Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (PC) Review

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A stripped down, yet still frightening sequel.

I love a good horror game. A truly terrifying experience is actually rather difficult to find in this day and age. Amnesia: The Dark Descent was one of those truly horrifying games. The sense of helplessness and fear really drove it home for me. When I heard a sequel was in the works, I was very excited. Developed by The Chinese Room, this sequel takes some different routes that change up the gameplay from the original. While the sequel has some terrifying moments that gave me a good scare, the rest of the game is not fleshed out, and it drops the entertainment factor significantly.

A Machine for Pigs is set on the night of New Year’s Eve 1899 in Victorian London. Players take control of Mandus, an amnesiac who has just awakened. Now, he must find his two children while navigating an industrial nightmare where some horrible experiences have taken place. With the help of a mysterious man giving advice through phone calls, Mandus must find his way through the dark clockwork of corridors and find out what has happened to his children.

Genuinely creepy.

Much like the first Amnesia, A Machine for Pigs is played through a first person perspective. Mandus utilizes a lantern to light his way. Unlike The Dark Descent, the inventory and sanity aspects are not present in A Machine for Pigs. Mandus can pick up certain items and move them around to solve puzzles or to open a new path, but it never gets very involved. The lantern never runs out of oil, and there are no health items to pick up. For the most part, it feels like a much more simplified version of the first game.

There are a few puzzles to solve in order to progress. These never went into much detail or complexity. Most of them even had the solutions sitting in the same room. Sometimes I found myself solving one and didn’t even know it was one.

Scariness can only go so far.

The atmosphere and scares are what players of the first game would come to expect. The sound design and lighting is top notch, and it can get very creepy at times. Of course, there are monsters that will begin a chase sequence. This is where things get very scary but at the same time, shows how it has no real depth. The first few encounters were genuinely terrifying, but when finding out the monsters are blocking the only exit, I had to kite the enemy around some corridors or eventually, just run by them entirely.

The visuals are on par with the first Amnesia. The lighting is well done, but when getting close to textures, it does show its flat surfaces. Of course, most of the time, I was too busy looking around to notice. Aside from the few scattered puzzles involved, the only other aspect comes in the form of the way the story is told. Most of it is through journal pages that the player will find, that offer back story to what is going on in the industrial nightmare, and even though it is told through reading or voiced flashbacks, it is still well done.

This is the only screenshot that isn’t almost entirely black…


The only technical problem I had with the game was substantial screen tearing. It only started after about halfway through, but when it started, it didn’t stop and it was very harsh.

I’m somewhat torn on A Machine for Pigs. It definitely has some moments of tension, and the story is well done, but when the game only lasts around four hours, and the puzzles and chase sequences boil down to simplistic solutions, it feels like a bare bones experience wrapped up in a scary exterior. I enjoyed what I played, but in the end, it felt like it was too short of an experience with not much happening. After the end of the game, I saw there was no real reason to go back and play it again due to already experiencing it. It felt like it ended far too quickly and after sitting back and thinking about it, it really felt like I was just running through a haunted house with a few puzzles spread around.

A Machine for Pigs has some great atmosphere and a compelling story, but The Chinese Room have removed much of the game play that kept me coming back to the original after the scares had became dull. As much as I liked The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs feels more like a quick expansion than a full on sequel. Fans of the first game will enjoy this quick romp through a new environment, but with its short play time, no replay value and removed mechanics, I still have to recommend a price drop.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.
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Written by
Drew is the Community Manager here at ZTGD and his accent simply woos the ladies. His rage is only surpassed by the great one himself and no one should stand between him and his Twizzlers.

3 Comments

  1. Really?
    Replayability = there will come community based maps and mods = lots of replayability
    Screen tearing = must be something with your pc

    • I can assure you there is nothing wrong with my PC, and I like to judge games based on their own merits. This is what was offfered when the game was released, not what may or may not happen with mods months down the line.

  2. This review got it almost 100% correct, I would actually say he was maybe a little generous (not a bad quality to have) with the 6.5. Removing the sanity and inventory components from the first Amnesia took out about 35% of the soul of Amnesia. While there is some degree of, as the reviewer accurately put it, “Haunted house walkthrough” present in both games, what set aside the monotony of walking through a story in the first game was that you had to constantly be aware of where you sanity was, and why the heck you were supposed to do with three of the (sometimes unusual) items in your inventory at any given time. Taking that out really crippled A Machine for Pigs as an Amnesia sequel. Again though, that being said, the developers did a good job with the environment and sounds, and if you have a few hours lying around and access to a friend who already owns this game, play it through in the dark and enjoy the nightmarish story. Don’t spend the $15-$20 on it though, even Outlast was a better buy and Outlast has absolutely no replay value since it relies entirely on jump scares.

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