Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

Get it on sale and expect a walking sim more than a survival horror experience. It is worth playing for the story and atmosphere, although the second half's pacing felt off. It's basically Animal Farm mixed with Metropolis, and that's awesome.

Dark Descent had scary moments and atmosphere was unsettling throughout. A Machine For Pigs barely has scary moments and those are mainly in the beginning when you still don't know what you're dealing with. It seems like this was supposed to be a tragedy poem in form of a game, the problem is, something that would make me care for the main character is missing, and evil in this game gives off cartoonish vibes at times. Not a terrible game, but after 1/4 of the game, I was rushing to see the end credits, thankfully the game is quite short.

сеттинг игры вообще жесть, мне понравилось, неприятно выглядят эти воспоминания, когда игра внезапно начинает лагать на моей 4090TI SUPER и INTEL ULTRA 15-10400F, ужасно оптимизированно, разрабы, учится и учится вам ещё

в начале немного страшно было, но потом уже начинаешь привыкать, игра довольно скучная но мне все равно понравилось, музыка в игре шикарная, больше всего понравилось концовка бож

great game

I really wanted to like this one, and was able to get some enjoyment out of it, but ultimately it's just not a good game. The music, voice acting, and sound design are all incredible. The story is mostly really good, with a lot to chew on. It's certainly going for more than Dark Descent did, and layered with more historical and literary references. For these elements, as well as the short length and low price on sale, I don't regret playing the game, and I will certainly be continuing with the series. Everything else unfortunately feels hollow, unfinished, or plain stupid. The removal of the sanity system and its visual effects is baffling. It added so much to the vibe and gameplay in Dark Descent. You could never get a good look at the enemies, because looking for too long would make Daniel lose his mind. So the enemies existed as these half seen, half imagined horrors that you mostly listened to rather than looking at. In this game, there is no penalty for looking at the enemies, and they are so stupid that you can basically stand right in front of them with your lantern on and stare at them to your heart's content. And they look STUPID. I really hate the visual design of the pig monsters, they look ridiculous and completely undercut the horror established through the writing and sound design. Alongside the removal of sanity, the removal of the inventory and need to find tinderboxes and lantern oil is also so perplexing. It barely feels like a game any more, there is nothing to look for in the environments, there is no tension regarding running out of resources for your light sources, and when a puzzle requires you to find an item, you can't put it in your inventory, you just have to carry it to the location, which will probably be a total of 5 feet away because having to carry it is annoying. Finally, this game just feels unfinished and amateurish on a technical level that was not present in Dark Descent. For some reason, any time a new sound played it caused the game to lock itself to a janky 40 fps, I had to fix this myself by finding a fix online and editing the games files. The lighting looks really whack and simply unfished in a lot of areas. Dark Descent had masterful lighting, to the point that I frequently stopped to look and take screenshots when I entered a new area. I never felt the need to do that in A Machine for Pigs, it pretty much always looks dark and bland. The only standout visual area is the starting mansion. And the final nail in the coffin was a crash towards the end that made me lose about 20 minutes of progress. Having to repeat a boring "puzzle" and listen to the same voice lines again right before the climax took the wind out of my sails and softened the impact of what was otherwise a really great climax. The ending music and monologue are truly excellent, but the process of getting there is such a mess.

What Machine for Pigs lacks in gameplay (compared to Dark Descent) it thoroughly makes up for it in story, where the true 'horror' lies. Not developed by Frictional Games but by the Chinese Room, who already proved themselves creative storytellers with Dear Esther, the first 'game' without an interface or HUD where exploration and audio logs piece together the story. It is still one of my favourite games of all time as it proves (traditional) gameplay is not needed for an engaging video game experience. I wish they had made MfP in an entirely similar fashion, I mean the no re-fuelling of the oil lamp was a good idea, but the mindless turning of valves, opening empty drawers/cabinets and carrying useless items by hand to find its purpose bogged the game down. It could have been shorter even, as in the end many people don't consider this a real Amnesia game anyway. Having re-played the game recently in VR using Vorpx and a HD texture pack made the experience fresh and exciting again (apart from the above mentioned gameplay blockers).