Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

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JaySevenZero
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Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Taz
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Re: 585: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Post by Taz »

As a follow up to the superb Amnesia: The Dark Descent, my expectations for this game were very high.

I enjoyed the game for what it was but it didn’t come close to meeting those expectations. It was much shorter and lighter mechanically, I spent less time solving puzzles and hiding from monsters and more time just walking around. There’s no inventory which hobbles the puzzle design as you can’t pick up key items to use later, and your lantern is now unlimited. The sanity system is gone. Health regenerates, meaning you don’t need to find health pickups anymore. There were fewer encounters with enemies. The game felt shallower in almost every respect – these didn’t feel like changes, they felt like reductions. Because of the lighter focus on game mechanics it seemed that the story really was front and centre this time around.

For this reason it seemed a little odd that, when the credits rolled, I had less of a grasp of what had occurred in the story than I did in The Dark Descent, almost certainly because I’d missed some of the handwritten notes along the journey. But in a way, this helped the game stick in my mind. I was left not frustrated, but intrigued by what I had experienced. Horror thrives when we don’t see everything clearly and I felt like this game had shown me just enough, and hadn’t overexposed itself by giving away all of its secrets.

The Dark Descent succeeded in frightening me while I was playing it but A Machine For Pigs got under my skin in a different way. I found it more disturbing than its predecessor, mostly thanks to the ManPigs. Seeing the Pigs playing with children’s toys in one mid-game scene really stuck with me. Considering how much Man might be left within them, and why they had been created at all, really bothered me. The Dark Descent was horrifying but left little to the imagination by the end, there was little ambiguity as to what had happened and why.

I also loved the vibe and aesthetic. The Victorian factorial setting really lends itself to this type of game and the feeling of travelling down into the guts of the machine is pulled off well enough. I just wished I’d felt more threat from the enemies while I was down there.

I’m pleased The Chinese Room put their own spin on the series instead of recycling The Dark Descent and what we got is a very effective experience in its own right. It just doesn’t compare to the exceptional original game.
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The_reviewist
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Re: 585: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Post by The_reviewist »

As a huge fan of Amnesia, and Dear Esther, I looked forwards to Machine for Pigs greatly. The idea of fusing the brilliant narrative and storytelling of The Chinese Room, with the world building, and atmospheric terror of Frictional's games seemed like a match made in heaven, or maybe in hell.

In the end though, it's a rough fit. Don't get me wrong, I really like Machine for Pigs, and some of the moments in it are truly horrifying. But it's not the same sort of horror as before. The body-horror and conceptual discomfort of what's happening in the game is truly discomfiting at times. But the game never really gets that "run for your life" terror that Dark Descent, and more latterly The Bunker have really succeeded in capturing.

That said, the descent through the cobbled streets, plush rooms and into the bowels of the ungodly machine, following the creepy pair of bobble-headed twins was far from a bad experience. But it's a more of a ghost-train, rather than an interactive experience. The fearsome horrors of the previous title replaced by awkward rooms filled with shambling lummoxes who irritate and frustrate rather than terrify.

I'm glad it exists, and at this point, with Dark Descent, Machine, Rebirth and Bunker all serving as thematically similar but vastly different anthology entries, it feels more of an understandable piece than it did at first. An experience flawed but darkly beautiful.
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