The Best Gaming Moments of 2010

Joe – Amnesia: The Dark Descent

For the first time in years, I actually feel spoiled for choice when it comes to picking a favourite game. This year has been overflowing with titles that match my personal tastes.

Just Cause 2 and Dead Rising 2, for example, would probably be the two games I've played the most this year. Both offer up huge sandboxes to explore at your leisure, as well as enough fun to entertain you without drowning you in complexity. While other games this year grasped for new innovations and features, it was refreshing to see two games that did little more than give players some tools and tell them to make their own fun.

In the end, though, Just Cause 2 and Dead Rising 2 didn't make the shortlist because, like many other games this year, it was the experience as a whole that I liked, rather than any particular moment. Once you've seen one explosion or decapitated zombie, you've seen them all.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent's water guardian sequence, however, stands out as a unique gaming experience.


The set-up is your usual, cliché-ridden horror schtick. You wake up as an amnesiac in an ancient castle where monsters and ghosts stalk you, and a trail of notes compels you to delve further into the fortress. The first few levels are fairly standard for this type of horror game – you explore the three different wings of the first floor, gathering the supplies you need to progress to the next stage. Finally, with your key assembled, you step through the door and watch the next level load.

The first thing you notice is that there's water everywhere. You're standing in a long, dark and gothic corridor, and everything is flooded and in disarray. Barrels and bookcases drift through the murk, disturbed by the wake of an invisible monster that's rapidly closing in on you. Huge splashes of water hint at the size of the threat as it charges towards you. Weaponless, you search for refuge, eventually climbing out of the water in the process, at which point....silence. Whatever was chasing you has stopped in its tracks.


The rest of this level unfolds in terrifying staccato; catch your breath, plunge into the water, swim forward and try to climb on to nearby flotsam as fast as you can. It's tense, but not particularly difficult, until you reach a closed door.

I wasn't especially worried when I reached this point. I figured that I'd gained enough ground on the beast and would have no problem hopping from crate to crate as soon as I got the door open. I remember thinking to myself that it couldn't be any more difficult than the similar ant-lion sequence in Half-Life 2. I ran forward, opened the door and dashed beyond, the creature snapping at my heels.

The corridor, however, was empty. There was nothing to climb onto. I actually squealed with fright as I rushed ahead, turning a corner only to see a makeshift barricade that I'd have to shift in record time. By the end of the level I was visibly sweating, had become a laughing stock for my colleagues and had a new appreciation for how scary games can be when they're intelligently designed.

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