For the record, they document the improvements made to the control scheme on their dev blog here:

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/09/lets-not-forget-about-physics.html

Some quotes:

"In Penumbra, you had to make sure to interact with the door at the right place to open it properly, which made it hard to close / open doors in stressful situations. Not so in Amnesia. Here you can click anywhere on the door and it will easy to control it."

"A further improvement is that doors will now stay closed / opened. In Penumbra they sometimes bounced back at you, but in Amnesia that is all fixed saving the player from many virtual/real headaches."

"Drawers will now react faster to player movements and it is possible to have more control (in Penumbra drawers could continue sliding after you stopped moving). And just like doors, the drawers will get stay open / closed, without any annoying bouncing."

They also discuss a lot of their design decisions in depth on their blog - very interesting stuff.

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-horror-games-suck.html

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Sep 19, 2010, 13:05:
I played Penumbra: Overture, one of their earlier games, and I was really, really pissed off at the control scheme for moving objects in 3d.

Amnesia looked graphically much improved, but very similar to the Penumbra series, so I didn't buy it or even try the demo yet. I was hoping to get used to the 3d control scheme enough in Penumbra to not totally cloud my opinion of Amnesia.

To me, the manipulation system feels more responsive than Overture - I don't think I've found it to be frustrating in Amnesia at all. You also don't need to rotate many objects to complete puzzles or try to kill dogs with a hammer, so it's mostly tossing crates around, opening doors and drawers, etc.

As far as graphics go, the textures can be a bit cartoonish and the poly counts low, but the lighting effects (EDIT: which are much improved over their past games) are where the engine excels, so it sort of balances out in the middle.

Yes, it IS a similar style of game to Overture and uses a similar control system, but much more effort has been put into the storyline and presentation. They really ramp up the disturbing factor in this one! You should at least give the demo a shot to see if if feels any better to you (especially before lecturing Frictional about it).

eRe4s3r wrote on Sep 5, 2010, 11:08:
Granted the Demo is very short, less than 10 minutes even with exploring so maybe it was just all condensed for the demo, in reality the scares might be a lot more subtle

Yep, that's pretty much it. They have a post about the demo on their blog that explains how they put it together:

"However, it is still in some sense a hacked-up version of the "real thing" and misses a lot of the atmospheric build-up."

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/2010/09/amnesia-demo-is-out.html

Surf wrote on Aug 17, 2010, 13:49:
More console heavily scripted crap. Why play it? Why not just have someone play the game, make a movie of it and sell it at a theatre.

Exactly. I wouldn't mind so many games taking this path if there were more titles for "the rest of us". More emphasis on emergent gameplay and tactics, less painfully typical camp dialogue. Slow it down and create some tension and atmosphere. More emphasis on the little touches and details. Metro 2033 was chock full of little touches that, to me, really enhanced the experience beyond what its gameplay mechanics allowed.

As for Stalker 2, my jury's still out until we can learn more details. The cross-platform development news really killed my hopes, though :(.

Ray Marden wrote on Jun 29, 2010, 17:15:
If they could just evolve it a bit, they'd have a fairly good game. It really screams out for a larger world to play in with more opportunities to explore a hinted at richness.

Yeah, I feel as though they should keep going with the Stalker similarities (I don't know the whole story about that) and mimic their open-world gameplay. Being able to explore and have random, unscripted encounters would be fantastic.

StingingVelvet wrote on Jun 29, 2010, 13:53:
It's more than pretty good I thought, it is a very well crafted and unique experience...

Agreed - you can sense that a lot of heart has gone into this project. The music, the level design, the graphics (which dropped my jaw more than a few times), all of the little touches, they all come together in such a cohesive way.

I hope they tighten up the actual gameplay for this next one, though, and maybe work on making the scripting feel a little less intertwined with the action sequences...

So many Quake memories!

Amen! I actually have Heat.net to thank for getting me playing online for the first time around '96-'97. That first night of fragging real people is probably my fondest PC-gaming memory and instantly convinced me that online-gaming was the future :).

GTA IV is definitely the benchmark and I'll be very impressed (and pleasantly surprised) if they can surpass it.

PHJF wrote on Jan 25, 2010, 15:17:
Wrote the score to BioShock? The only music I remember from BioShock was the old timey radio stuff.

Heh - having just started playing through it again recently, you only really hear music at key moments in the game, with some ambient tracks in-between from time-to-time. Nothing memorable, admittedly, but it does its job well.

This comment was edited on Jan 25, 2010, 15:35.

Quboid wrote on Jan 21, 2010, 13:47:
A good TV series doesn't mean a good game. Look at movie tie-ins.

I'd like to see the Top Gear test track in games so I could watch Top Gear and then try to beat Stig's time in the most similar vehicle in Forza/GT/NFS:Shift/other. That's the sole tie-in I can think of that would be worth implementing.

There's that and maybe recreating some of those beautiful mountain passes they've been to over the years. I've been dying for a driving sim to head back to the style of older Need for Speed games of supercars battling it out on public roads in interesting locales - I think Porsche Unleashed comes the closest to what I'm talking about.

This comment was edited on Jan 21, 2010, 16:06.

