I'm not really here to write a review or anything but I'll quickly cover my thoughts on my playthrough. Amnesia Rebirth is a game I was expecting very little out of based on the previous entry in the series called A Machine For Pigs. The first game, The Dark Descent was greatly entertaining but Machine For Pigs was no more than a walking simulator spook-house made by a group of devs so devoid of talent that you could have probably made a better game by giving a new born baby a 1970s IBM and a big stick to hit it with. Luckily Amnesia Rebirth is a bit more of an actual game and tells the story of a woman called Tasi as she gets stranded in the desert in a plane crash as she goes through caves and some alternate dimension in an attempt to escape and save not just her life, but the life of her unborn child as well.
Gameplay involves exploring areas, solving puzzles and occasionally hiding/running away from a monster. The sanity management thing from Dark Descent is back where spending too much time in the dark or looking directly at the creature will cause you to freak out and die so managing things like your supply of matches and latern oil is something the game tries to convince you is important. However Rebirth is also incredibly easy with pathetically easy puzzles and no punishment for failing encounters with the creatures, but I'll talk about that later. That said though, it was just entertaining enough to keep me playing to the end without getting too angry with it so as far as "run and hide" horror games go you could in fact do a lot worse.
So why am I so frustrated with it? Well one of the main things in the game is the main character "controlling her fear" and "not succumbing to anger" and all that bullshit. It's pretty clear, pretty early on unless you have some kind of brain problem that the events of the game are somehow her fault and she's actually retracing her steps finding out what happned to her and the crew of the plane that went down at the start. As you play you encounter a monster that will, in certain areas, attempt to chase you down and get you, only if and when it does get you, you don't actually die or game over. The game throws you a mini cutscene of the main character running through a couple of previous explored areas and then waking up either just before or sometimes just after the area you were just in.
What I thought was going on was that every time the creature caught you, that was her "succumbing to her fear" and so each failed creature encounter would somehow affect the ending in some way. What compounded my impression of that happening was the fact that after you are caught and get back to the monster area, the monster is gone from that zone. Like you are now free to progress the game monster free at the cost of the ending. Not failing any monster encounters would mean that she managed to stay mentally strong during the whole ordeal and you would get the best ending and failing all or nearly all of them would give you the worst one, maybe with some other factors thrown in as well.
However none of this actually happened. As soon as I hit the final cutscene and was given a "do X or Y" choice the rug was pulled from underneath me and I realized that all of that hiding and running away that I did barely mattered at all. The only monster encounters that actually matter are the spoopy ghosts with the lanterns near the end because they dont actually despawn when you fail but, and I'd have to test thing, they lose the ability to "kill" you after the first time.
The other reason I thought this was the case is because when you start the game you are given a choice between "normal mode" and "adventure mode". Adventure mode basically just turns off the monsters and the sanity mechanic and lets you just explore and puzzle solve and is described by the game as "for people that don't want to deal with horror".
There are two things wrong with this
One is that, like I said before, getting caught by the monster just deletes it from the area anyway so even if you're the worst hide and seek player of ALL TIME you still only need to suffer one minor failiure before you are allowed to progress. Two is what the fuck do you mean by "dont want to deal with horror"?! Why in the name of bloody fuck would you buy the THIRD GAME IN A SERIES OF HORROR GAMES if you didn't like horror? That would be like me going to see a movie called "Love Actually 3" and then getting pissed off at the fact its a romance movie and not a supernatural thiller, what a stupid fucking mode to have in your game.
So what could have been a cool mechanic that encourages repeat playthroughs just wasn't used at all and now if I want to see the other endings all I have to do is load my save and pick the other other thing. "Push a button on the Ending-tron 3000" is the shittiest, laziest most bullshit way a developer can implement multiple endings and anyone who's used that method deserves to have an entire day spent in wet socks, you're a disgrace.
Despite my griping though, Rebirth is still SIGNIFICANTLY better than A Machine for Pigs which granted, is not a very high bar to pass, but at least there is an attempt at an actual game here. The most 5/10 horror game you'll ever play in your life
