At her most vulnerable, a rapid, violent succession of images even flash across the screen-a scare that never ceases to be utterly petrifying, even when you are expecting it. You'll instinctively learn to be wary and terrified of these lightless places, as when Tasi lingers too long in them, her panic will become palpable: her breathing becomes more ragged, and her vision turns blurry and crinkles with black, sinuous lines, seeping in from all corners of the screen like a poisonous miasma.

Tasi traverses down a reluctant path into unfamiliar, otherworldly territories-most of them being horrendously murky caves and darkened stretches of corridors. Like being trapped in the noxious belly of a malevolent beast, the scorching Algerian desert feels actively antagonistic, a tumorous slosh of natural and body horror that threatens to digest and consume you whole. Rebirth's nightmarish spaces and Tasi's anxiety are such constant reminders of your impending danger that any discordant note or sign will swiftly shove your heart into your throat. Only through following the trail of breadcrumbs left behind by her crew, in the form of broken debris and discarded notes, can she piece together the truth behind her dreadful circumstances, and unravel the reason behind her fraught mental state. As with the protagonists of previous Amnesia games, Tasi somehow has no recollection of the events in the aftermath of the crash, and zero knowledge behind the abrupt disappearance of her colleagues. You'll relive all the trepidation of the survival horror experience as Tasi Trianon, an ill-fated engineer who is left stranded when the plane she's on crashes onto the sandy dunes of the blistering Algerian desert. Rebirth accomplishes this through an achingly gradual build-up to an unnerving cerebral horror, a clever ploy that renders every jump scare-which is, admittedly, not as frequent as you may expect-extremely potent, like a brief discharge of the pent-up jitters. When you don't see one, a sense of relief sets in-only for some monstrosity to materialize right behind you, its growl dialed up to a crescendo.Īmnesia: Rebirth, the sequel to horror classic Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Frictional Games, has managed to turn this trick into a masterful sleight-of-hand, conjuring a ghoulish survival horror that gnaws at your psyche. We're all familiar with such moments: you turn around a corner in anticipation of an unimaginable terror.

Jump scares have been relegated to the damnable pits of B-movie schtick, a gimmick of the horror genre that's synonymous with cheap, low-effort frights. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.

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