Adventure Gamers - Forums

Gamespot 8.

Reviews are out, mostly 7 ans 8s, writing and story is applauded but not the
scare factor(i never found amnesia series equal to SH, Fatalframe,Siren etc
anyway).

nomadsoul - 09 September 2013 12:21 PM

Gamespot 8.

Reviews are out, mostly 7 ans 8s, writing and story is applauded but not the
scare factor(i never found amnesia series equal to SH, Fatalframe,Siren etc
anyway).

Loads of reviews listed here:

http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-22785.html

Highest score so far is 10/10, lowest is 5/10 (and that’s on its own). Most seem to be in about the 8/10 range as you say.

So soon…eek…

Though some people are down on it, can’t wait to see for myself.

I gave in after reading short length comments and finished it today rather than later.

- My major problem with the game is monster design and encounters that are so not
scary at all, same problem in Amnesia games, here they are more scripted.

- The level of macabre and grotesque design in which Japanese games (i mentioned)
excel at, is just missing here (leaves something to be desired). Then you can easily avoid them by circling around crates , and run past them , thats all. The level of hide and seek is even inferior than Clocktower 1 or HauntingGround (ps2).

- Second problem is last quarter is dragged like anything, the 3rd quarter reveals enough to leave things for your imagination but TCR decided to go all out
for extreme exposition.

- More detail in environments than amnesia, which is a blessing because Amnesia felt
bland like hell in level design.

- The Story is 1up from DearEsther imo, the ending is welldone , everything well presented except the over exposure in last quarter. Story throughout gave some vibes of Silenthill.

- Sound/Music is clear winner here, monster didnt feel much by looks, but the sound design is A grade, saved the whole experience.

8.5/10.

Since encounters are mostly scripted and some puzzles are well integrated , Adv Gamers should try this.

This feels very overwritten to me. Or as the game itself would put it, “the swine bleat as their oily hides are bleached white by the sun and their rotting shells excrete what remain of their gnarled innards.” Every line of dialogue, every note you pick up, every journal entry you read is so overly calculated and meticulously worded that it fails to create any sense of mystery or dread. I don’t feel like I’m reading the disturbed musings of the game’s characters whenever I pick up a new note to read, I feel like I’m reading an English major trying to impress their teacher with a endless supply of evocatively gruesome words.

That kind of applies to the game as a whole as well, it’s just too structured to capture the primal, unpredictable sense of fear the first game instilled in the player. That game was like being trapped in a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from, this is like a breezy trip through a carnival haunted house full of pop-up skeletons and a scratchy tape playing some spooky sound effects.

It’s fun, and I’m enjoying the ride it is, but I looooooooved the first game and this just doesn’t hit those I’ve-gotta-quit-because-I’m-too-scared heights. I don’t dread playing this and that just seems wrong for something bearing the Amnesia name.

I really adore the writing - love it to bits: it’s so incredibly evocative and all-encompassing. I can’t praise it highly enough.

Northest - very well put, couldn’t agree more. Personally speaking I loved both games, and often for totally different reasons.

Just one feature of A Machine for Pigs that I truly loved was Dan Pinchbeck’s writing - it’s absolutely superb.

After finishing the game, I can admire it as this esoteric puzzle you’re left to piece together yourself but I can’t help but be disappointed with it as a successor to The Dark Descent. It strips away so much of what I loved about the first game—its puzzles, its clever use of physics, its unending tension—and simply exists as this on-rails interactive story which is so heavily scripted that it completely suffocates any sense of tension. It’s just not scary, and even worse, it’s not much fun because 90% of the game simply consists of entering a new mechanical-themed area and looking for some valves to turn. It feels like a 15-page short story which someone decided to remake as an Amnesia mod for some reason.

Well, to each his/her own of course, but I DID find it moderately scary and also far more psychologically unsettling and disturbing than The Dark Descent.