Amnesia: The Bunker review

Unforgettable.

I didn't think I'd close out this week being best friends with a generator, but here we are. It may be the delirium talking – I'm tired and scared and endlessly seeing things that aren't really there in the gloom of the corridors (at least, I hope they're not really there?) – but as long as I'm in here, standing next to my warm, chattering chum, I think I'll be okay.

How distressing it is, then, to know that standing beside the generator for the next few hours would be little more than a death sentence. How awful it is to know that no matter how safe you feel here, listening to the rumble of the furnace, your very survival depends on getting out and exploring the warren of tunnels and rooms that spread out from your safe space like blood from a wound. For starters, you need more fuel to keep it running. There are passcodes to find and tools to recover. Bandages, too, are required to stop the blood gushing from your dirt-encrusted fingers. Because there will be blood at some point, comrade – it's perhaps the only certainty you have down here.

Amnesia: The Bunker does an admirable job of making the titular location feel like both your cell and your sanctuary and, like the generator, it too will soon begin to feel like an old friend. Though small and tight, its claustrophobic corridors devoid of light and hope, you'll find yourself boomeranging back to the places you recognise with a rush of adrenaline and hopeless gratitude. But its confined little world will unfurl, slowly, as you creep about the place, grabbing the right keys to unlock its secrets. So creep about you must.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, you have just one goal, and that's to GTFO. It's easy to be distracted by the dismembered bodies, the endless stream of vermin munching down on the free buffet, and though you'd like to know what happened to those soldiers, there's something else out there in the darkness, something huge and hulking with razor-sharp claws and a terrifyingly good ear, and that's all that matters. Hang around too long trying to work it out and you'll be lying there amongst them.

The Bunker will feel familiar to anyone who's spent time with any of the series' predecessors, although there have been some gentle tweaks to the game's typical blueprint since we last powered through Rebirth, such as a wind-up flashlight instead of that ever-decreasing stack of matches we're used to. Yes, the physics are still a bit goofy and yes, sometimes you can cheese your way around a particular roadblock (for instance, I kept hammering a chained-up cupboard with a brick until it ever-so-slightly gaped ajar, letting me grab one of its spoils), and yes, you'll be able to interact with eleventy gazillion props and tools and drawers and cupboards which have absolutely no bearing on your adventure. But the detailed notes and world-building are achingly effective, even if the connection with our protagonist, Henri, feels a little tenuous at times.

But sitting at the heart of Amnesia: The Bunker is a wickedly dark premise. And yes, it's scary - scary in that special kind of way that sees you gasp for breath because, until that very moment, you didn't realise you'd been holding it. Whilst, like any horror game, you can become a little desensitised to the Big Bad that shows up at random to rip your face off, there are certain sequences and areas that made me feel delightfully uneasy no matter how many times I had to do them. Juggling other mechanics - such as the need to keep that generator burning, the manual save lanterns that you can only find in a handful of places throughout the bunker, and of course the importance of being as quiet as possible for fear of alerting the stalker - made for some terrifically tense encounters.

You're given a firearm right at the beginning of the game, but don't expect to rely on it. I think I only fired two shots throughout my entire playthrough. It's loud and it's noisy, and often not worth the risk. Consequently, the rules of old apply; hide, creep. And don't. Make. A. Sound.

You're encouraged to experiment enthusiastically, as you never quite know what options are available until you try them. Frictional has absolutely nailed this. A couple of times, even hopelessly lost and terrified, I'd misclick a Combine command or use the wrong tool and discover something completely unexpected. Sure, wooden doors can be blown off with a well-timed grenade, but have you tried throwing a brick at one, perhaps? What about using that handy bolt cutter on something other than chains? And sure, explosive barrels are useful for thinning out those terrifying rats… but what happens if you leave one by that ominous hole in the wall?

Subtitles and closed captions are available in a range of font sizes, with an optional background block with adjustable opacity. Mouse sensitivity can be adjusted, along with inverted mouse control, a smooth mouse option, and alternate keybindings. The same options are also available for controllers. You can adjust video distortion effects, the FOV, and framerate. There are three difficulty options: Easy, Normal, and Hard.

That's what makes The Bunker such a delight. As terrifying as it is, it's such a thrill to find your brave explorations and inventiveness rewarded in such interesting ways. There's usually more than one solution for the environmental puzzles you encounter, and with randomised codes, item locations, and traps, every playthrough should feel distinct and exciting, too.

There are a few snags. Not being able to re-read the codes scribbled onto dog tags is a peculiar oversight (one that may well be intentional, by the way), so if you grab a dog tag and forget to turn it over because a giant rat or the Big Boss itself headbutts you, the code is lost forever. The rats themselves are more irksome than frightening, and the stalker's ability to find you even if you'd scurried into a hiding space ages before it turned up falls on just the wrong side of frustrating. And where are the puzzles, Frictional?! Sure, you need to unlock certain areas and locate certain tools to progress, so some may argue that the puzzles are more organic and environmental, but at no point did I feel impeded or frustrated - a strange sensation, when playing an Amnesia game.

Those are small things though, really. Tiny irritants rather than full-on misfires that leach all enjoyment out of the horror adventure. Because I did enjoy Amnesia: The Bunker very much, and far more than its predecessor Rebirth, if not quite as much as The Dark Descent. I'd be interested to know what others make of the ending, too. It fell peculiarly flat and was surprisingly anticlimactic, but even a lacklustre finale wasn't enough to dull the shine of those previous half-dozen or so hours.

At one point, when I staggered out of the dark into a huge, gaping crater out in the open, bullets whizzed past my head again, and for a long moment, the sound confused me, and I wondered what they were. It's a testament to how terrifyingly tight Amnesia: The Bunker's hold is - even though you start the game stumbling through the soaking trenches, I forgot all about the war; I forgot about everything. Even creeping around a wartime bunker with reminders of conflict everywhere, I forgot. For the rest of the game, the only thing I cared about was my next save point, my beloved generator, and the terrifying thing that crashes around in the dark.