AMFP Member Review Thread

[jo291]

Hi everyone.

Long time member here. Been a fan of Frictional games and a forum member since back in 2006 when they released the Penumbra tech demo. I was very young then and...made some pretty embarrassing posts back then the worst of which has been purged when they got rid of the good old 2006 tech demo forums. Most people who knew me are probably long gone by now, the only person I recognize here is Scraper and of course the old Dev team members.

Wanted to give everybody my thoughts on AMFP.

Lets start with the things that I enjoyed because that will be easy.

Music: This part I think one upped Amnesia and I have always appreciated the music that the Chinese Room have put into their games. I enjoyed the motif and style of the music more then Amnesia so keep in mind that there could in fact be some Bias behind that.

Story: I enjoyed the story-line more then Amnesia but again I enjoyed the setting and motif more then Amnesia so there is Bias there as well. However I felt that this game was more of a spin-off rather then a proper sequel to Amnesia.

The few ties it does have to Amnesia are the fact that the main character Mandus is related to the villain Alexander of the TDD and is able to create the man piggies using refined techniques that Alexander used to create his servants. This makes sense and is pretty clever actually.

However It also makes mention of the orb from TDD and that makes little sense because nowhere in the game does the shadow come for Mandus. The game does not even mention the shadow at all. This makes no sense to me and if somebody could explain it too me I would be happy.

Graphics: Not much to say here. It runs on the same engine as TDD but with some minor improvements. It looks nice is about all I can say.

Now here we go with the huge issue with this game.

Gameplay: Simply put the gameplay does not measure up to TDD at all. To start with the level design is incredibly linear and the nice Hub area design that Frictional used in Amnesia and Penumbra has been castrated with Hub areas being small and always having only two places to go too before you can move on.

Puzzles are simplified heavily and take little effort compared to the puzzles of Amnesia. I never once had to think seriously about any puzzle that I came across while playing. This is due in part to the fact that the inventory system has been completely removed from the game.

The health system is non-existent and has been replaced with regenerating health which takes A LOT of the tension out of chases or enemy encounters in general since you know that all you will have to do is go hide in the corner and your health will magically come back to you.

Sanity is done away with and I am fine with that since Sanity in TDD was annoying but Chinese Room apparently forgot to replace it with anything so it just ends up being a further gutting of what Frictional made with TDD.

I am really baffled at all of this because watching the Dev interviews with the Chinese Room before this game came out it seemed that they really understood what made Amnesia and Penumbra good but despite this they really dropped the ball.

It really just confuses me.

Why couldn't CR design any cool or fun puzzles?

Why did they make the game have Regen-health? Would it really have been so hard to add some health items here and there?

Why was everything so linear and short? Again this game could have at least been made longer if they had made some good hubs with perhaps a central hub puzzle to solve but they don't.

Why did CR not make a effort to replace the things that they took out of the game from TDD? They could have at least replaced the Sanity from TDD with the panic mechanic from Penumbra since I found that better then the Sanity system.

And why oh why did CR get rid of the inventory system and all the items that Amnesia had?

Conclusion: In the end everything loses a lot of its impact and quality without the gameplay backing it up so I can only give in good conscious AMFP a 6.5/10.

It really feels to me like the Bioshock: Infinite of horror games in that while the visuals and music and story please me greatly it guts a lot of what made the series great.

I don't blame Frictional Games for this because I realize that they are working on their own project and so gave the reigns of the sequel to The Chinese Room to use with Minimal involvement, and I am sure whatever Frictional is working on will be great, it just really confuses me that The Chinese Room dropped the ball like that.

I hope that this will not dampen peoples attitudes to Frictional Games as well and that more importantly it will not hurt them financially because I really do care about this company. I have been watching it grow for such a long time and I am honestly scared that this could hurt them.