I don’t scare easy. I think it’s a product of what a wimp I was as a child. I was a child too frightened to walk through a Halloween store. This would lead to a sort of overcompensation as I got older, along with a need to chase the adrenaline that comes with a good scare. Games more so than movies always stood a better chance at scaring me than film. There’s something about being in control rather than a mere passenger on someone else’s journey that makes the scares hit differently. However, it wasn’t until 2010 that I found a horror game that genuinely freaked me out. That game was Amnesia: Dark Descent.
Frictional Games’ PC horror title was genuinely bone-chilling. It was dark, atmospheric, focused on its narrative, and did something most video games don’t, it made the player feel truly powerless. After the misstep that was A Machine for Pigs, it looks like the developer has finally outdone the original Amnesia with Rebirth.
Amnesia: Rebirth (PC[reviewed], PS4)
Developer: Frictional Games
Publisher: Frictional Games
Released: October 20, 2020
MSRP: $29.99
While Rebirth does technically continue the narrative from Dark Descent, you won’t need any familiarity with the original game to follow the story here. As far as I noticed, there are no references to A Machine for Pigs, but I played a lot less of that game. You play as Tasi Trianon, a French woman and part of a mining expedition to Algeria in 1937. After what can only be described as a peculiarly spooky plane crash, Tasi awakes alone in the wreckage of the plane with only fragmented memories of what has happened.
Tasi soon discovers that a mysterious bracelet she woke up wearing serves a sort of interdimensional compass transporting her into a dark world. As you progress through along the path, you’ll find notes and other records filling in the gaps of what exactly happened to the rest of your crew. You’ll also have to use the bracelet to traverse both the desert and this mysterious dark world.
As you explore the world, you’ll find notes helping you piece together the fragmented story all while trying to manage Tasi’s fear. You can’t fight the monsters in Rebirth, but you need to use light as your ally. Tasi can find matches to light her way and permanently light things like torches, lamps, and candles to create spaces to catch your breath. Stay in the dark too long, and Tasi’s fear will grow, represented by black tendrils creeping on the sides. As your fear grows, Tasi’s heartbeat increases, your vision becomes blurry, and sounds become less reliable. On top of that, strange flashes will start to fill the screen making your fear climb more.
Darkness will make your fear slowly increase, but the faster method is seeing frightening images. Looking at or getting attacked by some of the game’s monsters is the quickest way to boost your fear. If things are looking bad, you’ll want to find a light source and a good place to hide for a bit. If your fear gets too high, Tasi will be pushed to the brink, and you’ll wake up in another nearby room. The lack of any fail state may make this all seem arbitrary, but the gameplay is less about feeling like a winner and more about the tension of the encounters.
You won’t spend the entire game just reading and hiding, though. There’s plenty of puzzle-solving to do along the way. Every puzzle felt intuitive enough, and the game uses physics in a smart way allowing you to interact with pretty much anything to help you solve a lot of physics-based problems. None of these felt terribly challenging, but even a shape in the hole puzzle can feel stressful when there’s a monster chasing you.
Rebirth is a fairly strong narrative that only ever feels undercut by how intricate it can be. Since most of the game revolves around getting information via quick static flashbacks presented as audio clips or written documents found in the world, it can quickly become taxing trying to remember just who everyone is. After all, you spend zero time with them prior to this, save for Tasi’s husband Salim, who you have a brief interaction on the plane.
The core of Rebirth’s story is about Tasi, and that through line is its strongest. It’s about motherhood gripping with loss and understanding the difficult choices we make that the traumas of our past inform. Tasi is a great character, even if it takes fully connecting all the dots at the end for this to really come through.
What Rebirth does so well is what Fricitonal’s past games have all handled excellently; it builds tension to create fear rather than relying on lazy jump scares; the truth is most of these monsters aren’t that horrific, but slipping by them can feel harrowing as you slowly maneuver through the poorly lit corridors. The fantastic sound design also pushes this experience to another level. Headphones are a must for this one.
Verdict: Rebirth doesn’t rewrite the Frictional Game’s bible, but it refines what the studio has already done so well with games like Soma and Dark Descent. It focuses on storytelling and delivers solid scares and smart gameplay. After A Machine for Pigs, I was reasonably sure I didn’t need more Amnesia, but the lore now feels deeper than ever, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Buy it
Author: Rich Meister
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher]