GAME REVIEW: Amnesia: Justine (Amnesia: Collection, PS4)

Amnesia Justine

I think I may have gravely underestimated the depth of Amnesia: Collection when I decided to review all of its games separately.

Coming in at just over an hour long (if you know what you’re doing), Amnesia: Justine is easily the most brisk of the bunch, whizzing by and ending without you even realising you’re getting started. Where The Dark Descent liked to very slowly extend its claws towards your neck, Justine has no qualms with going straight for the jugular. It half works.

Almost immediately, Justine shows itself to be a more abrupt experience, waking you up as the titular hero and asking you to escape from a cell. Shortly after, you’re introduced to the add-on’s main monsters, The Suitors: sometimes comically shanty aberrations who love to just sort of amble into view. There are no theatrics to their sudden appearance – they just are. Revealing what their role is in the larger story of Justine would spoil the expansion’s best element: its story.

Amnesia games are famed for having twisting, often shocking tales, and Justine is no different. The why and how Justine woke up in isolation is just something you will have to find out for yourself, but just like its bigger brother, The Dark Descent, Justine doesn’t want you getting comfortable. It also doesn’t want you to feel safe as if you die once, you have to start over again. I learned that the hard way after not taking the threat of the goody Suitors seriously, almost jokingly jaunting up to them at one point to find out what happens. Once I realised the elevated stakes, I found them becoming far more effective in the scares department, but still no Gatherers.

Compared to the previous game, Justine is much more mechanically strict. It gifts you with an oil lamp early on, though never the oil to go with it – your sanity can drain rather quickly if left in the dark for too long. It’s all on a straight and fixed path, never really offering much in the way of exploration or a driving force other than the one getting you from one gruesome Saw-like trap to the next.

Justine is given many choices throughout the game, almost all of them being a case of life or death. Should she kill the captured men stuck in traps or try to figure out a way to set them loose? The latter is far easier as in typical Amnesia fashion, the solution is either hidden or obtusely presented. It’s a tried and tested way of padding out limited and insular horror games, but not one that I have ever been fond of. Puzzles within horror games can either build tension or flatten it completely – Amnesia seems to do the latter for me.

Hardly possessing enough depth to warrant its own review, Justine will provide a fun distraction for anyone wanting more of a quick Amnesia pick-me-up. For everyone else, it just sort of is. It’s not bad, it’s not outstanding. It just is.

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