When I first played through years ago I started with the Marine campaign because I loved the "spook" factor that the demo gave a healthy taste of. An atmosphere of dread and hopelessness pearmeates each level and you never truly feel safe or unexposed, which to me is EXACTLY why it was so terrifying progessing through the levels. And even once you get to the end of a level you can't really relax because you know the next level will likely be worse!

Unfortunately, I just can't convince myself that they'll be able to create as terrifying an experience with this next one, but I definitely won't be disappointed if I'm proven very wrong ;).

This comment was edited on Jan 15, 2010, 15:51.

Unfortunately, as awesome as that would be, I can't see this game being anywhere near RBR. More often than not, "realistic" means "slightly less arcade-y". They focus on making everything look and sound good and then skimp on the actual driving model. If a dev team would just make something like RBR but include a gamut of options to make it easier for the casual WRC fan then they'd likely please both sides of the market and maybe even convince some people to ramp up the difficulty and really learn about throwing a car around.

Some may roll their eyes at that last part, but there definitely is some skill crossover from the virtual race seat to real life if you have a proper wheel running at 900-degrees (pretty accurate for most sporty cars).

This is one example from a member on the Live For Speed forums:

I don't race about on roads, and specifically booked a track day to learn my car.

I've never pushed it at speed before, so ALL my instinct reactions come entirely from LFS. Particularly how at first I deemed the LX-6 undriveable under any kind of aggression, but then learned to catch it before it went bad.

Probably not a big deal for anyone seasoned, but this is my first track day, and my first time really pushing the car, or any RWD car at high speed.

video

Dooble-post

This comment was edited on Sep 20, 2009, 13:26.

This bit of info comes to mind from a magazine article earlier this year:

"Proper beta-testing promised, thanks to the new company they hired and less tech experimentation than in CS"

Who knows what this will result in but I'm at least hopeful of an improvement over CS - third time's a charm, right? ...hello?

This comment was edited on Sep 20, 2009, 13:27.

I'm not one to normally go as far as openly complaining about HDR because I think it looks alright if used subtly, but Arcania is a perfect example of too-muchery. How can they possibly think that this looks good? Am I supposed to imagine I've been popping extacy?

http://www.rpgwatch.com/files/Images/00-0280/ArcaniaGamesCom2009screen10.jpg

Very funny - the general editing and delivery for the voice-over were both spot-on. It's a shame it hasn't been getting much attention around the interwebs (digg, youtube, etc).

Dmitri_M: Didn't you make the exact same complaint (which has nothing to do with the game itself) in another thread? What's the point in repeating your story?

Because you still haven't figured it out yet, whoever hosts the server can do so however they like and it's up to you to decide whether or not it's worth staying or switching to a new one.

Wildone: Providing access to all vehicles early on wouldn't allow the devs to control the flow of the story and missions as they wanted, I'm guessing.

The way they've done it they can introduce new elements gradually to keep it interesting and also make sure that the player learns how to use a wide variety of weapons/vehicles. If they provided you with tanks right off the bat then what's the incentive to use anything else? Seeing the tanks parked near your base early on is just done for "decoration" purposes.

Whether or not this is the best way to go is obviously a matter of personal preference, but I don't mind it, myself - the infantry combat has always been my favorite part :).

Aside from the occasional framerate stuttering that's fixed with an alt-tab, it actually runs a lot better than I was expecting (X2 5600+/2gb ram/4850 512mb). Graphically, it's very nice, especially the lighting. However, it still has that slightly awkward feeling to the movement and environment interaction that every past game has had (not that I can't live with it!).

It was far from perfect, but I remember enjoying all three campaigns in AvP2. The marine levels were definitely tense enough! I remember playing the demo mission at 2 or 3 in the morning (the marine mission that starts with some spooky exploration and turns into you running for your life through the ventillation shafts as aliens burst into the room). It wasn't brown-trousers scary but they did a good job of ramping up the tension and when things started to go bad in a hurry it definitely spooked me out.

That being said, no game has ever freaked me out me as much as the original AvP! The underground lab in STALKER (the one where things start flying around on their own) probably comes closest to capturing that same feeling, where you don't want to keep moving but you know standing still is almost as bad. I think it's just that most horror/survival games never make it feel like you're being actively hunted. It's when you really have to look over your shoulder that I think it gets the most tense.

Oh, the hours of hilarity that OFP used to produce back in the day, not to mention the more serious wargaming that was possible.

The huge islands really were the stars of the game and the group of guys I used to play with (~20-30 guys, all with mics and - thankfully - almost all 30+ and ex-military) would have training missions lasting several hours at once, meaning lots of terrain to cross on foot while trying not to be spotted. The missions were always exceedingly difficult with the odds stacked against those on the "good" side, so we didn't always win, but it didn't matter. Some of the most fun I've had online, ever, and playing with (mostly) ex-soldiers really helped to authenticate the experience.

That being said, we had a LOT of connection issues when trying to get some games going. One or two people would often drop right when the map loaded, meaning we all had to go back to the lobby and try again. I remember wasting 45mins+ almost every time we played because it was such a pain getting everything set-up and running smoothly with connections coming from all across North America.

Anyhow, here's hoping for at least a partial-revival of the same goodness and a step up with the netcode.