Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
Where/when/why? This one came in a Halloween-themed Humble Indie Bundle around this time last year (Oct 2014 for those playing along at home). I paid around $7 for the whole thing, which got me 8 games, none of which I’d played before, so I guess that works out to a bit less than a dollar per game? I am generally a sucker for Humble Bundles, particularly when they are made up mainly of games I don’t already possess. In this instance Machine for Pigs was probably the biggest drawcard anyway, as I’d had a bit of fun with it’s predecessor/older-cousin The Dark Descent (next on the list, not coincidentally) and had planned to get hold of it at some point anyway.
What/who? Machine for Pigs is a FPV exploration/horror game with some puzzles. It came out in September 2013. The project was helmed by UK indies The Chinese Room (responsible for Dear Esther), and published by Frictional (responsible for the original Amnesia: The Dark Descent).
First install? Yep!
Play length? Completion state? 3-4 hours, and completed.
How’d it go? THOUGHTS AHEAD!
“Yep this is what it would be like if the makers of Dear Esther were put in charge of making an Amnesia game!” is something I thought to myself more than once. There are definitely elements of both.
Playing a horror game as part of a broader completionist task creates a weird tension of desires. I wanted to move through the game efficiently in order to complete it and move on to the next thing without too much delay. The games puzzles were fairly easy-going, and often progress simply involved moving ahead. A run button was even provided to this end. However, because I spook easily, and because Machine for Pigs horror atmospherics were honestly pretty effective, I was compelled to move cautiously even during the long early section of the game when I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be seeing any genuine threats for a long time, if ever.
Later on, when the actual enemies-that-need-to-be-ran-away-from become a factor, I found myself genuinely tense and heart-poundy even though I logically knew that dying and respawning would hardly set me back at all. This was again because…
The sound, particularly, was real good. Effects and music, both. Dynamic was spot on. Jolly good show.
I was super relieved when five minutes in I realised the light/fuel/fear mechanic from Dark Descent was gone. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this next time.
I enjoyed the setting! I guess Steampunk always gets a leg up there, but it was pretty well realised artistically. Also from a conceptual point of view, having the player continually directed downwards made the world, the house of the game, very easy to grasp. I don’t remember if Dark Descent had a similar thing? I guess we’ll find out soon.
And then the narrative, well… look. It was grandiose and silly, and it was also serious, and mixing these things is hard to do successfully, I know. Mechanically speaking the narrative worked okay as a, y'know, device to keep the game-world scrolling through, but I never felt particularly invested in it… although why this was the case feels difficult to articulate now. Maybe it’s that despite all the twists and reveals as to what was happening, large chunks seemed too predictable, and where they weren’t predictable, they just seemed downright improbable, the suspension of the player’s reality too large. This jars because Machine for Pigs builds into a convoluted metaphor/lesson relating to human nature and the way people treat each other (SPOILER ALERT WE’RE ALL ALREADY PIGS) (JUST KIDDING) (OR AM I?) and while the game seems to be making a serious point, a plausibly accurate point even, doing so with ridiculousness well undercut it. For me at least. The final jigsaw piece of the narrative, the part which I guess (SPOILER ALERT FOR REAL THIS TIME) is meant to show where the two sides of the main character diverge, that being knowledge of the future ie. twentieth century events, which is given as part of the final scene, is emblematic of this whole problem: it’s too far removed mechanically from the unreality in the game, like it’s a reality break in a totally different way that hasn’t been set up through gameplay but merely by vague references to “an event” in the found notes etc that colour the script, to make for coherent plot vindication. So it all just falls a bit flat for me there, really.
Once again I thought the game was about to end a significantly long time before it actually did. In this case it was because I’d gotten to the bottom of the map and the phone voice assured me things were totally about to finish. I knew I was being played a fool, but meekly hoped I was being played a fool in ways which would still end the game. At least it wasn’t at the half-way point this time cough Alan Wake cough.
Play it again, Sam? Unlikely barring a specific hitherto unimagined reason.
Up next is Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Obviously.