AMFP Member Review Thread

[Ghieri]

Ok. Finally beat the game. I must say the first half was terrifying because I didn't know what to expect. In the second half of the game, I got used to it and then I felt almost no fear at all, even when there was a monster I was running from. I was actually able to push from the half-way point to the end in one playthrough.
TCR made a good game, but not a good horror game.


Biggest Complaints:

Spoiler below!

I successfully guessed most of the major plot points in the first half of the game. Namely:
-The kids were already dead.
-Mandus was the saboteur.
-The professor(Machine) was the bad guy.
-The "pigs" were actually people. Though, we knew this before release.

Second, the pig monsters weren't scary. At all. You can bull-rush the monster, jump OVER it, run like hell, and still escape. You can even take a few hits from it and live. I found this out because the first encounter actually froze me in fear, but then he hit me, hit me again, and I just jumped past him and ran. Then I realized I was both faster and more durable than the monsters could handle.

Third, electro-kaernk was a nice throwback, but I really have no idea why they were there in the first place.(Apparently they were confiscated from Brennenburg, but WHY?!)

Stopping the count, but an electro-pig-monster? Really? So we crossed from mysterious and highly-improbable but still believable to insanely out of place and over the top? They weren't scary, they weren't even believable. The second time I faced this, I actually died, then realized I had to run from it again. Which was more a chore than anything.

The scene cuts were confusing. The first one technically was the one where I mixed the compound and went through a series of corridors to get back to the room. I turned around and the door disappeared. I actually was shocked by that and wrote it off as a freaky hallucination thing.

But then it kept happening. I mean, near the end I was even questioning whether the machine was even real at all, and mandus was just an insane person who killed his kids.

We saw almost nothing about what the machine actually was used for. A few blood streams and a couple of carved bodies. But no assembly lines, no meat hooks with human remains. Just mostly random machinery that could be anything.

There was nothing truly terrifying about the machine. I think TCR steered us clear from the areas of the machine that REALLY mattered. All we got to see were vague-looking engines and pulleys that could have been for literally any machine. Near the end we saw the pyramid and the streams of blood but those were a bit over the top. But did make for a kick-ass final level.

What I liked:


The atmosphere. I will make love to this.

The first 30 minutes. Those were actually the most fear inducing moments in the game, because I had no idea what to expect.

Spoiler below!

Pretty much everything before I woke up the machine. Actually, no. Pretty much everything before I mixed the compound x to get through the padlock. That was the turning point when things stopped getting scary for me. Even the kaernk, which terrifies me in every playthrough I've done of TDD, didn't really scare me that much.

The story was actually very lovecraftian, and very interesting. But it was more of the philosophical kind of horror and not the in-your-face batter-the-senses kind of horror that we got from TDD. It will kind of get me thinking about things, but not the scariest game I've played.


That's it for now. Bedtime.

Oh, before I forget: I was surprised to see some FG forum members in the credits. Pretty cool.

[Unearthlybrutal]

Good:

Spoiler below!

- I got the same feeling when I played the TDD for the first time. So scary...
- Pigs are not so predictable as the monsters in the TDD.

Bad:

Spoiler below!

- It was a little bit too short in my opinion
- The ending was a little bit confusing.
- Not enough fear at the end. (when the pigs are rampaging in the town)
- And I didn't like the "electric (space) pig" thing at all.

9 / 9.5

The fresh Amnesia feeling.

[Diango12]

Here's how I would have made an honest trailer of this game. It would cut in with the player going through a mansion and picking various notes and journal entries, the contents of which would be presented on screen for a brief moment before excerpts were read aloud here and there in vague sequences. Add in a scene with a door being thumped by some unknown creature and a few scenes of lever and flashy button triggering. Then cut out with a final quote from in-game dialogue.

The two trailers marketed were made to give the impression of a Amnesia like horror game. I know it, they know it, you know it. Stop being coy and try being a little honest about something glaringly obvious.

yeah and if they would have done that it would have been boring as shit and everyone would have ignored the game cause the trailer was terrible

literally the entire point of a trailer is to selectively show parts of a game or movie or w/e that are iconic or eventful to catch peoples attention which in turn gets them interested, so no shit they're going to use the more eventful sequences for the trailer. it wasn't even false advertising either, they had a good few monster encounters in it and when there weren't monsters around the atmosphere of each level was still very oppressive and horror oriented.

