Stumbling through Amnesia - Part 1
Jan. 7th, 2012 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I keep on saying (now and then) that despite the impression that I may have given over the last few years, I'm not really a fan of horror games. Starting when I got my hands on Silent Hill some time around 1999, it's just been the case that I somehow get roped into playing them as people keep on giving me them to try. It must be said that I have a respect for things that scare me cleverly, though, and they have a great viral appeal in that you can pass them around either to spread the pain or just to see if people are as traumatized as you were.
I had told people... quite a lot that I definitely wasn't going to play Amnesia, then
quadralien went and got it for my birthday, so I felt I should at least give it a try. And I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to share my reactions with the world - though it must be said that the game has started slowly compared to my expectations, with only a couple of involuntary noises from me. In fact, I think the party that ended up most distressed from the experience was the plant ten minutes in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTsvrbo0tJw
I did about twenty minutes of it, then decided it would be better to upload it in multiple parts instead of one megavideo and edited what I had. Thanks to a Christmas present from Whitney's parents, I've now moved on from iMovie (which, to be fair to it, is pretty decent for a free program and can out-video Windows Movie Maker in virtually every respect) and am using PowerDirector, so having eliminated the need to work on two computers at the same time I can put these things together a lot more quickly.
I had told people... quite a lot that I definitely wasn't going to play Amnesia, then
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTsvrbo0tJw
I did about twenty minutes of it, then decided it would be better to upload it in multiple parts instead of one megavideo and edited what I had. Thanks to a Christmas present from Whitney's parents, I've now moved on from iMovie (which, to be fair to it, is pretty decent for a free program and can out-video Windows Movie Maker in virtually every respect) and am using PowerDirector, so having eliminated the need to work on two computers at the same time I can put these things together a lot more quickly.
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Date: 2012-01-08 03:39 pm (UTC)(I'd have been tempted to go back and try that big door again after you learned how to open the cupboards, though! Although it probably would have just been "it's locked" or something..)
"There's some sort of ghostly emission here.." I was going to ask, actually, whether you could see the intermittent spattered trail of blood you'd been following the entire way... it was light enough that I figured it would stand out in grayscale, but eight minutes in was the first time you commented on it..
Watching you put that plant on the table, suddenly I want to watch people re-enacting famous scenes from film history as clumsy in-game avatars or something. I can't even imagine how unplayable these are going to seem once some more natural form of interacting with these environments is invented...
Have you noticed that the leftmost column of pixels of your video feed seems to be wrapped around from the right side?
Did you ever figure out if tilting to one side was a bug, or if the character was meant to have a limp? (It seemed to go away in subsequent areas, or did I just stop noticing it?)
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Date: 2012-01-08 09:00 pm (UTC)It's very surprising what you don't see when you're half-concentrating on talking as well as what's in front of you... as soon as I played back the video I could see that I was meant to have been following this very clear white trail for a long time, but while playing, it wasn't until I was made to look at the floor by being guided down a set of stairs that I even noticed it. The big door at the start is definitely locked, though - no hand appears over it once you've tried it the first time.
It seems that object interaction in first-person games sort of froze with Half-Life, when you were suddenly able to see objects allegedly in your hands floating in front of you... I felt quite sorry for putting the plant through that, bashing it on every available surface as I tried to get it upright again!
I didn't notice the misplaced pixels until you said that, but I did get an encoding warning message when I uploaded to Youtube. It's there on the rendered video on my hard drive as well, so perhaps I need to adjust the settings a bit.
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Date: 2012-01-08 10:38 pm (UTC)I suppose it doesn't help that I'm watching this on a laptop, and the LCD screen shows the 'blood trail' you were following in bright pink; it looks like someone walked through the castle spilling Pepto-Bismol all over the place, which does make it kind of hard to immerse yourself in the spooky Gothic mood. :P
Also, I had a flashback to Planescape: Torment when Daniel picked up the letter and his previous self told him that he'd chosen to forget whatever it was that you're presumably meant to spend the rest of the game finding out. I don't know if you've ever played it - it's almost worth viewing as a kind of interactive novel rather than as a game, but it's very well-written - but there's a story someone tells in it:
"An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn't certain of which direction to go, and he'd forgotten both where he was traveling to and who he was. He'd sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him. She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: 'Now your *third* wish. What will it be?'"
"'Third wish?' The man was baffled. 'How can it be a third wish if I haven't had a first and second wish?'"
"'You've had two wishes already,' the hag said, 'but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That's why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.' She cackled at the poor berk. 'So it is that you have one wish left.'"
"'All right,' said the man, "I don't believe this, but there's no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am.'"
"'Funny,' said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. 'That was your first wish.'"
The point being, why not just trust that forgetting was a good thing? Ignorance is bliss. Just leave the castle, go home, and put your feet up. Maybe rescue the pot-plant on the way out. :P Besides, your previous self seems like he's a murderous douche anyway; no reason you should be his puppet.
...I don't think I've got the point of this game, have I? :P
D.F.
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Date: 2012-01-10 08:39 pm (UTC)As Ravenworks mentioned above, a lot of the game's atmosphere comes from how they allowed you to be hesitant, with a slow walking pace, the ability to peek around corners and to open wardrobes very slowly - I think a great deal of the game's mood comes from knowing that it's you who has to press on, and to bring yourself to keep going. Having said that, it starts much more slowly than I was expecting - I'd seen so many people saying that this was the most frightening game ever (a title that I would personally currently give to the Chzo games) and I got through this section without much difficulty beyond a constant sense of dread. Perhaps further videos will reveal otherwise...
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Date: 2012-01-27 10:57 pm (UTC)I keep refreshing this page sadly, and keep eliminating what I was meaning to say - I'm starting to understand how people can get motion sickness while watching others play games. Since I'm not in control of the motions, seeing people move about in a way unlike my own makes me feel disoriented.
Anyhow, I wanted to recommend the NES game "Monster Party" because of its strangeness. It was an old favorite of mine (aside from Rad Gravity, and you've seen that one, at least the title screen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2S2_kLodIc)), and I'm curious to what you'd think of that.