“This Game Should Not Be Played to Win”: Playing Amnesia: Rebirth Before it Leaves Game Pass

I haven't seen many people talk about Amnesia: Rebirth. 

This silence, by default, could be interpreted as it being a weak link in the otherwise decorated series. The first entry,  Amnesia: The Dark Descent, was churning out viral clips of players screaming into their mics years before Five Nights at Freddy’s turned jump scares into big business. By the following Halloween, it was already appearing on lists of the scariest games of all time. I’ve never read a piece that doesn’t consider SOMA a triumph (while not technically an Amnesia game, we lump Bloodborne and Sekiro in with the Souls series and I feel the same treatment applies here). Amnesia: The Bunker was almost universally praised for taking the franchise in new directions. As the lettuce in this influential sandwich, any accolades that Rebirth once had have faded. I vaguely remember it receiving average reviews upon release and not much else. This is a good thing coming back to it in 2024. If I’m not riding the zeitgeist and experiencing something in the moment I want to be surprised, (I want to be scared). You could even say I have amnesia about all the baggage, good and bad, surrounding the project. 

I’m sorry, let’s get on with the review. 

Some additional context for anyone reading this without a video game background (translation: my family). Game Pass is a Microsoft subscription service. It operates similar to Netflix or any other streaming platform. Titles cycle in, titles cycle out, and you usually have a warning of about two weeks before a game is dropped. It’s enough of a window to impulsively play a cozy indie (or, apparently, a terrifying puzzle adventure), but probably not enough for that 50+ hour RPG you’ve been putting off. Seeing something intriguing in the “leaving soon” section has been my push to finally take the plunge on multiple occasions (god forbid I actually have to pay for it). I enjoy digital athleticism every so often–and in this case it’s definitely a sprint, not a marathon. 

Okay, on to the review for real this time.

In Rebirth you play as Tasi. You’re on a mysterious expedition when the plane goes down in the Algerian Desert. After you’ve wiped the sand from your eyes, you set out to find your husband, decipher the fate of your party, and survive the elements (which, this being a horror title, quickly turns into surviving nastier things). Within ten minutes it’s obvious that there’s more going on narratively than what is being presented (even if you discount the flashes of an alien city we see in the opening cutscene). You’re retracing your steps, but how could that be possible if our story begins with pulling ourselves from the wreckage? She’s an unreliable narrator–but also doesn’t recall enough details to convincingly lie to us. It’s almost like she has amnesia about–never mind, she actually does. 

From that first area, sheltered from the sun beneath the crumpled wing of your aircraft, I was impressed by the assets. Not much is being endlessly reused to clutter tabletops and shelves. Some items, like cameras and sextants, I don’t recall appearing in any other location. They look good, feel lovingly crafted, and despite being entirely handled by disembodied limbs two feet in front of your character, carry an appropriate weight. I spent too long at the crash site picking through every piece of luggage. This wasn’t conducive to finishing before my arbitrary deadline (or before the sun boiled the skin off my bones). 

Also from those first steps, I imagine most players will take issue with the movement speed. I’d argue it’s more deliberate than slow. It’s the pace you’d expect a real person to keep while crossing crumbling floorboards or shifting sand (or sneaking past spindly creatures). However, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t regularly check if the crouch was toggled on. 

I’ve always been interested in the unique challenge of injecting horror into sun-scarred landscapes (these might not be the most original examples, but Resident Evil 5 and Spec Ops: The Line come to mind). And while you begin by scurrying from shadow to shadow to survive the dunes, you employ the opposite tactic as soon as you move below ground. Staying in the dark for too long floods Tasi with intrusive thoughts and drains her sanity. Luckily, there’s a wide variety of darknesses–from an otherworldly emerald to a dusty red as the setting sun bleeds through dirty windows. It helps differentiate the environments over the nine hour runtime. 

Eventually you’ll pick up a lantern that guzzles oil like someone who orders extra dressing at an Olive Garden unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks lunch; but until then, matches are your most precious resource. Each strike of sulfur on phosphorus transforms Rebirth into a game of how many torches and braziers can you reach before the flame winks out (the faster you run, the faster the matches burn). In those early areas when you don’t have any frame of reference for their scarcity, the designers knew exactly how many to give you. Finding two is worthy of taking a deep breath–three feels like a miracle. Unfortunately, you can’t ignite the dry brush and kindling that litters your path and pokes through the rock. It’s probably an unrealistic expectation that an indie would include a fire propagation system, but it was a stark and regular reminder I was playing a video game, and therefore, playing by Frictional’s rules. 

The majority of the narrative plays out in notes and flashbacks. The voice acting is mostly strong, and despite face-to-face meetings with your former comrades being sparse, I had no issue keeping the members of the sizable cast straight. Disappointingly, the story also has an over-reliance on Tasi waking up in new locations. It’s a convenient way to teleport where we need to be (some stretches already involve too much walking–I’m looking at you dust mote dark world), but it happened so frequently my suspension of disbelief began to sag. If Tasi really is being knocked out repeatedly, she should enter concussion protocol and take the rest of the game off. 

After a few “levels,” Tasi remembers that she’s pregnant (again, amnesia, I blame the concussions). This introduces a mechanic where the player can press a button to check on their unborn child (from a gameplay perspective, this allows you to calm your nerves represented by black tendrils squirming at the screen’s edge). I recently finished Boltgun which included a dedicated button for screaming at heretics. More games that aren’t already utilizing every trigger, toggle, and stick should add something unique to the world they’re building. As controllers get more complicated, I feel there’s real potential here.   

The “game over” sequence is as terrible as any I’ve ever experienced. Getting grabbed by a ghoul or smacked one too many times means being treated to 20 seconds of flashing images followed by Tasi writhing around for an additional 20 as she collects herself. “I need to keep going,” she repeats in an effort to convince herself to persevere and convince us not to turn the console off. You could argue that there’s a narrative reason that death is presented this way, but I would have preferred anything else. I only met my maker maybe five times during my playthrough, but each was accompanied by an eye roll and a quick bathroom break or water refill. 

Sadly, this consistent blow to the pacing isn’t the worst thing I encountered in eldritch Algiers.

I was 80% of the way through the story when my Series X hard crashed. This crash occurred at the end of an unskippable, five minute tram ride. Rebirth auto saves in the background on console (the only way to save manually is to quit to the main menu) so my lost progress didn’t crush my morale. No big deal, I thought, it had been smooth sailing to that point. This was nothing more than a hiccup. 

I loaded, boarded the tram, and it crashed again. 

Apparently this is a known issue that has plagued the game for years. One forum suggested I replay the previous level. I did–another crash. A different post said I could circumvent the glitch by moving slowly. This time I kept my eyes trained on the tile to avoid overstimulating Tasi (or my console’s memory, I guess). Crash. After fiddling with various fixes for an hour, I did what any sane person invested in the story would do…

I watched the last hour on YouTube. 

That probably paints the title of this piece (which is also the line that opens the game) in a new light. 

So the real question, and the point of this review I suppose, should you bother playing it? If you manage to hack your way past the tram of death, it has multiple endings, and while they do a sufficient job of explaining what has been going on the whole time, I ultimately found each unsatisfying. As I mentioned in the intro, I played on Game Pass which meant my financial investment was minimal (and was probably the difference between my tech issues being annoying and devastating). It’s not an exaggeration to say it saved the experience. Amnesia: Rebirth is the embodiment of the cliche that it’s the journey, not the destination. If you decide to make the trek across the desert, just be aware that in all likelihood, your final destination is an error window on your homescreen.