Reviews - Painful Memories mod for Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The lack of a lantern RUINED this story for me. To hear the constant crunching sound and to keep losing sanity throughout the entire story was just too much. The first half also had WAY too many lengthy hallways that looked exactly the same. Just hallway after hallway after more hallways. The voice acting was also some of the worst I have ever heard. And the bugs. In the lengthy hallway section, there was what looked like car headlights gleaming through the walls. That was quite distracting. Maybe if a lantern was provided then the story could have been better.

GREAT, but I just started it. We'll see how it unfolds... Anyway, 10/10 for now.

Whats long, hard and a bit ****** at the end? Not this mod! Oh let me tell you the wonders I have seen.

First of all lets get to the good points and by that I mean all the points.

When I first downloaded this mod I was a bit skeptical, I mean I had never heard of these authors before and the reviews were a little "meh" but as quick as I was to be skeptic, the mod quickly changed my mind.

Lets start with the voice acting. Man, I honestly cannot tell the difference between this and professional quality voice acting. The immersion it brings to the mod is on a whole other level, clearly the work of an expert.

What about the mapping you ask? Well I only have one word for it and I'm going to leave it to that. Flawless, amazing and balanced. Okay, okay I admit that is 3 words, but I couldnt contain myself.

Alright, onto the scripting. Now I dont delve to much into scripting myself but from what I can tell by my immersion it was perfect and I'll leave it at that.

Music was awesome and only served to make my immersion even deeper.

Last but especially not least, the storyline. I'm going to be honest with you and tell you that this storyline had me sitting at the edge of my chair in anticipation and horror. I wont spoil anything about it as its best for you to experience it yourself.

Conclusion; Solid 11/10 , looking forward to your future mods! :)

~ MouseG

Positives:

- Custom entities
- Custom music
- Longer than expected

Negatives:

- Maps are way larger than they need to be
- Boring, repetitive, lack of mementos
- Floating objects
- Bugs
- Broken boss battle at the end

- Lack of voice actors
- Antagonist is so cliché it's unreal
- No autosave anywhere

Wow... where do I even start? Last time I played one of your mods, I rated it 3/10. This mod is better in some aspects, but fails miserably on other parts.

Story:

The story is so overly cliché it's unreal. Especially the antagonist. "I will kill you! Ahahaha!"

If I asked someone to look up the definition of cliché, this is it. Antagonist has the most cliché motives in history, with a mega cliché laugh and comebacks.

It wasn't interesting for me at all. I have seen so many other mods with the exact same plot, only with different set-ups and enviroments.

Level design:

Welcome to corridor simulator! I don't undertand this. I really don't understand why every new modder make maps 5 times larger than they need to be, with corridor after corridor after corridor. It's not fun to run around aimlessly like this!

I also found tiny wheelchairs (this is likely a glitch caused by version 1.3, I have seen this before), floating oxygen tanks randomly placed in corridors for no reason, and lamps which are off, but there is still light coming from them... ^^

However, some parts, like the underground lab, have creativity. I liked the rat cage for example.

Gameplay:

Same quest over and over again. Find the key, find the crowbar, find the drill, find the key *Repeat 8 times*. Where is the creativity guys? You showed some creativity with the levels, why not here as well?

Voice acting:

Some of the voice acting was pretty good actually, and I don't expect good quality from mods like this. However, why did you use only 2 people for it? Even the wife sounds like a guy ^^ Come on guys... you couldn't ask the community for help? Don't you have a female friend you could ask? Anyone? ^^

And during protagaonist and antagonist conversations, it sounded like the same guy simply talking with himself, because they use the same voice actor ^^

Bugs:

You need to make trees "passable", meaning you can't collide with them. It's not enough to just add block boxes if any of the trees are outside it. They made me fall out of the map.

The boss battle... wow, didin't bug test too well did you? Instead of jumping down to the ground, I decided to jump on to the candles on the right - battle was still triggered and monsters couldn't reach me. I was literally standing there the entire battle, looking at youtube videos while waiting for it to end.

Conclusion:

You guys seem unable to make a good mix between level design, story and gameplay. In the first mod I rated, you had a cliché story, but the level design was bland. In your second mod, the story wasn't there at all, but the level design was better.

In this mod, story is even more cliché than before and you took a step back with the level design. However on a positive note, the hospital looks decent. A bit empty, but at least decent, you decided to voice act, which was good, only wish you hired someone more, and you use custom stuff.

Overall, it's much longer than the other mods I played by you, and it is better in some aspects, but I can't rate it higher than your other mod, because the antagonist is so mega cliché, it was cringy to play, the maps are waaaaay too big, repetitive and the last battle is so easily broken.

3/10 - Bad

Hope I'm not sounding too harsh, I know you have great potential. You just need to focus as much on the level design as you do with story and gameplay, and think of something less cliché and I'm sure you can do better. Good luck guys.

I hope that my rerview is a bit constructive...
Yes, this mod has more quantity than the quality.
There are no puzzles, just the usual "find the key" or something to pry the door.
The rooms (that are tons) are pretty empty, that is unreal.
I personally hate to find a key in the fireplace, or on the top of a door. No one in this world place a key in the fireplace... why?
The voice acting is good, but also the notes as voice acting.
The two voice acting sometimes intersect one of the other, so if you ear one voice, you cannot ear the voice note.
Lack of mementos. Hard to continue withouth how to do.
But...
Mapping good, scripting good... there is all a promise to do a fantastic mod in the future, because the know-how is very good.

I finished all of them and neither of those series Impressed me with joy.

However, I liked the design at points, but there are too many repetitive maps just going over and over and just searching keys or different items. I liked mansion, but it was just frustrating to proceed overall and just watching those same wallpapers which was really boring and repetitive and then couple monsters here and there chasing me, i really didn't find any originality on this mod. It was just bland and not that scary.

Boss fight was nice add, but really poorly executed, I was running like crazy and died many times, but still managed to beat it, because if you die once and timer resets, it's painful to go all that chasing part again.

Voice acting was pretty good and strong point on this mod, everything else just flats and becomes easily boring to experience all those maps.

I appreciate effort on the design, but I think you have to improve a lot from the design, because it was really repetitive and annoying to find and search just too much overall.

Pos:

- Story
- Music
- Voice acting
- Lenght

Neg:

- Confusing and annoying to find items or progress at times

- Repetitive at times, need's refreshing experience too

- Bland and repetitive design

- Average map designing, lightning too

You tried and you didn't wowed me at all, I liked the story how it goes, but experience is really flat and should improve a lot, but thanks for the experience. Now you guys only can improve further now and get better. Don't ever rush, quality over quantity is my phrase when making mods.

5/10 - Average ride to play