Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs | a Review
originally published on 23/12/2023;
Hello everyone, I am the genetically similar to a pig G.E.M.Simov, a fellow constructed out of the cement of life - bone! Today, I’ll tell you about the second entry in the Amnesia franchise, namely Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, henceforth known as ‘the game’ or ‘the second Amnesia’, or maybe even ‘AAMP’.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
So, we start off on the weakest link in this game. What is there to say but make a saddened statement relating to the quality of this sequel… If we were to compare it to Amnesia: The Dark Descent (ATDD), we would be able to see that things have not gone in the right direction, at least gameplay wise.
Why? Because a lot of the things that were present in the previous game are, simply, not present in this one. Remember how there was this sanity mechanic? Well, it is not present. Remember how there were resources that needed to be managed? Well, there are none. Remember how there was a threat that laid in the darkness? Well, in AAMP, the Player has a lantern with infinite oil. Or, rather, with electricity? It is some kind of funky, endlessly illuminant lantern.
In fact, that’s not all that is gone. Gone is the inventory system. Gone is the freedom the Player had to pick up whatever items were present and throw them around. Now, there are very few items that can be interacted with in that manner - meaning there’s a vastly smaller number of physics beholden objects - and that, in turn, makes things feel disingenuous.
It seems as though the items that can be picked up and carried around in the manner that was so endearing and associated with ATDD are mostly associated with what the Player needs to do to progress. In a sense, one knows that there’s going to be a puzzle whenever there’s something that can be picked up, unless that thing is a chair… Only sometimes, though. That’s a very weird approach.
But, well… What does that leave the Player with? The ability to walk and jump. Essentially, AAMP is a walking simulator, when its predecessor was something far more. There is a very resounding lack of dread, or worry, or even concern to be gleaned from the act of playing the game. The only spooky thing about it is how lackluster things seem to be.
I’ll say a thing or two about level design here, and I’ll say that I don’t like the way it is done here. The zones are very strangely vast, or at least so they seem, which might be owed up to the speed at which the Player Character moves, but then they aren’t only vast, they’re empty. The lack of interactivity with things makes them feel barren, totally void of any reason to be.
There are other interesting choices. Now, instead of having empty shelves or wardrobes, most of the shelves or wardrobes have elaborate mechanical locks on them, which locks can not be opened by the player. Instead of being able to interact with the environment, only to find that there was nothing to discover as a result of that interaction, which interaction has the potential to be fun in and of itself, AAMP has decided that there’s… There’s no interaction. That’s not cool.
Over all, it feels as though the experience has been stripped down as a means of providing a clearer path for the Player to follow, so as to not get lost, presumably, or perhaps so that the means of approaching the game can better be controlled and no shenanigans can be performed.
If ATDD had been such, there would have been a lot less to complain about in AAMP. But, since ATDD provided a means of approaching the game as a playground that could also tell an interesting story, AAMP’s approach of providing nothing but a theme-park experienced through a cart that moves along a preset path is very different.
And it is not different in a good way. In fact, it is so odd that the moments wherein the Player lost control back in ATDD, which were part of the Presentation in the sense that they aimed to show the Player something unsettling or scary passing through, are gone. On the one hand, there’s a great amount of effort put into making sure the Player moves wherever the developers wanted them to be moving, but then there is no effort put into making sure the Player sees what needs to be seen - thus the changes appear purposeless and even contradictory.
In other news, once more bad ones, there’s an inconsistency in what the Player can and can not do. Sometimes, the Player can jump on top of a barrel. Other times, the Player can not jump on top of that same barrel. This is connected to the movement of the Player Character and just how sluggish it all feels. Now, Daniel from ATDD was no athlete, but he was better than this!
Other funky things - I happened to fall out of bounds while engaging with an enemy. I took two hits - which is one shy of the number of hits needed to get killed - then I walked into a hole that I could walk into and boom - infinite falling. I then saved and exited, continued, and somehow the enemy was gone, and a door that had been locked was unlocked.