Oh what's that? A trailer accurately depicting the true nature of this game, boring? Gasp! Now we are getting somewhere.

I could care less about everyone else's criticisms of this game. What I do care about is the trend of false advertisement that plagues this industry. Aliens Colonial Marines used patched up footage from their game, photoshopped screenshots, inaccurate trailer, and it all led up to a shit-storm post release because, gasp again! Consumers don't like being misled? But you are right. TCR is an art house! Why should art geniuses have to worry about inconvenient things as responsible marketing and consumer trust. True artists are just misunderstood by the typical pleb anyway.

Just look at that company's twitter posts. They even ask once if they would have gotten mixed reviews if they had not slapped the Amnesia title on the game! :facepalm yes, that was your first mistake not the consumer's fault for being misled. Dim witted victim blaming. To me it appears that they are literally full of themselves if they are musing about the alternative of not falsely advertising and missing the whole point.

[Fortigurn]

The two trailers marketed were made to give the impression of a Amnesia like horror game. I know it, they know it, you know it. Stop being coy and try being a little honest about something glaringly obvious.

I agree with this. The monster breaking down the door was clearly intended to bring in the Amnesia fans and make them think the gameplay would follow the TDD approach.

I haven't finished MFP yet, I've spent four hours on it and I've only just completed the level with the centrifuge. I am enjoying it a lot, and give full credit to TCR for nailing the atmosphere (it was a bit patchy early on, but from the piston room on it really picks up).

But I am distinctly missing the TDD mechanics they removed (not to mention the lack of interactive objects), and the centrifuge puzzle is the first which has actually approached the complexity of the best TDD puzzles.

[Diango12]

The two trailers marketed were made to give the impression of a Amnesia like horror game. I know it, they know it, you know it. Stop being coy and try being a little honest about something glaringly obvious.

I agree with this. The monster breaking down the door was clearly intended to bring in the Amnesia fans and make them think the gameplay would follow the TDD approach.

I haven't finished MFP yet, I've spent four hours on it and I've only just completed the level with the centrifuge. I am enjoying it a lot, and give full credit to TCR for nailing the atmosphere (it was a bit patchy early on, but from the piston room on it really picks up).

But I am distinctly missing the TDD mechanics they removed (not to mention the lack of interactive objects), and the centrifuge puzzle is the first which has actually approached the complexity of the best TDD puzzles.

The atmosphere was nailed very well. Better than TDD in my opinion. The music and sound were brilliant. Their sound producer is extremely talented. They make pretty good decisions when it comes to voice actor assets. Even gameplay wise I could forgive, as I enjoyed Dear Esther. I happen to like interactive books and I'd like to see more of them. But what I am sick of is companies thinking they can get away with dishonestly hyping a game through false marketing. I am truly, truly bitter about that. Just stop it.

[Kman]

omg no way it's almost like they're trying to use advertisements to help sell their game who would have guessed

this isn't a "plague to the industry" this is literally marketing 101 when it comes to anything. that's like if an action movie made a trailer out of dialogue bits and down time cause that's usually at least half of what goes into it. even with that said half of amfp was spent pretty much soley on horror but i guess since horror didn't take up 90% of the game that's false advertising lol right amirite guys

even though the majority of the game wasn't spent on monster encounters there were still monster encounters so it's not like they lied about that. you just made a blind assumption that cause they highlighted the part of the game that they thought would be most eye catching that that automatically meant that was what the entire game was focused on

[Diango12]

omg no way it's almost like they're trying to use advertisements to help sell their game who would have guessed

this isn't a "plague to the industry" this is literally marketing 101 when it comes to anything. that's like if an action movie made a trailer out of dialogue bits and down time cause that's usually at least half of what goes into it. even with that said half of amfp was spent pretty much soley on horror but i guess since horror didn't take up 90% of the game that's false advertising lol right amirite guys

even though the majority of the game wasn't spent on monster encounters there were still monster encounters so it's not like they lied about that. you just made a blind assumption that cause they highlighted the part of the game that they thought would be most eye catching that that automatically meant that was what the entire game was focused on

