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.
First of all, I want to say this game was brilliant. I will put down the reasons why I gave it a 9/10. I gave this careful thought...
This game focused more on the psychological aspect of terror rather than jump scares and in your face visual terrors. The true "horror" of the game felt like it was in the peripheral encounters with these piggy men that felt like they almost surrounded you earlier on in the game. You didn't always see them up close until later in the game when you were finally faced with these bizarre and unnatural creations. Then to suddenly face yourself and realize what you had done...only to have to tear yourself apart again...wow....
That being said, I did miss some of the puzzle aspects from the first Amnesia. While there was still a little bit of investigation which seemed to point more towards the inner questions of the character themselves...I was hoping for a bit more trouble destroying the machine. Or maybe even a bit more difficulty getting around the piggy men. But that is my personal preference.
Thirdly, I understand why they didn't add things like oil and laudanum or sanity potions. This character had not gone through the same things that Daniel did which gave him his phobia. This character was already settled in his actions and knew (mostly) what he was doing and what had happened. His condition was different and focused more on his fevered illusions of his children. I'm not sure even a sanity potion would have helped. As for the lamp...since, again, the fear of the dark played no role in this game, it was not needed.
The twists, tugs and turns of the game were over all very enjoyable and I loved the questions and scholarly humor used within the notes. It did not shy away from going inside the mind of someone willing to do good yet turning to twisted ways of "purifying" the imperfections of humanity. It touched on many disturbing thoughts and questions that many might shy away from. Very, very well done.
A Machine for Pigs was supposed to be a much shorter game. On playing it, I can see how this has moved from quite a good short experience to a 3 hour directors cut with all the padding put back in. It shouldn't have been this way. This game should have been 9 or 10/10.
We have two of the most interesting indie developers out there working together – The Chinese Room and Frictional. Both are well known for their style of game play. Frictional scare the hell out of you while giving you very interesting puzzles to content with. The Chinese Room tell very emotional stories within stunning landscapes. If all these elements came together we would have had one of the greatest horror survival games ever. Sadly these elements seemed to jar and sometimes work against each other.
** Spoilers **
In the original Amnesia, the monsters weren't your only threat. It was light and sanity. When you were confronted with a threat you really had to work on your wits. Do I have enough light to get past. Should I retreat and sort my head out. In AAMFP it quickly became apparent that the monsters are little threat to you. If you see one whilst taking the clockwise path, just take the anticlockwise path. This really is horror survival casual gaming or survival lite.
What the Chinese Room brought to the table was a great feeling of emotion. The ending is really satisfying, but to anyone who has played “Dear Esther” you can see it coming a mile off. The assent. The swelling music. The emotional voice over. I almost expected to hear words like Donnelly & Damascus.
I have much respect for both studios. I will be first in line for The Chinese Room's “Everybody's gone to the rapture.” But I really feel that with a little bit more polish AAMFP could have been the game everybody wanted.
On reflection I think the burden of this being an Amnesia game almost does it a disservice. Remove all those demands and expectations and you are left with a really good game.
Brilliant game.
Not nearly as scary as the dark descent, but the story was incredible, the sound/music was scales above the dark descent, and the atmosphere as absorbing as ever. The writing is excellent, Lovecraft himself would applaud.
Take your time and explore every inch of this vile and disturbing game and go in knowing exactly what to expect, it isn't just frictional games this time, it's the chinese room as well, which means you should expect Amnesia meets Dear Esther.
A 3 hour long disappointment.
Wow. This game was plain bad. Maybe I've had my expectations way high up, but I kinda expected this to happen. They've removed a lot of elements from the previous game like the inventory, sanity, health and a flashlight that doesn't run out of fuel. And from what I've seen, they didn't really add any new elements to the game. "Fresh experience"? I think not. The maps are repetitive and boring, you can't interact with all of the items you see anymore. AI is absolutely horrible, 99% of the time you can just run right past the enemy and he won't even hit you. They also give up on looking for you way too fast, and it's not that hard outrunning them either. The whole game felt like a horror book- you'll get scared from time to time, but it's almost 100% storytelling. 4/10's just because I can't wait to get my hands on the level editor.
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.
It wasn't bad. But to say it was totally awesome . Liked the old amnesia more. The old one was a bit of a challenge with alot to discover. Machine of pigs was more like: Follow the ******* path. No side rooms or anything. And ofc nothing to pickup! Although the first hour was a hell of beeing scared but after a while it wasn't that scary anymore XD cute little piggies. Too bad the game was quiet short. Although the music and sounds were really great only the gameplay didn't match up with it.
I have a lot of experience with Amnesia The Dark Decent and was elated to play A Machine for Pigs. To be honest, I'm not really sure why the game is called "Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs" as I saw almost nothing Amnesia related. They used some models and a few textures from the main game but that was it basicly. I did not have an inventory, I did not have to worry about my sanity, health nor oil, I could not use tinderboxes and could barley interact with anything at all.
I tried to immerse myself, but failed pretty badly. It offers low to no challange at all. The puzzles were easy and did not require much intelligence to complete. 80% of the quests did include items I had to find or valves I had to turn, as I didn't have an inventory and the original Amnesia quests was a lost call.
The enemies were way to easy to avoid, as half of them spawned in corridors and could easily be spotted by simply sneak behind a wall or a pillar. Not to mention the lantern that warned me when a monster was nearby by constant flickering.
The pig enemie was glitchy and I was able to go right through the enemie model. While I did, he was unable to hit me.
The water monster was also way too easy to avoid as I rarley had to cross the water. Only time I was in close combat with him was when the game developers forced me down the water against my will.
The levels felt very repetitive and offered a low varation. The storyline was actually decently good, and I'm glad for that. I'm not sure if I could find motivation to continue this game otherwise.
Conclusion:
They did a great work with the plot and the voice acting was super. It just faild to deliver a good Amnesia experience, if you can call this Amnesia. I was not pleased with this. I did except much more from an extension to a really awesome game they created for over two years ago.
6/10 - Decent
Could be better, but something is something...
Just like with "Penumbra: Requiem", totally different approach to the game. Cannot say liked it or not but definitely it was an experience!