Overall, it is a downgrade from ATDD. Items can only be picked up when they are integral to some puzzle, there is no inventory system, there is no resource management, the puzzles are simpler and the gameplay itself feels less pleasant to engage in.
AAMP is a walking simulator. ATDD was a proper game. AAMP coming after ATDD and claiming the mantle is not very good. 2/3
Presentation
The game looks similar to how the previous game looked. That’s a good call, but then does it sound similar? No. In fact, I’d wager I got the correct feeling of what this game was going to be like from the main menu.
Instead of the foreboding, dark and dreary, as if approaching from somewhere deep beneath the ground music of ATDD, I was greeted by an almost blaring, somewhat solemn yet simultaneously grand musical track that seemed too loud. There was a sense of unease to it, but it sounded wholly inappropriate. It indicated to me that, maybe, MAYBE there was going to be far less of the dread that I have come to love in ATDD, and there will be a lot more jump-scaring.
I was not wholly wrong. In a sense, the game is louder and more brash than ATDD. It features the same zooms and lingerings from ATDD, whenever something unsettling occurs, but whereas in ATDD it had the added effect of doing something that affected the Gameplay, in AAMP it is only a visual element, accompanied by a loud noise and a slight loss of control that seeks to give the Player a spook.
In relation to what was said in the Gameplay section, however, those moments of loss of control are very rare, and only occur when whatever is being focused on is already being looked at by the Player. Such moments would have been convenient and even beneficial if the Player’s gaze was guided towards something that needed to be observed - such as the potential monsters. Yes, indeed - the monsters appear and disappear quite quickly, at least in the early stages of the game, and there are loud noises, as well as journal entries detailing the encounters, but they are very easy to miss.
In a horror game, that’s problematic. Another thing that is problematic is the infinite light source at the Player’s disposal - the electrical lantern just has power and does not allow for a dark and dreary encounter to be truly had. However, what the game does do is make the lantern flicker, as if it is about to run out of power. That does not indicate it is about to run out of power - but it does indicate the presence of an enemy.
Due to the fact that there is no sanity mechanic in the game, there is no reason not to look at the enemy - and so the flicker, which wholeheartedly decides to just make the lantern stop working if one is looking directly at an enemy, is the ‘punishment’, or rather incentive not to look at enemies. Funnily enough, this section could have gone in the Gameplay section of the review, but it is so tightly bound to the Presentation that I felt it more proper to present it here.
Either way, there is really no point to this mechanic being present, as the music always shifts when an enemy is nearby, informing the Player regardless of whether or not they are using their lantern.
One thing that this game does quite unlike ATDD, however, is that it has audio-tapes. Whereas ATDD had notes that are read to the Player, this one features objects in the world that, when interacted with, play a recording of a conversation. This different means of presenting the story is very intriguing, due to the fact it keeps the Player IN the game world and, as a result of that, leaves them open to an attack.
By standing around and listening to these ‘tapes’ (they’re not quite tapes, but rather vinyl records) the Player is allowed to accumulate some dread, some anxiety - because stuff around them is still happening, the Player Character is still theirs to control, the ambience keeps playing - thus, this is a very good change. Unfortunately, it never makes use of that dread - there is no proper pay-out.
In addition to that, there are some very good (if rare and sporadic) instances of proper horror. As the Player is traversing through a level, they will see something - for the level’s design will be forcing them into moving and looking in a certain direction, and somewhere far off something will appear, then disappear, without a loud bang, but with an uneasy purr. That builds up dread and unease, and that’s really well done horror. Unfortunately, there is not enough of it in the game.
Overall? The game looks good, has decent presentation in some regards, but fails in some very important areas that leave it lacking. 2/3
Story
The Player takes on the role of Mandus, who conveniently awakens with amnesia, excluding the memory that he has two sons. Well, something’s amiss - these two sons are missing and yet they’re calling to Mandus. So Mandus has to save them!
