Video Games Suck - Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

I've been waiting for this game for 2 years now, and this is what I get? A downgraded hollow husk of Amnesia? This game has redefined simplification. Apparently The Chinese Room, the same people who made Dear Esther, took charge on this game and decided to remove fucking everything that made the first game, well, a game.

I've been waiting for this game for 2 years now, and this is what I get? A downgraded hollow husk of Amnesia? This game has redefined simplification. Apparently The Chinese Room, the same people who made Dear Esther, took charge on this game and decided to remove fucking everything that made the first game, well, a game.

Straight off the bat, the sanity mechanics are gone. You can now sit in the dark as long as you want, there is no need to seek the light. The inventory is gone, which is always a great sign, huh? You no longer need to heal yourself, find items and combine them, or solve anything. The removal of the inventory also means you no longer need to seek out oil or tinderboxes. You have a lantern with unlimited resources. There is absolutely no sense of urgency or desperation in this game. All the awesome post-processing effects associated with your sanity levels that made the first game so fun are gone. You can just casually walk through the levels, and it's not like anybody is going to stop you because there are apparently no enemies in this game. Just some voice acting, and the voice acting sucks ass too because it's a children's voice and everybody knows children have no fucking talent. What's wrong with these people?

The level design is horrible. In the first game we had the freedom to choose which areas we would like to visit. In this game all you get are linear levels. ALL DOORS except the ones you are supposed to walk through are locked. Same goes for every cupboard in the game. There goes exploration. You literally do nothing but walk through empty rooms to empty corridors that lead you to more empty rooms, with nothing to do but pick up a bunch of notes with a hard to read font and nothing else. Literally nothing else.

The graphics have not improved. I know they say they have, but no. First of all, they tried to make the game darker than the original, which made it too fucking dark. There are lamps in almost every room and corner, but they don't illuminate anything. Then why bother to have them there? They're obviously functioning, but don't do anything, and it looks fucking retarded. I had to use my lantern in a small room with 3 fucking lit table lamps. It's especially stupid when you know they only did this because they must have thought "DARK IS SCARY! MORE DARK!"

So you might wonder, since they removed the inventory and you no longer have to find items, or combine them, what's left puzzle wise? Well, want to know what kind of puzzles you can expect in Amnesia: AMFP? You have to replace a burnt fuse for levers to work. And where do you find this fuse? In the adjacent room, on a shelf. Holy shit, that was intense! Another mind-twisting puzzle is that you have to carry a canister to fill it with oil and put it in a car. All of this is of course explained in detail in a note, which you can find ON THE CAR. So apparently the devs not only thought they should get rid of actual puzzles and objectives, but they should outright give you a walkthrough. Speaking of simplified, watered down gameplay; the game now has controller support. Coincidence?

All you do in this fucking game is walk around alone in empty areas. First three levels you literally do nothing but walk and pull 1 or 2 levers. I'm not kidding. You are alone, and it feels like some sort of student project game where they still have to put the AI and enemies in. That's it. I've seen better mods for the original. There are many aspects which made the original such a good game, and The Chinese Room removed EVERY single one of those things. No sanity mechanism, No inventory, No items, No puzzles. This game is now nothing more than Dear Esther with an Amnesia skin thrown on top of it. Walking around an empty level doing nothing but listening to a few bits of voice acting might work for a game like Dear Esther, but when people pay for Amnesia that's not what they expect. It's borderline fraud. The development of this game took a whole year, and then it was postponed another year, to total a two year development period. It took these people 2 years to create a DOWNGRADE. A mod that takes away features from the original game. A product with less features than the original. It's like taking Mario and working 2 years to turn it into Pong. The Chinese Room has proven that they need to fuck off and leave others' games alone. Stick to making trekking simulators.

4/10?

Only played up to the fourth area