I am a huge fan of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It did horror right in a way that other games just don’t these days. The atmosphere was dark and oppressive, you had no way to defend yourself and you were crushingly alone. Except for the monsters which you always had a feeling were there but you never quite saw until it was too late.
Horror doesn’t affect me too much, so most of the kicks I got from Amnesia came from its fantastic atmosphere and visuals along with its brilliantly paced story. The few hours I’ve played of Machine for Pigs show that that’s all still here, and once again whirls together to create the aforementioned dark, oppressive feel, but actually delivering on the horror is where it trips over.
The suspense, once again, is perfectly built. And yet somehow, encounters with the grunts were much more frightening than the encounters with the creatures found in aMfP, even though these new encounters are far more clever. In DD, you had all the music a-playin’, the screen a-shakin’, the grunts a-roarin’, yet that first moment you saw the thing was always terrifying because you didn’t know it was coming. Machine for pigs however . . .
“Oswald walked into the room already crouched, for he could see that it was not a puzzle room, and the way it seemed to be laid out, with endless barricades of boxes and machines, light pooling in some places with utter darkness surrounding, told him that an enemy was probably lurking nearby. His lantern flickered. Although no music played and he heard nothing but muffled footsteps and a snuffling noise, he knew exactly how to proceed. A minute later, he was at the other side of the room, quite content in his safety from the confused creature.”
It’s not quite so compelling. You can see what’s going to happen quite easily if you’re reading the signs right and that makes the entire encounter a farce. I love the fact that there’s no music and that the creature won’t just go away if you crouch in the corner for a minute or two. But knowing when you’re safe and when you are not safe completely undermines the horror aspect. What would be ideal is the best of both worlds; these encounters happening unexpectedly, but also not just finishing when you’ve sucked your thumb in the corner enough. No music either. Sounds good to me.
The rest of the game seems lacking. Being not much affected by horror, the joy of the game was exploration and puzzle-solving to me. With no inventory screen, puzzles are more limited already. And what I’ve seen so far haven’t been much more than glorified fetch-quests or a game of hunt-the-lever.
Here’s another thing that’s taken the tension off and is related to the whole inventory screen thing; your lamp never runs out. You no longer have to conserve your oil, fearing that you could be left stumbling around in the dark slowly going insane. It was an annoyance, yes, but it DID succeed in making things tense. I’d have left it in.
Finally; Sanity’s gone. You also have no way to assess your health;I I assume it just regenerates. I see the logic since in the last game you died in a couple of hits, but still, again, it added to the tension to know when you were on your last legs. And the one time I did get caught by the creature, it got off three or four hits on me. I got away just fine and I assume made it back to full health somehow with no negative repercussions.
Don’t misunderstand me; I’m having fun with it. It’s still Amnesia. It just doesn’t hold a lantern to The Dark Descent so far.
I’ll post a last-impressions to give my full thoughts on the game when I’m done but for now, peace out.
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