EPTAmnesia: A Machine for Pigs - Page 8
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Teton
France1656 Posts
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AnomalySC2
United States2073 Posts
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VirtuallyJesse
United States398 Posts
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Bloodash
Netherlands1384 Posts
On September 11 2013 22:02 VirtuallyJesse wrote: I've only played 1.5 hours so far, but I agree with that 100%. No inventory, oil, or boxes of matches to find means there is no real reason to explore, unless you want to read notes. Kinda feels really one dimensional, slightly disappointed so far. :< Oh, and the fact that you can barely interact with any objects! In the first game you could pick up and move lots of things, now it only feels like you can interact with puzzle objects. yep, have the exact same comments, kind of miss the gameplay in this game | ||
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sWalloW56
England29 Posts
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soggywaffle
United States18 Posts
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beg
991 Posts
 .and it's still very scary. | ||
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prototype.
Canada4215 Posts
There are no indications on what you're supposed to be looking for to advance the plot and like people said before, there's pretty much nothing to interact with which makes the game very counter intuitive since everything is so hidden. A good example poor design in this game is when you're at the entrance to the church and there's a flashback saying something about climbing to a higher place blah blah blah. Gaming logic tells me I should look for something to climb but nope... I spent 30min dicking around because I didn't see the oil filling contraption before this area. | ||
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AnomalySC2
United States2073 Posts
On September 11 2013 22:02 VirtuallyJesse wrote: I've only played 1.5 hours so far, but I agree with that 100%. No inventory, oil, or boxes of matches to find means there is no real reason to explore, unless you want to read notes. Kinda feels really one dimensional, slightly disappointed so far. :< Oh, and the fact that you can barely interact with any objects! In the first game you could pick up and move lots of things, now it only feels like you can interact with puzzle objects. The extremely well written notes are reason enough to compel me to search every nook and cranny. I guess I do understand why people at least wanted a gameplay mechanic replacement for removing candle and lamp oil collection, but for me I found those a bit annoying in the first. I do agree that the puzzles, if you can even call them that, could have been a bit more engaging. The story and setting and so well done though, that alone has me wanting to finish the game, despite being scared the entire time lol. Plus the sound design is one of the best I've ever heard in a game. Everything is so detailed. | ||
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ZeroChrome
Canada1001 Posts
Everything else is great so far. | ||
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Kisra
United Kingdom466 Posts
The first few hours of the game are pretty fantastic. Very tense, lots of exploring to do, a lot of the subtle fuckery you associate with TDD. Then after a while The Chinese Room starts showing its colours and you end up with a lot of heavy-handed exposition and a lot of very scripted, linear environments. The ending segments of TDD basically had semi-randomly patrolling monsters around large environments and puzzles to solve. It made it all very tense as you were combining items and working with stuff because you didn't know what to expect next. Here, that doesn't quite happen (partially due to lack of inventory; so puzzle solutions are generally very near). Lack of interactivity in the environment is kind of annoying, being able to play with everything in TDD was just a nice immersive touch. The lantern being infinite and lack of sanity mechanics also made the dark feel far less oppressive; TDD has a great feeling of being hunted and small, that the darkness itself is out to get you, and you need to manage your light carefully. This game lacks that and suffers for it. I spent most of the near end sections just not bothering with the lantern at all, it isn't really needed. Grab it in a sale, watch the inevitable screamy assholes on youtube, but it doesn't really measure up to its predecessor. Some decent genuine scares and some good mindfuckery at points but otherwise a lesser game. Now, spoilertime: + Show Spoiler + They really need to stop pulling that shit of walking down a corridor and listening to conversations. The entire last hour is full of it, on really linear environments, with no patrolling enemies. It's just set piece after set piece, which is odd considering TDD went the other way; early encounters are all highly scripted, later ones are far more unpredictable and freeform. Telepig at the end was more annoying than scary. It felt so out of place to have a 'Boss Battle' style enemy