Disappointed with AAMFP

[MyRedNeptune]

^ Comparing stories, I say AMFP dominates.

Alexander was banished from his world and wants to go back. To do this, he uses an Orb and tortures people for "vitae" (whatever the fuck that is). Using that, he powers the Orb to make a portal.

In this game, we've decided that the world is too fucked up and we want to clean it, so we build a massive machine to slaughter people, create Manpigs and just keep going. Much larger scale than one man torturing a hundred people.

So scale is the most significant thing by which you judge a story?

[DamnNoHtml]

I enjoyed the game. I thought the environments were a small step above the Dark Descent (I can't wait to use those assets and get started in full conversions again). The story was a bit confusing, but so was TDD's.

As for scares, there were practically none for me. I'm not sure if I've been desensitized to Amnesia-type scares from playing so many custom stories and making a few of my own, while knowing the editor quirks and tricks. Either way, I didn't even really get elevated pulse at any point during the entire game, except for a certain "electric" encounter where I was slightly elevated but nothing near the fear TDD put in me.

I don't think TCR were trying to be as tilted towards the horror genre as Frictional, they just simply wanted to tell a maddening story and in that they succeeded. The lack of insanity was alright, but no items or limited light source really took away a lot of possible gameplay.

I still liked the game, but it was no Dark Descent.

[TM2738]

I have been reading these forms for a while but not commenting, greatly anticipating this game. And I was greatly disappointed. My first playthrough of TDD, I had to finish the game with the lights on in order to progress. In AMFP I found myself HOPING for a monster encounter halfway through. TDD had a few "did I just see something" moments to prepare you for the rest of the game and expose you to insanity and saving your tinderboxes/fuel. AMFP is nothing but scripted monsters out of the corner of your eye (except progressively more and more easy to predict/spot.

There are really only two areas where the monster roams and you need to sneak by them. Everything else is a scripted encounter. Another disappointed is that the larger monsters did not do more damage that the small ones (even the electric pig at the end could not one-hit me).

What I have noticed are that all of the positive reviews on this board are people that have not finished the game, and those that have finished it are disappointed. I can say that the first half of the game was done incredibly well. But when I got to the sewers I was no longer afraid of the monsters (don't worry, by this point you are past the parts you could encounter a non-scripted monster).

My last criticism... What happened to the parts from the trailers? Oswald hiding in the cage after going through the plastic looked TERRIFYING, yet this was removed from the final release?! At no point in this game did a monster tear down a door trying to come after me (which was even featured in the release trailer!). I saw lots of places to hide, yet no reason to!

I totally agree with the above comments. I played the first part of the game and felt really tense and scared. I kept expecting a monster to attack me out of nowhere since I saw the first one. It is just as I felt in TDD. Because of that, I moved slowly and would wait for a long time.
But when I reached the sewers I noticed that the noises and light interferences didn't mean that there was a monster there. All the tension disappeared and I continued to play just because of the story, which, by the way, is very good!
But the monsters are a big disappointment. They move slow and are not very interested in hurting Mandus. In TDD they would run after Daniel and I would panick, but not in AMFP. The bigger monster was very slow as well and the one with the magnets didn't even come close to me.
One of the best things in TDD was hiding and running from monsters. AMFP lost that. There was only one point where I had to hide.
The trailers where misleading, I don't understand why there was no moment like that in the final game.
That said, it is still a very good game, but TDD was much better.

[sproik]

The main dissapointing factor for me is because the game is so linearized , it's almost like a story telling (dear esther) style rather than an actual puzzle horror game.

[cantremember]

Before pointing fingers at the trailers let's not forget that TDD's trailers were misleading aswell.

The trailer where Daniel shoves a table in front of a door to block it, this isn't in the game. Or shoving boxes out of the way for the water monsters was just for drama effect since you can just jump over the debris.

[Alardem]

I got a little annoyed that the scene from the second trailer was reduced to a pretty goofy (and harmless) cutscene.

[wolfman]

It was mentioned before that AMFP will be story driven.
I mean when Chinese Room created Dear Esther...
It was also mentioned that there won't be an inventory at all.
It's something new, some new/other experience. I like it.

edit: imo it's a great horror-story. Like a horror-story book you could read before you go to bed :3

[Victor Kade]

Completed it in an hour and a half...

[wolfman]

Completed it in an hour and a half...

lol, did you even read all the notes and so on?

[Draug]

Completed it in an hour and a half...

lol, did you even read all the notes and so on?

I almost spend one hour and a half alone on reading the notes and diary entries haha. He must have really enjoyed the game...