Amnesia: The Bunker Reviews
This may not be the horror romp you're itching for, but Amnesia: The Bunker provides a fantastic map to explore with engaging gameplay to make it that much more enjoyable. It's too bad the game's stalker creature lacks the necessary delivery to generate authentic scares.
Amnesia: The Bunker has become one of the best horror games in an ever-changing landscape on par with titles like Resident Evil 7 and The Dark Descent. This game not only is a return to form for Frictional Games but it also paves the way forward thanks to its systems that encourage creative solutions to problems and an ever-changing nature that will keep players on the edge of their seats as they face off against the supernatural threat that's roaming the halls of the bomb shelter.
Amnesia: The Bunker has all these little pieces that work well, but doesn’t fully deliver on its main hook. Fans of the series may be set up for a No Man’s Land of disappointment, where just a few tweaks here and there might make it a much more enjoyable experience. With it also launching on Xbox Game Pass, that might be the best place for it to gain an audience.
Amnesia: The Bunker is a step down from Amnesia: Rebirth. New release from Frictional Games is visually boring, lacks atmosphere and can get on your nerves with constantly teleporting stalker enemy.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Amnesia: The Bunker sticks a little too close to what Frictional Games has been doing for over a decade now, but with a more free-form approach to gameplay, the team is back on the right track again. Coupled with an excellent setting, Amnesia: The Bunker represents a vast improvement over its predecessor. You'll still encounter the same stumbling blocks of old, but this horror experience comes recommended.
The Bunker does many things right, from its intricate level design to its rich atmosphere, but the overbearing adherence to horror eventually makes it wear on the senses. Being isolated in a pitch-black bunker with only a murderous beast as company can run you down quickly, and The Bunker never lets up. It is soaked in tension, worships at the altar of making you squirm, and does it with a smile. While this is appealing, it is a lot to manage, and this is a game for horror fans with a masochistic streak. Find the best pair of headphones, sit in the dark, and get your creative thinking cap on, because The Bunker is a survival horror experience to rival the best in recent memory. When it all comes together, when your back is against the wall, gun drawn with a single bullet left, and the beast is bearing at you down a dark hallway, that is when this game sings. In those moments, it reaches the heights of the genre greats and its progenitor.
Amnesia is not a flagship of the genre. It doesn't pretend to be, and it doesn't even try to revolutionise the genre or its franchise. It evolves a little in its content and structure, but retains the same strength. Its job is to scare you for a few hours by immersing you in its world, and it succeeds perfectly. The Alien Isolation-style beast that stalks you incessantly makes you break out in a cold sweat, and the game is gripping. You'll simply have to get used to the decade-old gameplay. The problem is that it can also put some people off.
Review in French | Read full review
The playful formula of Amnesia: The Bunker is configured as the most articulated and varied in the entire history of the brand.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Experimenting will more often reveal methods that do not work rather than validating the loading screen’s impossibly lofty claim to player freedom. Further, the resource scarcity that drives the game is hardly conducive to experimentation, doing more to keep you strictly on the path of least resistance. What motive is there to waste a precious gas can on some hare-brained scheme when you know for sure that it will work just fine in the generator? Certainly the more restrictive means of progression in The Bunker has its own pleasures even within a more open framework, but the game insists on calling a shot that it has no hope of making.
And perhaps that is the greatest success of this game, beyond the monsters that terrify us so much, to understand what war really means. In understanding that, at a certain point, there is no longer a border between good and evil, but that everyone is part of evil and the true border is between those who can live with it and those who cannot.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Amnesia: The Bunker felt like it was somehow different from its predecessors. The puzzle-heavy horror game and a hint of resource management give the anxiety of suddenly plunging into danger. I felt like the franchise made a different approach but in the end of the day it’s worth the adventure.
While 'Amnesia: The Bunker' is a brief, albeit very replayable experience, we’d wager that even the most grizzled survival horror veterans will be clenching their sphincters as they navigate Frictional Games' masterclass in terror. The overhauled gameplay loop is a welcome change, though 'The Bunker' does fall victim to the same shortcomings as its predecessors, which makes it feel somewhat dated in places.
Amnesia: The Bunker is a fantastic return to form for the developers behind The Dark Descent. If you want to experience terror locked in a dark cupboard underground, this is the game that will get you there. (Review Policy)
Amnesia: The Bunker is a truly terrifying experience that will keep you on the edge of your seat and your sanity. The overall experience is thrilling amidst all the horror, leaving me (almost) craving more. Almost.
At its core, Amnesia: The Bunker is a monster of the week horror game that dips into the Amnesia lore pool but still feels more than accessible to someone who hasn't played or watched the games before. While the controls are rigid, the game shines in its use of atmosphere and survival elements which many will find enjoyable. The Bunker will have you running for your life in a deadly game of cat and mouse, even if the ending feels a little lacklustre.
While the classic Amnesia gameplay is available here in a lot of ways, it’s mixed with some underwhelming, poorly balanced monster gameplay that doesn’t work as well as it should.
Amnesia: The Bunker is Frictional's best entry in the series since The Dark Descent. Its environmental design and mechanics offer multiple solutions for problems, and its use of darkness leads to some genuine dread. Just don't go in expecting a very long experience.
Previous Amnesia games have repeatedly fallen behind the horror that haunted the castle in the original game, but Amnesia: The Bunker is already showing potential in this regard. Bunker still feels like an exciting and increasingly important step forward for the Amnesia series. Players will love the change in the scale of the gameplay and the bigger storytelling and the new ways to interact with the world our hero is in. Having weapons and all the explosions you will bring back can change the atmosphere a lot but I will say they are not endless, and what will happen when you are left alone with the monster?