you not there was several moments in this game where I was trapped in an area for long periods of time unable to do anything and made the game incredibly unfun to experience. Every time I moved, or tried to get out of the hiding spot the beast is just there. You can try hiding, but honestly most of the time I got annoyed and bored of how long it took for the beast to go away, that I just started sprinting past them at some point, which seemed to work a lot better. There's no specific way you're meant to deal with the Beast, but you're able to lure him away, hide from him or just run, and a lot of the time these are options can be heavily limited by how close quarters the level design is. You're given two different guns that can temporarily stun the Beast, but neither are all that effective at doing so, which kind of brings into the question, why even have guns at all? This all wouldn't be so bad if saving was more of a prevalent thing in this game, but there is a total of 2 save points on normal difficulty, 1 of which you will use once and never again. The main save point right toward the start of the game is a cool concept, but the fact that some of these sub areas are so expansive means you can lose so much more progress so quickly and it can be incredibly frustrating. There was one time when I was being camped by the beast and 45 minutes went by without me saving and my game randomly crashed. It's very rare for me to get so angry at a game that I end up having to walk away and pace around, but this game managed it. On easy difficulty this game has 5 different save points, one for each of the main areas of this game, and it's wild to me that this feature isn't included on normal difficulty. Amnesia: The Bunker has it's moments, but those are far and few between and with the game's anticlimactic ending, it all just left me feeling frustrated in the end.