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Amnesia: the Dark Descent is an excellent survival horror game, being perhaps one of the foremost examples of the genre done /right/. The game itself is very immersive, in one of the simplest ways possible: through the controls. Movement is quite simply "WASD", "L-SHIFT", "CTRL", and "SPACE", and to look around you just use your mouse. But that's not all the mouse is used for, you can also interact with most loose objects in the game (as well as doors, drawers, cupboards, etc.) by clicking on whatever and moving the mouse up/down/left/right in order to manipulate what you grab. To use doors, for example, you click on one and then either push or pull with the mouse, depending on how the hinges are oriented. For a wheel/knob, you click on one and then move the mouse in a circle in the direction the object needs to be rotated. The whole thing is so incredibly simple, yet it adds such a great immersion factor, you actually feel like /you/ are the one in the game opening doors.
Any sane human being has a healthy fear of the dark, or at least what may be lying within it. Your avatar, Daniel, has a very unhealthy fear of the dark, as prolonged exposure to it deteriorates his mental state, causing him to slowly go insane. Luckily, re-entering light restores his sanity. It is this very struggle to maintain his sanity that places Daniel in most of his predicaments. Darkness is, sadly, /not/ the only thing that causes sanity lapses, witnessing unsettling events around the castle, like a spooky mist swirling in and out of a room, will do the trick as well. The third and final of these mental hazards is not strictly /mental/; the offender in this case, is an assortment of randomly-spawning, randomly-roaming, horribly grotesque, giant, MONSTERS. You heard me, monsters. Just looking in one's general direction causes your reality to warp.
Monsters, no problem, this is a survival horror game, there's bound to be a shotgun or something around, right? Nope. You are utterly, and completely defenseless, and the monsters can kill you in one swift motion. This is what ties together all the other elements, which are cool and well developed on their own, but now take on much greater significance. So since you can't fight back, your ONLY options are run, hide, or die. Dying is a no, so that leaves run or hide, you aren't guaranteed to get away if you run, so your best bet is to hide. Regrettably the only place you can hide from the monsters is in the dark, but by being in which you lose sanity, as that happens you breathe harder/faster and you start to grind your teeth. Both of these help the monsters notice where you are, but you can't fix it by turning on your light to get rid of the betraying sounds, because in the dark your lamp is like a beacon drawing the monsters right at you. In the end, you literally have to sit in the dark, slowly becoming crazier and crazier staring at the floor so as not to behold the monster, and just /pray/ that the beast passes by quickly.
The game's ambient soundtrack, apart from background noises and atmospheric death-cries, is terrifyingly similar to the sounds created by the monsters. As if their random generation and patrolling, let alone their EXISTENCE, was bad enough, now you'll never be able to tell if those heavy footsteps and deep growl belonged to an actual monster or if it was just background noise. In reality you encounter very few of the monsters -maybe 10?-; but with the /constant/ playing of the would-be warning noises, combined with the randomness of their spawn system, you could very well end up psyching yourself into thinking there's a beast in the room you're in, plunging you into full stealth mode. Even though, save you, the room is completely empty. /That/, is the full extent, the psychological power, that Amnesia is able to conjure.
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