in a Dark Descent game and all I could think while encountering it was the meeting at The Chinese Room where someone suggested they need a 'bigger monster' to scare people at the end. Monsters aren't scary. The unknown is scary, and we've been playing with pigmen the entire game. Just because this one is sparking and goes invisible doesn't somehow make it nightmarish. There's a lot of wasted potential here, but I'm not too surprised. Early sequences were fantastic, refueling the tank springs to mind, or just wandering around the house, all felt very tense. The centrifuge area was pretty solidly executed. But it all seems silly compared to how well done TDD was. I'm talking stuff like giving you no option but to go into water as opposed to just dropping you into it, or the cistern in TDD where there isn't even a monster for a long time but every player is freaked the fuck out and paranoid. None of that really happens here. | ||
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julianto
2292 Posts
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Leporello
United States2845 Posts
First time you see a pig-man is great, and there might be one or two other decent pig-chasing moments. But otherwise it kind of just felt like an extended, darker version of Dear Esther. TDD scared the hell out of me and made me extremely anxious at times. With this game, I was just never really worried. Even when it comes to the "mood" and "atmosphere", I think TDD did a better job. edit: TDD has a great feeling of being hunted and small, that the darkness itself is out to get you And it's so obvious that this is what made the game great. I'm really surprised that they decided to just abandon everything that made TDD so wonderfully nerve-racking. | ||
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ZeroChrome
Canada1001 Posts
I'm less scared in the middle of the game than I was at the beginning. Pretty much says it all. | ||
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Kisra
United Kingdom466 Posts
On September 12 2013 06:34 julianto wrote: I don't get the ending. Can someone care to explain their interpretation? + Show Spoiler + -Mandus' wife dies in childbirth. -He lives relatively happily until he takes a vacation to Mexico with his children. -There, they find the "stone egg," a relic of an ancient god that still holds his spirit or power or whatever. -The god shows Mandus visions of his sons dying very painful deaths in the Battle of Somme in WW1. -This drives Mandus to madness, so he kills his sons on the spot in order to spare them that pain. -However, this sacrifice strengthens the god's power, while simultaneously linking his soul to Mandus or something. -The god gives Mandus the idea that all of mankind of diseased, and plants the idea of the Machine in his head -Mandus travels back to London and spends the next year building the Machine for the purpose of making an army of pig men to kill everyone -But then, somehow, right before he unleashes them upon the world, he has a change of heart and goes about sabotaging the Machine, while simultaneously contracting sudden amnesia -This is where the game starts. You travel through the guts of the Machine, discover what a dickhole you've been, then kill yourself at the core of the Machine in order to kill the mad god that lives inside you. Best summary I've seen so far. General consensus I've noticed is Aztec god/orb gets into Mandus, Mandus goes crazy, starts butchering/converting poor, starts butchering/converting rich, has a change of heart, sabotage, amnesia. In the end he kills himself to kill the intelligence in the machine/himself organising all of this. There's a few nasty plotholes, like why you have Amnesia, if this thing is the same as what Alexander was in TDD (which never really seemed actively hostile to mankind, just uncaring and wanted to get home). | ||
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Warpath
Canada1242 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + This one felt a lot less scary than TDD, I rarely had to sprint except in the forced encounters. Despite having unlimited fuel I was content to not use my lantern for a majority of the game, and, after the intro portion, the tension never seemed to increase. probably partially because TDD was a supernatural horror that could throw enemies to you at random, where this one seemed really scripted and entirely predictable the whole way through. Turning a valve used to be the scariest thing, and i never got a moment of "Fuck, i have to go BACK into the water/X room!?" etc. The biggest thing is TDD forced you to move or you go insane and the game gets tougher on you, and made you want to not stand in the light OR the dark. none of these elements really appeared in machine for pigs. | ||
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Fatalize
France5210 Posts
