The Swine are Rising! In 2010 Frictional Games terrified the world with the cult horror Amnesia: A Dark Descent. Now they bring you a new nightmare. Created by The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is an intense and terrifying journey into the heart of darkness that lurks within us all. The year is 1899. Wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus awakes in his bed, wracked with fever and haunted by dreams of a dark and hellish engine. Tortured by visions of a disastrous expedition to Mexico, broken on the failing dreams of an industrial utopia, wracked with guilt and tropical disease, he wakes into a nightmare. The house is silent, the ground beneath him shaking at the will of some infernal machine: all he knows is that his children are in grave peril, and it is up to him to save them. Step back into the horror.
A huge letdown. Lack of sanity removed a huge element of fear from the game - monsters were just not threatening any more. The game didn't trigger a sense of fight-or-flight (mostly flight in horror games) in the player, it just seemed to say "look at this, this is scary!". Enemies were silly (see dubstep pig), encounters were not dangerous (injuries healed fully in <=5 seconds) and the maps were not dark enough. Storyline was extremely unclear throughout, I didn't know what or why I was doing things half the time. There was too much recycling of Dark Descent assets (plants, chairs, doors, urns, shelves, tools) which went as far as the pig ragdoll in a game that even has "pigs" in the title.
The game was also too short. I completed the whole game with no prior knowledge of anything in about 2 and a half hours. Puzzle solving was an insult to Dark Descent and FREE custom stories made by the community. The most complicated puzzle in the whole game involved picking up two gears and putting them in a box - and the gears were right next to the box.
Not worth my money. It felt like an elaborate custom story with a bad storyline. The only good points I can name are great voice acting and some of the map assets are good, like the moving machinery parts. All in all, this game doesn't deserve the title "Amnesia". Thoroughly disappointed.
While I would consider this game a good one on its own, I couldn't help but compare it to Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I feel as if myself and a lot of other players were hoping for the same play style and feel to carry over into the sequel. I was pretty upset at a lot of the changes they made to the game play that no longer make the game as fun to play in my opinion.
The first thing that really bothered me was the lantern. Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs takes place in a time where technology and electricity is available, and as such, you get a lantern that never runs out of energy. Yeah it means that the developers can turn your lantern off whenever they want to add suspense or visual effects, but I don't feel like they did a good enough job at this to make the transition worth it. A lot of other games handle similar situations like this in a more engaging and just over-all better manner. Having to scavenge for tinderboxes and oil was one of the things that made Amnesia:The Dark Descent great. It made you feel like what little light you had was precious, and you shouldn't waste it. It gave you a sense of urgency when you ran out of light.
They also completely eliminated the inventory system, leaving you only able to interact with the things in the environment that you could hold in your hand, while this gave the game a more realistic feel, as you wouldn't be able to carry an inventory full of stuff in real life without a bag of some sort, it got rid of any sort of crafting. The game really only allows you to interact with the specific items needed for the progression of the game, and I really missed be able to interact with all of the little trash bins and random objects that weren't important to the game, just for fun. Also, no hiding...
The game developers obviously put a lot of time into the story of the game, just like the developers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, however I don't feel like they balanced the story and game play as well as the first game did.
not as good as the first amnesia.
thechineseroom totally screwed this game up!
I have been playing A:TDD for 2 years now and it is much much better than A:AMFP.
I LOVE AMNESIA, BUT I NOW HATE DESURA, GIVE ME MY GAME OR GIVE ME MY REFUND!