Amnesia: The Dark Descent is one of the most impressive, terrifying cult hits in PC history. With a miniscule budget and none of the advantages that a huge development or publishing house can provide, Amnesia became a fan favorite almost immediately after its launch, terrifying critics and gamers alike.
Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs bears a heavy burden in terms of expectation, and tragically, it does not do so with great skill or grace.
Visuals – 7 out of 10
Little has changed: the textures are a little cleaner, and the animations are a modicum better. But these are tiny, incremental steps, safe yet ultimately unsatisfying. Given the rate of technical progress, and what should by all rights be a much larger budget, I would have expected better work from a title from the development house that brought us the absolutely GORGEOUS and heart-rending Dear Esther, which looked far better then than this Amnesia does now.
Presentation – 8 out of 10
To be fair, the design aspect of the visual work is remarkably impressive. A Machine for Pigs is a much more visually interesting and dynamic title, and at its best moments, it is beautiful.
The UI is markedly similar to The Dark Descent, which is both fine and expected. There’s still something a bit jarring about objects that you are ‘carrying’ simply floating in the center of the screen, but that’s a different beef for a different day (and to be fair with a great handful of titles including the beloved Half-Life and Elder Scrolls franchises.)
The narrative is much more engaging this time around and feels more grounded in a unified mythos. The hallucinations, the phone-calls, the earth-quakes . . . it’s just a better story, told similarly but more artfully. It also avoids the pitfall its predecessor fell so neatly into – the narrative doesn’t lose its impact in the last five minutes. The horror that you confront is less otherworldly and more painfully personal.
Audio – 9 out of 10
Sound design in a survival horror title is often one of the most vital areas of design, and the work in A Machine for Pigs is much cleaner and deeper than in any of its predecessors. Every aspect of the sound work is better. I experienced mild pet peeves with a tiny detail: the sound effects.
The soundtrack is also a great deal more pointed and atmospheric, and is my favorite part of the title by far. The soundtrack creates incredible tension and the odd moment of beauty.
Game-Play – 5 out of 10
When The Chinese Room took over this iteration of Amnesia, there was some small concern in the community that a different developer would mean a very different kind of game. Those fears were well-founded, as A Machine for Pigs is remarkably different from The Dark Descent. The central creep-and-cringe game-play remains, but the massive-yet-labyrinthine environments and the complicated multi-tiered puzzles are mostly absent. The vast majority of the antagonists are toothless and seem more intent on sprinting from one impossible hiding place to another than any actual threatening action.
The puzzles are much less obtuse this time around, and the title takes a while to get going. A lot of the early encounters are more along the lines of did-I-see-something than what-the-&$*(-did-I-just-see? The slower pacing does eventually turn into a sense of dread, just not quite the kind of dread one would hope. I found myself actively hoping that an area wouldn’t involve any encounters with antagonists for the sake of avoiding frustration rather than actual fear.
I cannot express how much the lantern mechanic was ruined. The lantern in A Machine for Pigs is a limitless resource – until you stumble into one of the monsters, at which point the device blinks and ceases to function. This is startling the first several times, but after a while it becomes a flawless early warning system for every encounter. It ruins any possibility of surprise scares and provides light until you need it most: when you’re trying to evade the creatures. The encounters with the enemies become predictable – removing any sense of tension – and then frustrating. I found it very difficult and at times unpleasant to complete encounters from the midpoint through the end of the title.
Pairing that with the musical cues that invariably herald the arrival of the enemies, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs cannot seem to get out of its own way.
Technical – 7 out of 10
There’s not much to say here, it works. The engine is solid with no noticeable bugs, artifacts, or crashes. The audio work is much cleaner than before, and is technically competent.
Intangibles – 5 out of 10
There is something missing from the equation that was unquestionably present in its predecessor. Amnesia: The Dark Descent was brilliant despite its mis-steps. Even for all of the factors that make it a more technically competent and more polished title, A Machine For Pigs is merely adequate at best.
Overall – 6.8 out of 10
It is not as strong a piece of work as Dark Descent, but it is without question enjoyable. It just isn’t quite what most of us expected, or unfortunately, wanted. It is almost exactly the midpoint between Dear Esther and Amnesia, and is not likely to satisfy fans of the latter.
But the narrative is much stronger this time around, and there are moments where everything comes together and it works perfectly. There aren’t quite enough of those moments, but when they go off without a hitch, it is a better experience than the first. Unfortunately they’re few and far between and the altered game-play mechanics hinder rather than help the experience.