Yes, I’m done already. I thought more end of the week rather than now that I’d be writing this. AMfP is dramatically shorter than I had thought it would be, racking up just five hours of playtime.
I finished not more than hour ago and already the environments blur together. The streets, the heart of the machine, the old house and the church are about all I remember. What even came in between? Oh, there was a sewer I suppose. Great.
I’ll say it again; the atmosphere was fantastic. The writing was brilliant and the pacing was fantastic – narrative suspense built up to a marvellous climax at the end of the game. The music! Oh, the music.
But it . . . wasn’t really . . . a game . . .
That’s it. It felt entirely like an interactive story. I felt like I was shepherded along a path, look at this, look at that, now hurry along, there’s a good boy. I remember being lost and confused in Dark Descent. I remember scratching my head over puzzles! Machine for Pigs feels . . . devoid of gameplay. How sad.
And halfway through the game, you get to freely stare one of the creatures in the face and feel no danger! The entire experience of being trapped and alone with them just slightly out of sight is devalued by knowing what they are.
They even recycled the water-ghost thing from dark descent, except not nearly in such a compelling way. Even that encounter was easily resolved by running away quickly.
For one such as me, not easily frightened, the game is already lacking something. But at least the Dark Descent managed to be unsettling – I found myself a little shaken by those blood-soaked torture chambers. Given the nature of the story of machine for pigs, so much imagery could have been applied, and yet the opportunity is overlooked for the sake of more metallic corridors, stone archways and endless crates.
The story carried the game entirely for me. I cannot ignore the gameplay issues, but knowing what I know now, I’d still not change the fact that I bought and played the game. The writers are geniuses, truly.
Although the story IS fantastic, we were promised that we wouldn’t be certain what was and was not reality. I felt more could have been made of that.
*Sigh*
I wanted to like this game. I wanted to love it as I did Dark Descent. It seemed one of the last gleaming lights in an ocean of genericness, but even its own light is dimmed, and it has become little more than being led upon a path.
The Dark Descent was far more of a game than this. All that seems to have been done is that things have been removed and not replaced. How sad. How very sad.
Magic and Guesswork 
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