Brilliant plot, attention to detail make ‘Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs’ truly terrifying experience
There has been an exciting resurgence of the survival horror genre recently, thanks primarily to one, now-famous indie game: “Amnesia: The Dark Descent.”
After its release in 2010, it was quickly hailed as a brilliant success and has come to be regarded as one of the scariest games ever made.
For its much-anticipated follow-up, Frictional Games handed the development reigns over to The Chinese Room, a cleverly named indie studio best known for the experimental game, “Dear Esther.” The result is a sequel which is true to the spirit of the original, but not a slavish devotion to it. The Chinese Room brings its own strengths and weaknesses to “A Machine for Pigs.”
The game opens with protagonist Oswald Mandus waking in his deserted London mansion.
Though there is no immediate sense of danger, things appear very wrong. The beds are encased in iron cages, secret passages behind the walls reveal a series of one-way mirrors and a mysterious caller on the telephone informs Mandus that his children are trapped inside a machine far underground.
It sounds like a dream sequence, like a nightmare intro to the game that Mandus would awake from.
But it isn’t. The game only becomes more surreal as the player progresses deep into a massive complex of turn-of-the-20th century machinery.
“A Machine for Pigs” distills the horror genre down to its core, stripping away anything and everything that might prove extraneous. For better or worse, “The Dark Descent”’s insanity mechanic and resource management have been removed.
It’s hard not to miss these pieces of a devious game play formula, as the game feels a bit too constrained, linear and simplistic without them.
“A Machine for Pigs” also reduces the number of enemy encounters significantly, making a trade-off in favor of a focus on immersion. The game does this incredibly well, creating such a foreboding, sinister, utterly toxic atmosphere that it manages to terrify even in its first 90 minutes, prior to revealing its first hideous pig creature.
It’s a brave gamble to withhold a game’s threat for that long, one which will vary in its effectiveness based on the player’s affinity for horror.
Players who require their monsters to be constant, tangible sources of danger will find “A Machine for Pigs” to be quite a disappointment. But for those who favor atmosphere and an ever intensifying sense of dread, this abattoir from hell could quite possibly be your worst nightmare.
Great sound design is a necessity for success with this kind of horror. The audio here is as effectively chilling as the waters surrounding the Titanic. The distant shrieks that echo through the walls of steam-powered industry are a haunting mix of swine and human suffering. Pipes rattle and shake with an almost organic quality, as if the entire machine were drawing deep breaths through them. Playing “A Machine for Pigs” without quality headphones is both a waste and an act of cowardice.
Above all else, what makes “A Machine for Pigs” such an excellent game is the powerful story it tells. The writing is superb, some of the most evocative of any game this year. The documents players find on their descent into the bowels of the machine poke and prod at the mind, their vivid descriptions practically dripping with malice, disgust and anguish.
Though many of the details are left up to player interpretation, the overarching narrative is one which encapsulates the inhumanity surrounding the apex of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Players willing keep an open mind and to divorce “A Machine for Pigs” from their expectations of what an “Amnesia: The Dark Decent” sequel should be will find an excellent survival horror game, one that understands that anticipation is horror’s most valuable commodity.
“A Machine for Pigs” will tug at your nerves, one by one, until the tension reaches a fever pitch, and then it will let you suffer in that space for as long as is possible. It’ll have you begging its mutant man-pigs to show themselves, if only so you don’t have to imagine them any longer.