Recent reviews by Coleslaw

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is just plain ok if you consider it as a standalone game. If you rate it as a sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, it's kinda bad and very dissapointing.

Unfortunately, there isn't much meat to this porkchop. Amnesia: The Dark Descent took me 9 hours, which is decent. I finished this game in 5-ish hours, and that was with me exploring every possible nook and cranny before going along with the very streamlined story direction. Most rooms are locked off to you or are entirely pointless. Sure, some of these rooms would be nice hiding places, and there are plenty of areas throughout the game that look like they were specifically designed to be hiding places, except you rarely encounter the monsters. In my 5-ish hours, all risky (some encounters are visual only) monster encounters, if timed, would add up to about 10 minutes.

And to make hiding even more pointless, the monsters know your exact location for about 5 of the 10 minutes. Remember in Amnesia: The Dark Descent where you'd be encountering the monsters often enough to keep you on your toes and genuinely in suspense as to when the next one will appear? Well, for this game, I had this feeling at first, but once I realized that the monsters are so surprisingly insignificant, I lost that feeling entirely. I mentioned this to my friend, and he responded with "it's like edging" and that's honestly how I felt the entire time. I was ready for the suspense, but the suspense never came despite me wanting it so badly. Oh, also, the famous closet hiding is illegal in this game. Literally every single closet you encounter has this weird, ornate lock on it and you only see closets for the first few levels. They're gone for the rest of the game. I miss them already. :(

Also, the monsters are essentially just copy-pastes from The Dark Descent (aside from one, but it's just plain annoying and doesn't make sense), except retextured and with different sounds. Encountering one isn't as tense as it was in Dark Descent. In Dark Descent, you got spooky music, notable sound cues for where the monster is located, and a warning noise when you're spotted. You get none of that in A Machine for Pigs. Oftentimes, you can't hear the monsters over the ambience, dramatic music doesn't play unless it's already part of the level, and the only warning sound you get (if you even get it at all, sometimes they just chased me), is a semi-loud squel that I mistook for an idle noise.

Monster AI is just straight up bad. You can easily get the AI stuck on many objects. I.e. stand on the other side of a large crate and the monster will just stare at you from the other side of it.

The puzzles are easy/self-explanatory. For example, you find an obviously placed note that says "This chemical can melt metal but only when activated by light!", and oh look, a padlock you have to unlock to progress, hmm :thinking: now how do we get through that? Oh neat, we just so happen to have the components to make aforementioned chemical, and oh look! A big surgical lamp right next to the aforementioned padlock!

The story is.. eh. It sounds alright if you're not paying attention, but honestly if I had to give you a general gist of it all I'd probably butcher it since it's very forgettable, doesn't make much sense, and much of it goes unexplained.

In short, I'm glad I didn't pay for this (got it for free from a Humble Bundle event). Otherwise, I'd have been really annoyed with this purchase. I wouldn't say it's garbage. It's more like those offbrand snack cakes that taste kinda funny. Sure, they'll do if you're hungry, but why eat Tastykake (Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs) when you could eat Hostess (Amnesia: The Dark Descent)?