AMFP Member Review Thread

[Kman]

i'm shit with introductions so i'm just gonna jump into this

i think a lot of the reason it's getting mediocre/bad reviews is cause too many people went into it expecting it to be amnesia 2 when really it was a very very different game than the dark descent. if you look at them separately and don't hold this game to the same standards as amfp i think it's a really great experience in its own right, though maybe lesser so than the original game

for one the focus of it was completely different from tdd which i'm guessing was mainly due to the chinese room making it. it was clear about half way through that the main focus was on the story and not about just scaring the shit out of you. in one sense i think this worked pretty well because one of tdd's biggest flaws was that the story telling was incredibly streamlined and static, whereas in amfp you kinda had to take a bunch of different pieces from diaries and notes and phonographs and telegrams and cut scenes and all sorts of different shit and put them together to form this big picture which made it feel a lot more immersive and interesting to try to piece it all together. the more personal take on the journal entries helped with that a lot and made checking your diary a lot more interesting and rewarding, since not only did it feel like you wrote it yourself, they also offered hints on the story a lot of the time. the story itself wasn't that interesting or complex honestly, but just the way it was told made it incredible.

at the same time that kinda caused a few of my biggest problems with it. for one, for a horror game it wasn't particularly… scary. that was probably the biggest issue i had. what made amnesia such a landmark in the survival horror genre was that the monster encounters were so fucking stressful and well done, and yet there were barely any in amfp, which was really disappointing. the build up of tension in the first few levels was phenomenal, but then when you finally encountered the pig monsters you only really had 3 or 4 real encounters with them before the game went full story-mode. the most memorable moments of tdd were the monster encounters, especially the levels that were solely devoted to them (the storage, the archives, the prison, the choir, etc.), and yet this game only had 1 or 2 levels that were totally horror focused which is kinda ridiculous for a survival horror game (though with that said those two levels were fucking amazingly well done and incredible tense, almost as much as the original probably).

which leads me to my next complaint which was the ending. i'm fully aware that what i'm considering "the ending" is probably a little far fetched, but i'm counting everything from the first moment where it felt like the climax, where you felt that sense of finality (i'd say this started right before you activate the machine) to the end. it just felt so insanely long winded and over the top that it kind of lost the magic that can come with a big ending like that. a friend of mine put it to words well i think, it basically felt like it was ending about 5 times, and by the actual end it just lost all it's impact. they spent at least a good hour and a half or two in that sort of climactic "this is the end of it all" mode and it had just lost so much of its power by the end of it. i'd be kind of okay with it if all of it was used well, but a good half of it was just random epic looking filler that didn't make a whole lot of sense. if they had cut a lot of that out and replaced it with more horror oriented stuff from the mid section i honestly think it would have blown the original game out of the water.

really i think if you look at those two complaints together you have what the biggest issue with it was, which was that it was just pretty poorly paced. it felt like they spent half the game in the exposition and rising action of the story and then the other half in the climax, and anyone who's past 3rd grade english could tell you that's not a good formula for a story. if they worked out that, i think a lot of the other minor issues i had with it would have gotten ironed out and it would have been a much much better experience.

as for pros i think pretty much every gameplay change they made was spot on. i'm super glad they removed tinderboxes and the need for putting oil in your lantern, that always felt like kind of a tacky system and relying on them and having to constantly look for them killed the immersion in a lot of parts. the inventory system could have been worked out better so you didn't have to carry stuff around everywhere but i think the idea to remove the menu itself was good since that reminds you you're in a game every time you used it. the puzzles were really well designed, i never got stuck anywhere for longer than 15 minutes which is a lot better than tdd, which can definitely be attributed to the lack of interaction i think. other than that, the graphics (and art design/mapping overall) and sound design were fucking amazing and absolutely blew tdd away.

with all that said, i think the good outweighs the bad in this case. they improved the story telling and overall immersion in it a LOT. putting aside the apparent pacing issues i still thought it was a very enjoyable experience in its own sense. i'm gonna give it a few more run throughs before i'm final on my opinion but right now i'd give it a solid 7.5/10