AMFP Member Review Thread

[Mjarr]

(Obvious disclaimer is obvious: the following walloftext is purely subjective, so feel free to disagree.)

Amnesia : A Machine for Pigs - or as I like to call it - Amnesia : Piggyback Ride finds itself in tough position to begin with, as it is overshadowed by it's Prussian brother and the massive hype of “zomg scariest game evar omg so scary ur not playing it right”- and whatnot. For that reason my expectations were pretty neutral, if downright negative to begin with it would seriously end up suffering from the same problems The Dark Descent did, or feel like arbitrary sequel for the sake of “fan service” (term loosely applied here). To my surprise I was slightly wrong, but overall that Piggyback Ride is kind of like very mouldy piece of good cheese spread all over the place: the truly good bits simply cannot cover up for the rest. And no, not referring to blue cheese or something similar with that weird metaphor.

To elaborate, Piggyback Ride is textbook victim of X steps forwards X-1 steps backwards. Audio, general atmosphere, presentation and alike are still as superb as they were in The Dark Descent - and the writing is perhaps something which surpasses the original - and much to my surprise, Piggyback Ride distills pretty well my biggest issue of TDD's rail of gameplay predictability: take an item, doomy music of doomy doom begins to play, RAWR HAI GUISE I'M HUNGRY FOR KEBAB GUISE? GUISE?- appears, makes noises like they're trying to impress opposite sex and it's repeated again and again in most obvious set pieces ever. Very meta, but almost impossible to ignore after one hour of gameplay and even more poignant by the end. Yahtzee put it pretty well with his “It's like they're summoned by the autosave function.” line.

Problem with Piggyback Ride in this regard is, actual gameplay is quite limited to the point of making it pointless. There's what, barely two moments where you actually have to avoid someone and those are probably among some of the best parts of the game. No more TDD's arbitrary limited night vision and convenient hiding spots (few exceptions aside), but make your own instead. So the question arises: how do you fuck something like that up? On paper that was something I was actually very much looking forwards after the first real encounter, so much to be had when the game distills the idea of obvious trigger is obvious without pouring everything in your face, but in the end you barely get to avoid anything. At. All. The more Piggyback Ride progresses the worse it becomes and holy dear, after promising, if slow beginning it seems to throw pacing and gameplay out of the window all over the place.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all is, horror-factor has suffered and waned to rather nonexistent levels. I will say this very unpopular opinion: I already found The Dark Descent's horror factor bit lacking, but at least it had some effort and managed to scare me couple of times instead of just invoking the same old meh. Piggyback Ride at best, manages to be bit tense when you're hiding in the dark, you know something is very close, you're not sure if you're in “safe” spot but using the lamp would be sureway to expose yourself... but as noted, you have two of these moments in the entire game. Two. To clarify further, I personally consider overall atmosphere, horror-factor, and unsettley-ness bit separate parts of the experience. Atmosphere? Pretty good. Unsettley-ness? Has its own moments. Genuine creeps and\or going full shit bricks- mode and whatnot? Yawn. Oh, was that supposed to be scary?

Many good concepts, bit of perhaps unnecessary streamlining resulting in too sterile environments, and quality presentation cannot distract from the lack of overall gameplay, bit half-arsed utilisation of concepts, borderline atrocious pacing, and simply being all over the place. Piggyback Ride is an experimentation, quite interesting one at that to be honest, but if it would actually include more gameplay and wouldn't be so criminally short you can finish it in four hours with slow gameplay pace, it might be pretty decent despite being overshadowed by it's Prussian brother. As it stands, it's pretty lacking. Not bad, just meh. If on the fence, I wholeheartedly recommend looking forward for a sale.

Overall score somewhere between 5 and 6\10.