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.
The story was excellent. It was lightly predictable but still very well written, answering most of the questions you had during gameplay. The visuals were eerie and at times down right scary. The ability to view the monster up close at times gave away some of the terror when dealing with them. In the dark descent, never really being able to see an upclose shot of the monster, without having your face torn off, made him all the more terrifying. These monsters were almost cartoonish and lacking. The monsters were never really a threat and the scare factor of taking every turn carefully like in the dark descent was nullified. You could walk through this game and know that 99% of the time you were safe. The Tesla pig was almost laughable and a non factor for any time of boss in this game.
I didn't enjoy the fact that this game was so sort. The linear design of the gameplay gave no challenge. Add to the fact that there aren't any free item interaction, it made it as though once you could pick something up, you knew it was a piece to a puzzle.
Sanity, Health, and inventory gave the dark descent a much better feel than AMFP.
All in all, this game deserves a 7 out of 10 for the hope that the DLC and mods are better than the actual game. Amnesia: A machine for pigs seemed like a well done MOD to Amnesia: The Dark Descent then a sequel.
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.
A game with a great idea and atmosphere. On the other hand sometimes to easy to play with too little variability.
It was an alright game, personally I wouldn't consider it a full sequel, but more of a spin-off type game.
Really good game, with lots of nice scary parts. Great creatures. It should have more objects to interact like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, in this game you only interact with the elements needed for the story, doors and chairs.
Big disappointment. I miss the looting and original amnesia style. You cant even grab any objects and throw them and such, which takes a big part away from the gameplay. I'm not afraid of running out of oil aswell as im not afraid of going insane. The game was too easy and there were no complicated puzzles, they were extremely easy. it also felt really linear at some parts. And it was not scary. It had a pretty good story to it though, and believe that the developers wanted to give us an epic story instead of scary experience. Everybodys got their own opinions, but I'm really disappointed. Especially with the fact that you cant play custom stories in this game. I'm still gonna give it a 7 because of the story, something to cheer about atleast.
After dying to play the game for a long time I must say that the end result was disappointing. The story was very good and it was told in a way I would expect from an amnesia game, the thing I missed was the notes you picked up narrating a bit like in TDD. Another big thing, which did it for me, was the fact that it wasn't very scary at all. In fact, I only witnessed 1 or 2 jumpscares and only 1 part where I was sitting at the edge of my chair. Long story short, I think AAMFP was slightly disappointing. The story was great but the horror part of the game was very lacking. If you ask me, thechineseroom should stick with what they are good at; making story-based games and not try to make a story-based game that says "Boo!" trying to scare you every so often but just doesn't quite get the moment right. I would've given this game an 8/10 at least if it was much scarier and a 10/10 if it also had Custom Story support.
The story was really interesting. That's the only good thing about it...
The biggest disappointment was that there is no insanity: without insanity all the "scares" and pigs were kinda lame.
And what's the point of having a lantern that tells you when to turn it off. When I realized that it would do that it was very annoying.
Also the pigs are kinda funny looking and the animations on them are little bit too fast so it makes them look even funnier. And they are so slow that you can outrun them easily. If only the game had that "terror meter" sound I would know that the pigs are supposed to be afraid of.
Then the electric, teleporting pig... w..t..f.. When I saw that thing I said out loud: "Seriously?!".
I miss TDD's heartbounding atmosphere and scares :(
C'est un excellent jeu dont j'y ai joué sur ma chaine youtube :D Le seul reproche dont je pourrai me permettre d'évoquer est l'absence de "Custom Story" :\
It's different than the first game (A Dark Descent), but scary equally on quantitative levels if not qualitative. I think one could say that Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a horror game for the thinking man. In story, this second one rises far far above the first. If you play this game, don't play it for fear of being completely vulnerable and helpless like the first game, play it to fear at the utter horror that should be had when you consider the events of the story.
Think about the character's motives. How did they set out with this goal, what were their sacrifices, what was the driving philosophy, and how does the player character change?