What kind of self-respecting horror game kicks off in the middle of a desert under a blazing sun?
It's a bold choice for a series so intrinsically associated with gloomy corridors and shadowy corners and flailing around in the dark. It feels intentional, too, as you trudge across the dunes, desperately hugging the shade to avoid dropping dead of dehydration before the game's even really begun. Later, you'll realise how foolish to have doubted Frictional's ability to mess with you - this is an Amnesia game, after all, not Uncharted; there is no buried treasure to recover here - but revel in the sunshine while you can, my friend. It won't last long.
There's a lot about Amnesia: Rebirth that feels purposefully different, actually. Though it retains much of the horror series' famed DNA, Frictional has been astonishingly audacious here, inverting many of our expectations to craft something that's at once both familiar and utterly otherworldly, and an effective, if complex, tale that's wildly ambitious.