Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Review (PC)

  Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a really short game; I clocked in at around three hours. To it's credit, even in this short time span I went through an impressive range of emotions. First, I was unsettled and creeped out, waking up in a bed that was surrounded by an animal cage. Next I was curious to learn who I was and what events had led to my precarious situation. As I picked up and read some scattered notes I felt genuinely disturbed as they described surgical experiments and mutilation. Roaming a labyrinthian sewer, I lost my way and confusion set in. Then somewhere along the way I got tired of looking at bricks and pipes and I got bored.

  The setting of A Machine for Pigs is intriguing; taking place in London (I believe...) around the start of the industrial revolution it's the Lovecraft tropes we know and love, but in a setting that's somewhat unique for the genre. The character you control is the owner of a meat packing business, and the advent of automated machinery to replace human workers leaves him a little obsessed with streamlining the production line. Under his house lies impossibly complex machines of death to slaughter the livestock. And of course by “pigs” he means humans. His kids take to playing in these death tunnels and have an accident around the pig people. Discovering his twin boys' demise leads your protagonist further into madness, and he becomes obsessed with bringing them back. The underground laboratories help his quest as he feeds more blood into his machines with the promise of quenching the insatiable appetite of an elder god residing in an abyssian pyramid. His wife died, too? Forgive me if the details are hazy, but this is one of those “pick up the notes” types of storytelling, and it also really doesn't matter that much because it's more about the atmosphere of the game.

  And the spooky atmosphere is done rather well. At first, anyway. The early portions of A Machine for Pigs could reasonably be criticized for being nothing more than “boo, haunted house” jump scares, but these are quite effective and the strongest parts of the game. Descending deeper into the earth you'd figure a darker madness awaited you, but no... it's mostly just recycled bricks and pipes and steam. There's a real good buildup to revealing the pig-men hybrid monsters that stalk the halls, and seeing one for the first time is unnerving. Unfortunately that's about all you're going to see in terms of monsters, and their effectiveness wears off long before the apocalyptic payoff of pigmen running rampant in the streets of London. They become more nuisance than nightmare, obstacles between you and the solution to a simplistic puzzle you'd otherwise solve before you knew there was a problem to be solved. Again, for a short game it seems like it's stretching itself too thin.

  I started off fairly high on Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, but as I progressed I grew less interested. It's been awhile since I played the original Amnesia, but somehow I remember much more about that game than the one I just finished. It's almost like... no, fuck it.