Review for Amnesia: The Bunker
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I have a confession to make at the outset of this review: until The Bunker, I had never played an Amnesia game all the way through. Frictional’s first Amnesia game, The Dark Descent, lives in my head as the first and only game I’ve quit playing because it simply scared me too much, and I was too wary of touching the others after that. So diving into The Bunker terrified me, to say the least, and I was not fully prepared for the level of horror and claustrophobia that I would be faced with.
You start the game by being thrown into the trenches of World War I. As a French soldier named Henri Clément, you’re given the tutorial as you navigate the trenches alongside your fellow soldier — and close friend — Lambert. After a brutal attack in which you lose Lambert, you wake up in the titular bunker, bandaged and seemingly alone. You learn from a nearby document that you have amnesia, which leaves you to piece together your life as a soldier as well as the events that transpired during your recovery. Meanwhile, you’re being hunted by a relentlessly vicious beast as you desperately try to find your way out of the bunker.
Early on, you learn that some of the officers escaped and detonated dynamite at the entrance, causing a cave-in that left you and the other soldiers trapped inside with the monster. Your goal is to blast your way out, following suit with the treacherous officers. At the beginning of the game, you’re told to learn, adapt, experiment, and survive. If you think something in the environment can be used to help you, it probably can, giving the game a bit of an immersive sim feel. You can use bricks to break down wooden doors and blast locks open with your gun, but be careful, as every bit of noise could alert the monster to your presence.
The bunker’s map spiderwebs out, and as you delve deeper, you’ll find more items to help you navigate its twisting tunnels, often backtracking to get back to the safe room or open a previously inaccessible passage. I enjoyed getting to know the bunker’s layout and finding ways to navigate around the various obstacles that presented themselves. The game rewards you for exploration and experimentation, and having your creativity pay off feels satisfying. It also leaves you constantly questioning your options. Should you chuck a grenade at a door and risk alerting the monster to your precise location, or see if you can find something heavy in the vicinity to bust it down with instead?
The monster itself isn’t the most creatively designed, and its AI leaves something to be desired. At one point, I was in the prison area when the monster slunk its way in, leaving me crouching in the corner with my heart beating heavily as I waited for it to leave. It finally did, only to immediately return as soon as I stood up. Audio and visual cues, such as your speeding-up heartbeat and blurred vision, let you know when the monster is around. A well-placed shot will scare the monster away if you find yourself in a bind, but ammo is a limited resource as well, so you often have to decide if it’s worth it or if running is a better option.
Along with the big beast, you have some smaller beasties to contend with as you navigate the bunker’s passageways. Rats have taken over, and these aren’t ordinary rats — they’re huge, red-eyed, and vicious. Luckily, fire drives them away, so all it takes is a torch — once you scrounge up a stick, some cloth, and a lighter — to contend with them. They can be a pain when you’re trying to escape the monster, though, getting in the way and forcing you to improvise quickly as you run.
The game’s puzzles are primarily environmental and immersive, as it encourages you to find ways around obstacles rather than giving you anything as concrete as a slider puzzle. A generator in the safe room must be used creatively to get past certain spots requiring power while turning the lights on and making the twisting passageways a bit easier to navigate. It doesn’t seem to have any effect on the monster, though, as I was still chased regardless of whether the lights were on or off.
The Bunker is a return to form for Frictional, offering similar mechanics — and, at times, wonky physics — as Penumbra and other Amnesia games. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and foreboding, but as you get to know the bunker through constant backtracking, it gains a sort of homely feel. The hallways close to the safe room felt almost warm and inviting whenever I returned to them. It became my bunker, full of items that belonged to my fellow Soldats, and I’d be damned if I was going to let a monster take that away from me. The best survival horror games have a distinct sense of place, and The Bunker excels at that.
I thoroughly enjoyed piecing together Henri’s story as I made my way through my new makeshift home. You’re constantly reminded that although you’re trapped in the bunker with a beast, there is still a hellish war going on outside. German artillery explosions shake the ceiling at intervals, and the various documents you collect detail Henri’s life as a soldier. The strange juxtaposition between the human threat outside and the otherworldly one inside made for a unique experience — and one I’d like to return to in the future, as with its dynamic item locations and codes, no two playthroughs will be the same.