I could care less about everyone else's criticisms of this game. What I do care about is the trend of false advertisement that plagues this industry. Aliens Colonial Marines used patched up footage from their game, photoshopped screenshots, inaccurate trailer, and it all led up to a shit-storm post release because, gasp again! Consumers don't like being misled? But you are right. TCR is an art house! Why should art geniuses have to worry about inconvenient things as responsible marketing and consumer trust. True artists are just misunderstood by the typical pleb anyway.

Just look at that company's twitter posts. They even ask once if they would have gotten mixed reviews if they had not slapped the Amnesia title on the game! :facepalm yes, that was your first mistake not the consumer's fault for being misled. Dim witted victim blaming. To me it appears that they are literally full of themselves if they are musing about the alternative of not falsely advertising and missing the whole point.

[Mothhive]

Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed with the game, maybe because I was a massive fan of the original, as well as a fan or Dear Esther, and had been excited about playing this since the reveal, I don't know. Anyway, here's what I found good and bad:

Good:

Spoiler below!

As usual, the world is extremely detailed looking.

The music is quite good and fits with each situation in the game

There were a few cool moments when objects or even doors and passages would appear/disappear leaving you a little confused or freaked out for a moment, but in a good way!

Bad:

Spoiler below!

Far too short. I finished it in 4 hours, and I didn't rush through. I'm OCD and I explore everywhere and look at everything in games. Regular gamers would probably get through it even faster!

There was absolutely no tension or atmosphere, which are things the original had in spades! At no point did I feel dread, fear, apprehension, or any of the other good stuff the original made me feel.

The only scares in the game were a handful of cheap jump scares, like platforms falling, children running at you, etc.

The story seemed to be the main focus of the game, but it was extremely predictable. There was obviously a lot of effort put into it with all the notes and dialogue, but most of it was so over the top, almost pretentious sounding, coupled with the shovelling of as many terms relating to pigs as possible (yes, we get it, there are pigs in this game!), it was incredibly hard to take seriously and almost painful to get through, nearly to the point where I considered skipping reading the notes/journal.

The monsters were not even remotely scary and never felt like they were a threat, even when they spotted you and chased you. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they were almost comical in their appearance and behaviour (WTF was up with that Space Pig???). So disappointed after the terrifying array of monsters in the original.

Lack of mechanics from the previous game, like tinder boxes, lantern fuel, inventory, insanity, health, etc. The game was over simplified and lost a lot of it's charm and things which helped make the original scary.

While the graphics are similar quality to the original, there seemed to be this weird fuzz/glow over everything, that in the darkest parts of the game would cause weird artifacts and colour banding that I hadn't experienced previously.

Overall, I found this to be a disappointment and I wish I'd picked it up in a Steam sale, rather than pre-ordering, because it certainly was not worth the money.

5/10

[Ghieri]

I should have said, despite all of my complaints, the game is a solid 8/10. It's far from a perfect game, but it definitely told an interesting story, and the atmosphere was nothing short of perfect. I just wish that I saw more of the machine!

[bobbo]

Obviously trailers are made to sell a product. Still you can't just "lie" in your trailer and get away with it.

If you look at this trailer for A:TDD, you'll see that the actual events aren't happening in the final game like this either - but the gameplay is pretty much the same and make up a huge part of the game. You get what you see, so to speak:






The A:AMFP trailer suggested the same gameplay. Last time they (FG, I do understand it's a different developer, however I'd still hold them accountable for this since they did quite some marketing here on the website and obviously helped finishing the game) delivered, so I thought I could expect the same this time.

I get it, TCR focused more on story telling. Why weren't the trailers more like this then?






Obviously because that might have prevented fans of the first game to buy this.


Edit: Sorry, got interrupted and forget to add an important part.

The "lie" is in quotian marks because technically, you probably could play A:AMFP the way they showed it in the trailer. It's just that it's never needed given the way the pigs are implemented.