A dark descent into the mind of a madman
A Machine for Pigs is a spin-off to the 2010 survival horror smash hit The Dark Descent developed by Dear Esther remake developers, The Chinese Room, and published by Frictional Games. It starts off with a familiar premise, you take the roll of a man who has recently suffered from amnesia and is tasked with finding someone. This is where the similarities end. Balancing your sanity and lamp oil, a hallmark of the original has been stripped from AMFP. Hiding from monsters, solving puzzles and exploration has all been streamlined in a way that degrades the the overall experience. There is no constant push forward or threat that immerses you in the world, in TDD if you chose to sit in the dark for a minutes you would eventually succumb to insanity and die shortly after experiencing unique horrifying events. In AMFP unless there is an enemy in the room with you then you don't have anything to worry you. It makes it easy to be taken out of the experience by focusing on reading the environments instead of worrying about constantly dwindling resources. I found myself constantly 'reading' areas where I would encounter the monsters; sprinting through the tight corridors of the game because it makes no logical sense for the designers to put a monster at one end and you at the other. Despite this, I can count more than a few times where monsters would seemingly teleport in and out of existence, it makes some of the potential scares just confusing more than anything. The world you inhabit isn't much more than a series of connected corridors and it is disappointing to see such an interesting setting not utilized to its full potential in the gameplay, the environments in TDD felt so vividly real, but the majority of AMFP's world is completely static. It is as if everything Frictional has learned from Penumbra and put into Amnesia was completely lost, the oversimplification and constant contrivances in order for some cheap scares break any illusion of the world being an actual place and make it feel like a cheap fun-house type of horror.
What I described may sound pretty bad, but luckily it almost never goes into offensively bad territory. For the most part it isn't really anything beyond average aside from a few lame scares. AMFP's strength is definitely its narrative, art and sound. While the world wasn't used well from a gameplay perspective, the period and setting is used in full effect in the notes you read and the events you hear about. The story's disjointed nature welcomes you to read and re-read notes in different orders, piecing together mysteries that form the darkest story I've ever experienced in any video game. The descriptions and events take layers of darker meanings as you learn about the different elements in the story, the egg, the machine, Mexico, compound X, pigs they all sound so bland on the surface but if you take the time to read the notes you will be rewarded greatly. If you chose to not piece together the story you will be confused, which is something that TDD handled well by having the simple premise be the main story of the game so you could still understand what was going on even if you didn't take the time to comprehend the subplots that surrounded you.
The game looks and sounds fantastic, the soundtrack is hauntingly beautiful and there are a few moments in the game that left the same impression. The graphics and voiceacting are a step up from TDD in particular but once again it is used to little effect in the actual game. The game isn't objectively bad, if you can accept that it isn't a direct mechanical sequel to TDD you might be able to enjoy it like I did. It is comes so close to reaching the same heights as The Dark Descent that you can see it in almost every space and every encounter, "that would be so much better if they just did _____" is something you will be thinking to yourself over and over and it can make it almost painful to play in all the wrong ways. In a way, A Machine for Pigs improves upon the The Dark Descent, the story hit hard and delivered a few emotional parts as well as some cringe-inducing and horrifying descriptions, the world looked fantastic and sounded downright terrifying at times but in every way that matters, every way that enhances the experience it falls completely flat.
