Frostedge
Frost joined
My name is Frostedge, or Frost Edge, or just Frost. I started getting into Amnesia: TDD after watching a Let's Play. I'd only played F.E.A.R. before that, and that game made me cower under the desk everytime a small dust cloud came by. When I first started playing Amnesia, I got that horrifying opening door sequence that gave me 'Nam like flashbacks to F.E.A.R., it also made me realise that my desk had become too small for me to hide under. That's when I realised that this was a good horror game. I was not scared enough to hide under the desk, yet I was too scared to simply push a button that would make Daniel walk forward into more nightmares. I applaud FrictionalGames for making this masterpiece. But it was not enough, Frictional had added a Custom Story section. This blew my mind, the things people could come up with. From random funny maps to absolute art in both horror and storytelling. I wanted to contribute to that, and that's why I'm here.
Reviews
To be honest, if this is really inspired by the Thief series, it's missing the main point of the entire franchise, player-controlled sneaking.
The voice-acting is subpar, and often drowned out completely by the ambient music. Having subtitles would cure this problem, sadly, it's absent. Practically any text in the game has butchered grammar and bad spelling.
Forcing the player's view to every single group of guards undermines the player's capability to fail or be surprised by anything other than what's meant to be surprising. The entire story is unnecessarily linear with blockboxes harrassing the player at every turn and destroying any freedom the player has over the course of every mission.
All the while when trees are involved, these blockboxes are conspicuously absent. With the path not being very clear, it's easy to glitch into the trees and having to reload a save, or in my case, the entire story. For a second time, the first being when I accidentally crouched when meeting with my first mission-giver. Apparently, the game wrestled control away like it does in any "cut-scene", but there was no voice acting or progress for a minute, and I had to restart.
The guards are indeed, as they should be in any Thief game, blundering idiots who couldn't see in darkness for the life of them. But if that's all you've got going in the Custom Story that is supposed to remind us of Thief, then you'll need to replay the games and re-evaluate your mod.
Enemies don't move. The last time I played a Thief game, guards would chase your squishy thiefy behind through the streets to capture you. Instead, here, they stand still, being 'blundering' in their own non-comical ways.
Why haven't you just used edited Amnesia monsters to have a dynamic enemy, and then have the cutscenes/notes/text contain the humour? This could've been a lot better if the player had active influence, or even give the player multiple approaches to a problem.
This doesn't measure up to Thief in any way.
Impressive work, very detailed. Has a lot of different types of scares. Overall ambience is very well done.
The Good:
- Level design was impressive, the mansion parts were well done, as was the cellar.
- A very wide range of scares, from the best of jumpscares to the most creepy of ambience noises.
- Good use of the assets provided by the HPL Editor. I personally really liked the Library event with the portal. Very innovative and well implemented.
The Bad:
- The story is extremely flimsy, if it's even there at all at times.
- Whilst looking at Loki's Portal from the window, the building looked very bland. It's a shame, seeing as how well decorated everything else is.
- The part where you get taken to the Prison was extremely predictable, the scriptedness of the event more or less murdered my immersion.
And The Buggy:
- In the Prison, there is one of the low dungeon windows that you can view the jail cells from. If the player were to crouch in there for a better look, the ground plane extends too far into the window, trapping the player and forcing him/her to restart.
- Aside from a very few minor texture glitches, I have nothing else to mention.
The Verdict:
Very well done, nicely decorated, with a well designed castle and impressive scares and well used assets. Though the story is the only thing this Custom Story is lacking. Which is too bad, because if that had been good as well, this CS would have been a straight ten.
