Recent reviews by Yanarsen

Too early for Steam quest, but never too early for negative review.
Pros: can be played with friends
Cons: everything else

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is still waiting for its worthy successor.

Where to start with The Bunker? Another title in the series, living to the fame of TDD, which launched so many YouTube carrers and Frictional Games as a main horror game industry... But we got nothing. Same as Rebirth.

I will try to keep review as spoiler free as possible.
First things first, as Rebirth, all those trailers, introductions to story (Plane crash / WW1), gameplay stuff and whatnot looked promising, while actual gameplay is completely opposite.

PUZZLES - The Bunker is probably first game in the series without a single puzzle included. I am personally not fan of those, but it kinda feels off for games like these, horrors in general to not include a single puzzle.

MAP - The Bunker has without a doubt smallest map, at least as twice, or maybe even more than twice as smaller map than any other Frictional Games game. Once you get into bunker and stand in front of a map, thats it. Thats whole Bunker setup. There is no next area once you clear the map, its literally end of the game!

BACKTRACKING - My God! Amount of times you have to go from one part of the map to another is insane. Nothing new happens, to make it more dynamic and worth revisiting, its just the same thing that you must visit again to progress further into the "story". Frictional Games got pretty lame about that part as well. Instead of making new areas to explore, they just force you to revisit same places in specific order to extend the gameplay.

MONSTER - Worst design of them all. I thought Frictional can't make worse monster than what Ghoul looked like, but they did. This monster is basically "super ghoul" from its design. And its not scary, at least not on the long term, like Grunt from TDD was. This monster reminds me a lot of Xenomorph from Alien Isolation because it is indeed pretty smart, which is big plus, its so unpredictable, and its also just one single monster that hunts you down all the times. Both also come from one (of many) included holes spread through entire map. However, if you manage to glitch it (which I did unintentionally way too many times), you can pass through it pretty easy. But when AI works as developers expected it to do, then its very challenging. But that also kills the fear factor. Instead of hiding from it, you are constantly trying to mindgame the monster.

WEAPONS - Both good and bad inovation. Its good, because its something new and, well, not something you'd use to eliminate the monster, but instead slow it down. And thats where the bad part comes in. Surely, you are constalty hold at 1-2, or if you are lucky enough, up to 3 bullets, but thats more than enough to hold down monster and escape. Even a single bullet gives you mental safety that monster won't kill you, and his stun duration is more than enough for you to run. I preffer more intense chases where you have to think while running and hope that you can somehow lose it.

CRAFTING/INVENTORY - Looked promising until it didn't. Having limited inventory looks cool, but when you are constantly full, it removes all the fun. Once you start expanding your inventory, amount of items that you must keep with yourself all the time expands as well, so you just get an illusion of additional item slots. Also, tons of items have no worth. About crafting, you can literally craft 2 single items, and I seriously don't know which one is more useless. Especially torch that needs 3 item slots to combine, and guess what? You need a single torch for entire game.

STORY - Its bad. And whole plot is in those dozens of notes, which I couldn't bother reading. Not a single cutscene, flashback, or anything to show the story. Instead, you have to read notes and visualize the story in your mind. I watched YT clips for story explanation and I can say that its very disappointing. Even worse that they used main story plot from Rebirth, which was bad even to begin with.

GRAPHICS - So far best out of all Amnesia games, but nothing special for year 2023. Human models are still one of the worst, if not even the worst of all games I've ever seen, while your surroundings and monsters are somewhat acceptable.

Summary: 6/10
- Scare factor doesn't exist
- Game gets extremely boring and repetitive over time from all the backtracking you must do
- Map is small and super-empty
- Inovations in this game (crafting/limited inventory/weapons) are very unsatisfying
- Game in general feels unfinished
+ Monster is challenging at times

If you never played any other Amnesia game or horror in general, then you should give The Bunker a try, but otherwise, wait for some super sale, becuase even 25$ in 2023 for this game sounds like a super high price.

[UPDATE] Oh and yes, I haven't got a single achievement for completing the game. sad violin starts playing

Steam awards update

Quantum Break > Control
any time of the day

Steam awards

Removed my previous review thinking I would start enjoying this. Instead, I ended up hating it even more once I figured out the whole concept.
Simply put, this game is EXTREMELY RNG based and besides very first few rounds of playing (to get a taste of each card in every deck), there is nothing more to enjoy in it. RNG would literally NEVER let you build a deck that you want, once you figure out specific decks (and not being able to build any of them), there is literally nothing to keep you play it. Over time, it gets just more and more repetitive, you have very few different opponents (any of regular/elite/bosses), to the point where you'd know every single attack of anyone after 10h or so, which is boring. But even with that knowledge, you won't win most of the times (if any time at all) just because of how disastrous cards will RNG throw in your face. Besides card drop, RNG will wipe you over with encounters, floors, merchant, basically everything.
When you are stacked with money: You won't get proper merchant pathering or merchant will offer some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cards/relics. When miracle happens and you get some deck build, trust me, RNG will give you hands full of unsynchronized cards and there you go, lose guaranteed and start everything over again. Question marks can give you 5 times in a row insane debuffs(or buffs[when you don't need them]), and so on.
Only rounds that I managed to win are rounds where I wasn't even trying. I simply went "next next next" tactic and got all broken cards where it was impossible not to win. Once, question mark even thrown me from the bottom of the floor to the final boss in instant.

TL;DR you are not in control of any game

My childhood is ruined

Very cool

(Steam awards)

You literally have to do a 360 with your mouse for every single interaction, and I still feel dizzy from camera angles.

What a banger! Yet another nailed game in franchise!
Game starts slow, like, really slow (literally 3 episodes), but then it gets super exciting, intense and good.
In general, I think its the weakest entry in franchise, but with best final episode without any doubts!
Still, game is great, highly recommending it to everyone! If you liked previous Life is Strange games, you will enjoy this one as well for sure!

Crap