AMFP Member Review Thread

[MonoxideDGK]

Ha dto finally create an account even though I am a long time Amnesia fan and have been lurking these forums for quite some time.

I am truthfully disappointed that after such a looong wait for this TCR came out with something so average imo. Yes the story is good and the atmosphere too but when comparing to TDD it is extremely average. They went backwards in so many ways...I am genuinely upset as I hoping for more =(

[Kreekakon]

Samuel Justice and Jessica Curry (and anyone else involved with giving me eargasms) should be bestowed with golden ass-scratchers made from melted-down Grammy awards, because their work is beyond amazing and no actual award would suffice.

...this is the single greatest metaphor I have ever seen in a review before.

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Anyways great reviews everyone! Seeing all these makes me want to hurry up, and write my own, but I'm waiting until I've successfully wrapped my head around the whole thing to be SURE how I feel less I accidentally write something which does myself a disservice.

[wretch]

Story: 10/10 (i predict plenty of story awards for this game)

Gameplay: 7/10

Spoiler below!

(monsters are encountered only a couple of times through the entire game, lack of interactivity, puzzles were very simple but thet were fun since you got to interact with AMFP's environment, the monsters in the first Amnesia are a lot more dangerous and a lot more easily alerted than AMFP's monsters, oh and i don't think i encountered a situation were a monster could get a chance to break down a door, even if the animations and the sounds are in place. but i really licked the light flickering when monsters are near mechanic)

Sound: 10/10

Spoiler below!

(chilling and the near end-game and end-game tracks are sad and emotional)

Voice acting: 10/10 (especially mandus)

Overall, this is a 10/10 for me just because of the story. That's what I cared about the most when I bought the game.

[Artyom]

After finishing the game in one sitting I'd say that this is soooo much more immersing and intense than TDD. The story was excellent and the level design was awesome!!!

AMFP:
Level design: 10/10
Story: 10/10
Interaction: 5/10
Characters: 10/10
Monsters: 5/10 (they looked a bit silly and wasn't very intelligent)
Performance:8/10 (Played on full settings 1080p, Had a few fps drops here and there.)
Scares: 9/10
Puzzles: 9/10
Music/Sounds: Absolut 10/10

TDD:
Level design: 5/10
Story: 10/!0
Interaction 8/10
Characters: 10/10
Monsters: 9/10
Scares: 7/10
Puzzles: 7/10
Music/Sounds: 9/10

These are my personal opinions.

[The Raining Brains]

Here's a thought. If one's survival is not threatened...then for what reason would we feel fear?

[Kreekakon]

Here's a thought. If one's survival is not threatened...then for what reason would they feel fear?

Paranoia, and fear of the unknown of what MIGHT be something that could hurt you.

[Paddy™]

Ugh, though i do quite like your picture, that first sentence just shows that you assert your opinion the same as everyone else does.

-edit- my bad second sentence

Nothing wrong with asserting opinions...did I give that impression? I thought it was clear I was talking about knee-jerk opinions from people who either haven't played the game but instead watched Let's Plays, or are from people who are generally belligerent dicks. Having a negative opinion of the game is perfectly fine if it's a reasoned one (and is preferably from someone who has actually played the game). The clear majority of the complaints I've read on this forum are not in that category. In fact, most of the time they're barely coherent.

[The Raining Brains]

Paranoia, and fear of the unknown of what MIGHT be something that could hurt you.

So then I suppose if TCR can be praised for anything, it is there ability to create fear for it's own sake.

An admirable approach but I can't help but wonder if that paranoia was the result of the game itself, or of our expectations left over from TDD? I'm not sure the latter would sit well with me.

It exploits all the things we've learnt about horror gaming without fully utilising them. So even if such an approach was successful, it is not really a great experience on it's own terms but rather a product of what has preceded it.

[MonkEsquire]

Completed it in 3 hours. Was a total fucking waste of my time. It had absolutely none of the atmosphere, build up, tension or execution of TDD. There's literally no sense of danger from the monster and the monster itself is fucking laughable.

Literally. I laughed when I first saw it. The parts of the game where you had to hide from the monster I didn't even bother putting my lantern away because it was so non threatening it was comical. They removed 90% of the game play elements that made TDD excellent.

Inventory management isn't a bad thing. Choosing whether to use up your tinders/oil or lose sanity was a smart game play decision. It gave a sense of tension because you didn't know if you were going to need to save your resources or use it in the moment. It created ups and downs in the game play where you felt safe momentarily. in AMFP there was none of that. It was jsut a constant down moment. The graphics were just so completely dark that even the light up areas felt dreary and uninteresting.

Exploration felt pointless because there were no resources to find. Every single area in the game is a linear path to the next area. There are no extraneous rooms to explore because all of the doors are closed off with a giant 2ft wide lock.

I felt absolutely no connection to the main character and his reasons for doing what he does. You figure out what happens in the first 5 seconds of the game. The whole children aspect was just tiresome and overdone to the point of annoyance. The character doesn't seem to care about what's going on, so why should I?

In TDD you learned about the character and his actions through the memory flashbacks with voice acting. These were well done but in AMFP it's all done with verbose diary entries which I couldn't care about at all. After the first 5 or so you realise that he's basically just writing down what you have to do to complete the next puzzle. The puzzles by the way being simpler than "put the cylinder in the cylindrical hole"

The only good part was the end of the game with the final monologue. I felt that was done rather well and the voice actor was actually acting. It's just a shame that the entire rest of the game was so poorly paced up to that point.

I'd like to thank The Chinese Room for ruining one of the only good horror games of the last 10 years. Please don't make another video game again and consider branching out into shitty art house indie films for your "vision" because you have no fucking idea how to make a video game.

4/10

[Oscar House]

It improved upon the original in some ways and did some things worse, but it was definitely worth the Amnesia title and the price for me.

Spoiler below!

While the story was interesting, it was painstakingly obvious what was going to happen most of the time. You already knew pretty early on that the kids were dead and the machine was talking to you, trying to get you to restart it. Mandus' motivation to reach the machine (saving his children) made no sense; he sees the kids running away yet he'd rather believe a random stranger calling him. Derp. The way his mementos were written made me feel like he was an incompetent adventurer on a quest to thwart the evil saboteur's plans and save his children. Weird.

I hated (that means liked) the monsters in AAMFP. I never tried to get up close and personal with them on purpose and so the scare factor didn't diminish over time. I didn't find any story explanation as to why the light would blink when pointed at an enemy, so it was both a weird design decision and illogical.

Inventory, sanity, tinderboxes and oil removed, I'm not sure how I feel about those. It made the game more immersive when you didn't need to check your inventory every now and then to mess around with the items or check how much oil you have in your lantern. At the same time, they didn't seem to fully take advantage of having no inventory, making the puzzles feel lackluster.

Sound design was great, but didn't make sense at times (too aggressive/intense when there's seemingly no danger). Great stuff nonetheless.

To summarize: Good but not great. If you've played the previous game you can be put off by the change in mechanics, but it's still very much worth a try.