Justine

Ashley got so bored this evening, that she agreed to play a horror game so I could make another post for this blog.  Whenever I even mention Amnesia, she gives me this grimace and dirty look as if my butt just farted out an insult about her mom.

So to be fair, I did not force her to replay Amnesia: the Dark Descent.  Instead I forced her to play Amnesia: Justine!

You're an asshole, Steve.

Justine is the 2011 expansion for Amnesia that has a whole new story line and setting but features the same basic underwear-soiling gameplay.

The game began with the same prompts about lowering light and putting on headphones to create the perfect ambiance.  Ashley wasn't having any of that.

Fuck the darkness!

After the prompt the camera zooms into what looks like a shadowy, round hole to which Ashley exclaimed: "I feel like I'm walking into a sphincter." This was followed by the title screen and another camera zoom into a dark hole.

"And now I'm walking into a vagina.  What's with this game and all the weird orifice holes?!"

After entering the weird "orifice hole", the player regains consciousness in a dungeon cell next to a phonograph.  Something shambles past the jail cell doors and Ashley is already off to a shaky start. "There's somebody out there!  It needs a sandwich.  Am I supposed to go out there?  I'm perfectly fine staying here. Getting fed and eating sandwiches."

No crust please

With Surgeon Simulator-like dexterity Ashley attempted to turn the crank on the phonograph.  After a few tries she was able to get the record to play.  An exuberant voice welcomes the player to this "cabinet of perturbation" with the enthusiasm of a Roman emperor.  So now Ashley is the be the subject of a cruel experiment for the entertainment of a sadistic observer.  She's also forced to play Amnesia.  Har har har.    

Ashley didn't really pay close attention to the message on the record.  She was far more concerned with what was outside of her cell.  "Is something going to jump out at me? I need to know these things before I go to the bathroom!"   Risking the cleanliness of her computer chair, Ashley pressed on expertly "strafing" through the dingy corridors until she reached a large cell block.

A small bottle on a nearby table was the first thing to grab her attention.  "Is that a protein shake?" Her cursor highlighted the bottle revealing it to be laudanum.  "Laudanum?  Is that like Ensure?"

Yes, Ashley, it's Ensure.  Now with 20% more opiates!

Amnesia always knows when it is being mocked by a player and it retorts with ambient sounds that can make a grown woman whimper like a four-year-old.    Determined to get further than she did in Dark Descent, Ashley started playing music from her phone hoping to somehow transform the whole scenario into a Joss Whedon musical.

How do you find a girl like Justine?
With Amnesia she won't remember a thing!  

Alas the swing music failed to cue a jaunty tune about psychological experimentation.  It did, however, keep Ashley from hearing the monster that burst through the opposite side of the room.  By the time she turned around it was too late.  Ashley's survival instincts hadn't failed yet and she did what all panicked players do in this game: throw a barrel.

If it can kill a fat, Italian plumber, it can kill anything.

In Amnesia when monsters get hit with a thrown object they do two things: first, they momentarily stumble back in utter disbelief that the player hasn't started running yet; second, they charge forward like a rabid Sumo wrestler with diaper rash.

Aaaaaughibbrgubugbugrguburgle!

"I QUIT! I QUIT!  I QUIT!" Ashley chanted as she ran face-first into the corner of the cell block.  Her shaking hands managed to locate the escape button to pause the game.  "I'm done!  I'm done!  You're an asshole!" <cries>

I asked Ashley if she managed to get a good look at the monster before she quit.  "It looked like, okay so you know in Angel that demon that drank from his little friend in bondage gear?   The peepee demon! You know he said 'it smells like pee pee!'" 

Close enough.

The beginning...and then the end

We had to compromise on the atmosphere as Ashley refused to play in the dark with headphones on.  By the light of her Ikea floor lamp my fiancée cranked up the gamma and brightness to Spongebob levels and proceeded to enter a very brightly-lit Castle Brennenburg.

No, not like that...

Yeah, that's more like it.

As Daniel regains consciousness, Ashley takes stock of her surroundings.

"Are these rose petals or blood?"  Rain filters through the crumbling masonry and there's a clap of thunder through the windows.  "This must be Portland."

Ashley tries to get a hang of the controls but Daniel's insanity vision quickly turned the game into a sobriety test simulator.  "Seriously, am I tripping on acid or something?"

No dear, that part comes later.

Suspicious of anything that could trigger a jump scare, Ashley approaches practically all objects with suspicion.  The suit of medieval armor in the starting hall was inspected warily just to have its helmet torn from its body by my blood-thirsty fiancée.

Who's the real monster here?  Not I...

"I'm hitting your butt with your own head!  How does your butt smell?" Ashley taunted gleefully at the helpless inanimate armor.  Amnesia can detect such hubris in its players so when she dared to confidently stride down the hall, a sudden breeze blew open an adjacent door.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!  I'm done."  

So this is why she's afraid to enter supermarkets...

Ashley was able to regroup from the game's first intended jump scare but startled herself when she accidentally hurled a chamber pot to the floor.  "Oh oh!  It came at my face!  Heheheheheh"

The hallway shook and rattled in anger at the sudden loss of pottery and Ashley lost her nerve to continue past the second hallway.  

"I don't want to play this anymore."  Three minutes into the game.  She didn't even get to the lantern.  That's the power of Amnesia: its atmosphere.  There isn't even a single monster until a half-hour into the game but all it needed were sound effects and wind to scare off most players.  

Ashley's dark descent into Castle Brennenburg is done but that's probably for the best.  If she's too scared to sleep at night, then I'm not allowed to sleep either. :(

Anyawdy eee eye entures?

After exiting the game, Ashley opened Tropico where she could take on the role of cruel tormentor.  Maybe we could return to Amnesia another time but 10 minute intervals is enough for her.  In the mean time Generalissimo Ashley is going to deny her people basic healthcare and religious freedoms.  Viva la Revolucion!  

And now to turn all the corn crops into tobacco...

Prologue

There are a lot of things that scare my fiancée Ashley: spiders, ghosts, bees, cracking my knuckles, fibers on the carpet that look like spiders, I could go on.  So a game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent (the digital cure for pleasant dreams and constipation) should downright scare the ever-living crap out of her. 

Let me give a little background on this game.  In 2010 Frictional Games released another survival horror, first-person, puzzle, nightmare-inducer baring a slight resemblance to their Penumbra series.  The player takes on the role of Daniel, a British archeologist armed only with a lantern and superb voice acting.  You wake up in a puddle of Pepto-Bismol with no memory of why you are in a Prussian castle but know that some kind of reality-dissolving shadow monster is stalking you.

Ashley grew tired of setting fire to Sims this weekend and wanted to try something new.  I jokingly suggested Amnesia and surprisingly, she agreed.  My poor fiancée has no idea what she has gotten herself into.