However the story in itself is a lot more twisted and deeply wrong compared to TDD. In TDD it's all about killing Alexander and that supernatural shadow following you, but that's it. In AMFP the story is a lot more intricate and well written I feel. Also, the music and voice acting are truly excellent spoiler + Show Spoiler + And the ending scene where you walk to the machine to rip your heart is both beautiful and terrifying in a psychological way. The Machine's monologue is gorgeous. So yeah TDD is probably the better game but AMFP is the better story and narration. Were you to write them as books, AMFP would be a way better read. Also, as a side note, LOL at people complaining about the obsolete words and language. It's supposed to happen in 1899, so the old language IS mandatory to set the atmosphere. It wouldnt be half as good if the english level was that of a 15 yo kid born in the 90s. I've also seen people in streams laugh at the various "I am come" that are in the notes, which is sad. English unfortunately simplified all its grammar and language rules during the last century. | ||
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Disengaged
United States6994 Posts
When I look at this game I don't see an Amnesia game. I see a game trying to be like Amnesia but failing. TDD balanced the story with the atmosphere,scares pretty damn well. This game fails to do that. They took out what made TDD good and came up with this. No oil or tinderboxes or even an inventory. Oh and a lantern that doesn't run off of anything. There goes two things that TDD had. The feel or want to explore because you wanna explore to try to look for items along with notes because you are pretty much directed where to go with the linear levels. Second thing is that with nothing keeping the lantern on there goes the feeling of panic the sense of "oh shit i need to find oil please!!!" when your lantern is low because you do not wanna be creeping around with no lantern. This game you can care less and keep the lantern going on forever. Puzzles are meh. They took what made the last game scary and fun and took those out and made a simplified version of Amnesia with too much of a focus on the story. Its like they focused all their attention on the story and then after that they were all like "Well, shit, I guess we have to actually put "scares" in this game! OH! And some scary atmosphere. I'm sure people won't notice." I feel disappointed about this game. You wanna know whats funny? Is that a FREE HL2 MOD called Underhell has great story,scary atmosphere,gameplay and balanced them amazingly well and its longer then both outlast and AMFP combined and exceeds tenfolds and does so much better then what AMFP and Outlast failed to do. | ||
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Leporello
United States2845 Posts
On September 12 2013 08:13 Fatalize wrote: I guess the overall feel is that TDD is a better game whereas AMFP is a better story. There are a lot of mechanics missing, puzzles are really simple and the game has less jumpscares/monsters/chases. However the story in itself is a lot more twisted and deeply wrong compared to TDD. In TDD it's all about killing Alexander and that supernatural shadow following you, but that's it. In AMFP the story is a lot more intricate and well written I feel. Also, the music and voice acting are truly excellent spoiler + Show Spoiler + And the ending scene where you walk to the machine to rip your heart is both beautiful and terrifying in a psychological way. The Machine's monologue is gorgeous. So yeah TDD is probably the better game but AMFP is the better story and narration. Were you to write them as books, AMFP would be a way better read. Also, as a side note, LOL at people complaining about the obsolete words and language. It's supposed to happen in 1899, so the old language IS mandatory to set the atmosphere. It wouldnt be half as good if the english level was that of a 15 yo kid born in the 90s. I've also seen people in streams laugh at the various "I am come" that are in the notes, which is sad. English unfortunately simplified all its grammar and language rules during the last century. No. I get that it's supposed to be obsolete and Dickensian, Old English. The problem is it tries too hard. It embellishes too much. It isn't Dickensian, it's a thesaurus-lover's wet dream. Also, a lot of Victorian literature, especially Dickens, was not at ALL representative of how people actually talked. Like The Pickwick Papers, the abundant formality of the language is itself a joke, intellectually impressive as it may be. Dear Esther had the same problem. | ||
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Fatalize
France5210 Posts
On September 12 2013 08:48 Leporello wrote: No. I get that it's supposed to be obsolete and Dickensian, Old English. The problem is it tries too hard. It embellishes too much. It isn't Dickensian, it's a thesaurus-lover's wet dream. Also, a lot of Victorian literature, especially Dickens, was not at ALL representative of how people actually talked. Like The Pickwick Papers, the abundant formality of language is itself a joke. Dear Esther had the same problem. Not gonna waste my time arguing but I guess you feel that way because there is no culture of poetry and well-written texts in english compared to a variety of other languages, mainly because of its simplification and worldwide spread. | ||
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