Overall, the story is relatively simple - there’s a factory (a machine) and Mandus (Oswald Mandus, that is) starts walking deep into the bowels of that factory. He figures out that it is his factory and that there is someone that is sabotaging the factory. Presumably, that saboteur also has his children.
Then, it turns out that he is the saboteur, and also that his children are long gone and dead. So he destroys the factory, killing himself in the process.
With that said, I’d say that it is important to note the goal of the factory is to generate power for the operation and creation of pigmen, and so as to also just sustain itself as some kind of living organism, through the processing of humans. Ultimately, the goal is to burn the world and purify it. Why, though?
Well, a while prior to the events of the game (which takes place on the very last evening of December in the year 1899), Mandus went on a trip to Mexico and uncovered a funky pyramid. In that pyramid, at least it is hinted, he discovered an orb like what Daniel found back in ATDD. That orb had a profound effect on Mandus, so much so that it split his personality in two.
There was one Mandus and there was Oswald Mandus (the one the Player controls). Mandus had seen the future - the 20th century - and, having seen the incredible horrors that would fall upon humanity, as well as the fate of his sons, who would die fighting in the Somme, he decides that the only means of salvation is to burn everything, to kill off humanity (or something along those lines).
Both of the Manduses are in agreement for the longest of time - just after the events in Mexico and all the time spent leading up to the moment the game starts - but something happens that forces Oswald Mandus to change his mind or to forget about what had happened. Conveniently, he has forgotten that he, himself, killed his children at the apex of the Aztec pyramid in a funky ritual that would breathe life into the machine (or so I gather).
The game does present a clear line of separation between them - a villain and a hero, if they can be so interpreted - but in truth it makes very little sense. As can be gleaned from the many times I’ve failed to be concrete, the game itself fails to be concrete when delivering the story, and that’s in regards to some incredibly important things.
See, Mandus has influence over Oswald for a period of time, but not immediately after they get separated into two different consciousnesses. In that beginning, when they were two and Oswald was in control, Oswald was in full agreement with what Mandus was proposing - going so far as to even kill his own children in ritual sacrifice.
What was it that caused him to change his perception of the situation? Did he feel regret? That is not conveyed. Why did that amnesia fall upon him and make him forget what had happened, leading into the events of the game? What is the inciting incident? It makes no sense, I must admit, for Oswald to drink laudanum and forget. It also makes very little sense that he would recover from a fever and forget what he had done - notably building an entire factory and sacrificing his children, which are activities that would require acuity of the mind high enough to warrant remembrance.
It makes no sense, and that really undermines the whole story that takes place. Not only that, the events that do take place seem to be very large scale, which then brings about question as to how would they be handled by the authorities - for whereas castle Brennenburg collapsed and that can be it, this here is a massive factory that was used to process humans under the guise of being a meat packing factory. In addition to that, it might be broken beyond repair, but it remains accessible.
The game leaves more questions than it answers, but those are questions that the game should have answered. The motivation of the main character is most important in that regard, and Oswald Mandus’ motivation is incredibly loose and flimsy.
Thus, while being vaguely interesting and having some kind of oddly optimistic message - I will stop myself from killing millions so they can kill themselves instead of me doing it to them - the game fails to give the Player a story of the same caliber as ATDD. I’d even say I was hard pressed to keep playing the game, because neither the gameplay nor the story had me hooked. The only reason I did finish it was to write this review! 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Unfortunately, the answer is NO. While ATDD got the Legendary Point handily, AAMP does not manage to do that, due to the fact that it is more of a walking simulator than a game, due to the fact that it relies on jump-scares far more than ATDD and is brasher and louder than its predecessor, and due to the fact that the story is convoluted and fails to grab the Player as does the story in ATDD. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. An average horror game. It does not do anything spectacular, aside from having the “Amnesia” name associated with it, and as such is not worth anyone’s time… Well, aside from huge fans of Amnesia or the horror genre who just need to experience everything out there.
In the bag of mediocrity I chuck it. It could have been so much better, but, alas, it simply was.