Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Review - Squeals and Fury

[fromthepoisonwell]

Not surprised at all to see people not enjoying this game as much as the original. The Chinese Room should stick to what they know best, pretentious interactive fiction, instead of barging in on well beloved horror games.

I'll likely still end up playing this eventually, when it goes on sale, but it's disheartening to see such an awesome series not reach it's potential.

You really don't have to right to dictate, as a consumer, what the Amnesia series is and isn't, let alone call The Chinese Room's work pretentious when you obviously haven't played most of it.

I have played Dear Esther and watched at least partial play throughs of two of their horror games. So no, I have seen enough of it to judge their work. You're not required to play through a company's whole catalogue to judge them.

Also, lol wut? I absolutely have the right as a consumer to make and call the Amnesia series whatever I want. I honestly have no idea where you're coming from here. That's how capitalism works. We vote with our money to dictate products and companies. I don't like the looks of this game, so I'm not buying it and urging others not to buy it (at least till it's cheaper). That's not 'dictating' what the Amnesia series is any more than it should be. I'm not stealing any of the creator's artistic license by telling them and others that I don't like their game.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

Just watched a playthrough of this online and I gotta agree with the review. I'm not saying it's a bad game just that I really don't think ChineseRoom really understood what made TDD really great. Or maybe they just didn't care and wanted to do things their way to get their story out and fuck the scary or tension.

Not to mention the ending it's....well... <spoiler=Spoilers for the Ending> IT'S A BUTTON PUSH! No seriously! That IS the ending, a push of a button that pretty much does nothing and shows nothing! And then lots of talking that really didn't make anything clear....

It was an interesting game and maybe if it wasn't under the Amnesia title I wouldn't be so disappointed but...it was and I couldn't help but expect a little more because of it. The story was kind of jumbled and didn't seem to quite gel together, and the protagonist...Mandus just never seemed to actually CARE. Nothing seemed to bother him. He didn't really seem upset by anything. His actions of not seeming scared or bothered by any of the goings on, didn't really seem to match up with his supposed desperation to find his children. Just the character himself didn't add up whenever you combined all the elements together.

os the ending of Dd any other? either you throw a thing or you klick a few times against a few objects.

also- I like d that more because story matters to me. in amnesia, you get things on a silver plate, you know everything, there are no questions which you have to find out with sincere observation and brainwork.

ans one difference-amnesia is about terror. AMFP is about horror. about what we can become, about what we are capable of doing for love, or our twisted idea. its about real psychological illness and its intertwined with the first amnesia.


also, I found the plot not that hard to understand-its very important that you not only read all notes but also your journal.

why he got amnesia is speculation-he might have tried suicide after he woke up and saw what happened. what he tried to put out, why he split, what happened in Mexico, why he wanted the machine...

really its more about the story. the story of the firs is real old trope and overused.I knew just from the beginning what would happen and that is not helpful...in amfp I did knew it. it tool a bit, you have to puzzle out, remember and combine..

a story where some black goo chases you and you search for an asshole that lied to you and let you do shit..eh,is okay...

a story about not only the mind of mandus but about all our minds and what dwells in the dark corners of our soul, about the deathwish, about hate and despair and about the question, how much you would do to stop such atrocities. and how capable we´re are in lying to ourselves.
amnesia is about the outside and terror.

a machine for pig is about the horror, that is us.

amfp is more psychological, its more suspense and less terror.
so i like it more.

also-after 2 games its hard to call it a series and demand that the 2nd is like the 1st. These are 2 games in the same World but with a different story and a different mindset-but both are about madness, about the role of humans in our environment etc

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

also another thing-adding tinderboxes and oil would rather hurt immersion-because its the 19,century.. this is a facory, there are no candles and oil lamps--well maybe oil lamps, but no candles. its the time futurism is born, where poverty through industroalization takes place, where machines condemn a whole part of society into poverty and illness-I liked that, amfp took society with in and not only 2 or 3 people in a creepy old castle.
i do like both, but i like the 2nd more-i am not so into scares and terror and the predictability of the spawning monsters was annoying. solve this hear growl, wait in dark, get blurry, hear the crunchy sound. eh.


also-mandus has no nyctophobia-so there need for sanity-loss in dark. its just not logical.

Amnesia DD and amnesia amfp are just 2 different things-as said, the first is about terror, the second about horror. the first is about survival-terror, the second is about psychological horror. i like both, the 2nd more because of the great story and forcus (btw, the stone egg is NO orb-its a seashell. but an orb is there. or shards. who bled madness.

 

[TomWiley]

Also, lol wut? I absolutely have the right as a consumer to make and call the Amnesia series whatever I want. I honestly have no idea where you're coming from here.

Neither do I since I didn't say anything of the like.

 

[fromthepoisonwell]

Also, lol wut? I absolutely have the right as a consumer to make and call the Amnesia series whatever I want. I honestly have no idea where you're coming from here.

Neither do I since I didn't say anything of the like.

You said:

You really don't have to right to dictate, as a consumer, what the Amnesia series is and isn't

And I responded to it in as rational a way as possible, since it seems nonsensical to me in the first place. Clearly I'm not dictating it anymore than I can and should be.

What else could you mean by this that I haven't already addressed?

 

[Jeyl]

As a fan of the original game and it's Justine spinoff, I've got to say that Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was quite an excellent experience. A lot of the missing features didn't really bother me because I found the level of immersion go away whenever I had to check on what color Daniel's brain was at any time.

I think what "A Machine for Pigs" does that the original Amnesia did only in fractions was put your character in a setting that was unnerving. As Daniel, the basic plot progression is essentially going through the castle and it's dungeons seeing elements that have already transpired. The only thing you get to decide is whether or not Alexander lives or dies. For what it was, the game was absolutely perfect. What "A Machine for Pigs" does is put throw you in a situation where you're not only responsible for the atrocities you've done to others, but also the atrocities that are to come. When the "Machine" is at full power and sends the pigmen out to the streets of London, they are gathering everyone up to be slaughtered and fed into the machine. Despite all the damage you've tried to cause the machine on the way up, the portions that process humans is still working and for every second it runs, someone is dying. That really struck an emotional nerve because this machine is slaughtering innocent people like pigs, all while playing soothing music in the background, and telling you that this is the right thing to do. And it's not just the pig line either. The pipes disposing of the blood, the pigmen eating/raping corpses and the bodies flowing in large ponds of blood. I never felt that way during the first Amnesia so I think TCR did something right.

My only real criticism was that the "Pig line" wasn't as immersive as I was hoping it would be. If you look at some of the official artwork, it depicts the perspective of the player in one of the blood filled chambers where the limbless bodies on hooks are moving across the ceiling. You were IN THE PIG LINE! I was practically dreading the moment where Mandus had to go through the pig line itself in order to reach the machines that controlled it. Starting at the beginning where you can hear the still living people scream in agony as they're limbs are chopped off, their bodies thrown onto the metal hooks, the line processing them in different ways with every one of them dripping blood on you as they move along the line while you try to make your way out. The thought that these people were alive and whole mere seconds ago would have made this one of the most uncomfortable moments I've ever played in a game. And that soothing music playing in the background would have made it all the more horrifying.