The Gatherer represents a direct physical danger, so avoiding that danger is the central issue for this horror puzzle. We start treating the horror scenario like a puzzle, and that’s no good for The Dark Descent because how we resolve the puzzle of physical threats undercuts any psychological threat. By preparing for it, we allow logic to overtake emotion. By the sixth time that we encounter the Gatherer, we know the drill, and because we know the drill, we can prepare for it. We face this exact scenario several times throughout the game, and that repetition allows us to get past the visceral emotional reaction to our helpless. However, the game plays this card too many times. Since we can’t really protect ourselves, all we can do is mitigate the harm, and that’s a powerfully disturbing no-win scenario. Both antagonists (the Gatherer and the darkness) evoke both types of fear, because both can hurt us and we’re helpless on both fronts. Regarding the latter, there’s our complete inability to fight back. Regarding the former, there’s the very obvious threat of physical harm. These hunts are meant to scare us both physically and psychologically. Risk death by lighting a torch and basking in the light or risk insanity by staying in the safety of darkness. Every move that we make thus becomes a compromise. We’ll also lose our sanity if we stay in the dark. We can’t look directly at the Gatherer or we’ll lose our sanity, making it difficult to keep track of its location. There’s a catch, naturally - a few of them. Basically, we’re tasked with exploring a dark environment while trying to stay hidden from a dangerous creature, a Gatherer. They’re relatively simple scenes, though. When people describe Amnesia as one of the scariest games of all time, they often cite these hunting scenes as the reason why. The central hook of The Dark Descent is the monster that hunts you through certain sections of the game. It succeeds on both fronts, but ironically those success actually undermine the game as a whole. It wants to make you fear for your life and fear for your soul. Even by today’s standards it’s an ambitious game, evoking psychological horror through a Lovecraftian story and mechanics of insanity, while also evoking physical horror through the threat of otherworldly monsters and limited survival resources. However, it still largely succeeds in what it sets out to do. Playing it for the first time six years after its initial release, it does feel a little dated, and it certainly doesn’t live up to it’s reputation as a horror masterpiece. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is still a good horror game.
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