Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a terrifying game. It's the scariest game I've ever played, and I've been playing horror games since Resident Evil 2. Amnesia's atmosphere is pitch-perfect. Each minute that grinds past you is as nail-bitingly horrific as the previous one. Therein lies the problem.

The game never lets up. 

Fear is a stressful and tiring emotion. It gets the adrenaline flowing and heart pumping. Playing through The Dark Descent exhausted me on an emotional and physical level because I never felt safe anywhere. The dank and oppressive nature of the title's castle setting devoured me completely. I loved it for that, but at the same time, it turned me off.

At times I would just need to get up from my computer and do something else. I needed a break from the terror. Other fans of the horror genre understand this. Horror literature and films are never completely scary experiences because the lulls in tension give the audience a chance to rest.

Films such as John Carpenter's The Thing, Alien, or Psycho provide momentary respites from the fear. Characters do what people normally do. They eat, drink, and interact with each other. The scares come at the viewer in waves. We see the chest burster for the first time, and then it scurries off. The alien in The Thing is only revealed intermittently. Most of the tension comes from the characters not knowing who to trust. I'm not holding my breath for the entirety of those films' running times. 

The same can be said for books. I'm a big fan of H.P. Lovecraft's work. He operated mostly within the medium of the short story. Since he had a limited amount of space to work with, tension was usually built from the very first word in his fiction. That being said, when I read his pieces, I'm not left choking on fear and anxiety the entire time.

All the books that I've read in the genre build toward their scares. They don't set the tone at the beginning and keep it at the same level the entire time. 

Even most games know when to give the player a break. You're never alone in the Resident Evil series. Characters you're cut off from will show up again eventually to give you a helping hand or some conversation.

In Dead Space, a game where the enemies come out of the walls, moments of safety also exist. The game lets players know when they're secure or in danger. For example, a quarantine in a medical lab let me know I was in trouble. When I killed the last Necromorph, the quarantine was lifted. I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on. 

Amnesia doesn't have lulls. The game is a one-way train to Scaresville. However, that's not the worst thing in the world. The title succeeded in scaring me more times in its first hour than the aforementioned games did in their entireties. I love it for that. What I don't love was the high blood pressure it gave me and the uninterrupted stream of heart attacks. 

Hyperbole aside, it's my favorite horror game because it succeeds at scaring me, something not every "horror" release can accomplish. It could have given me a break every now and then though.

It's not easy to get through a game where I'm constantly trying to catch my breath.