Four reasons as to why Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is underrated

Poor old Chineseroom. After the release of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the small indie developer got a whole lotta flack from the gaming community. Some said the games lack of tangible mechanics (actually, the only extant mechanics were tangible ones) meant that it wasn’t a game. Others claimed the lack of scares and jumps merely meant it was a bad game, whilst the silent minority plodded through, enthralled by the nuance The Chinese Room are becoming known for.

[illgamer]

Nice read. For me, the main reason for not liking Machine for Pigs was that it just wasnt enjoyable enough.

[nofallouthero]

mfp wasnt as enjoyable as the dd maybe because there is very little tension since you know nothing will happen like in shattered memories. still soma looks great.

[Blacklash93]

I'm pretty sure Frictional Games did not develop AMFP. They've been working on SOMA this whole time.

[markoghc]

It just wasn't scary enough. The story was fine, but everyone expected a truly scary game. Monsters looked like reskinned versions of Dark Descent's. There was even the invisible pig in the water (they didn't even need new model or texture for that one). Also, lack of health bar, inventory and enjoyable puzzles didn't help either.

I hoped that they will change game engine for their next game, but it seems that SOMA is still using HPL. It is so painfully unoptimized that I wonder why couldn't they just go for Unreal engine or any other affordable option.

[DoctorJones]

Having The Chinese Room get involved was a big mistake. It's not a bad game really but it's nothing like The Dark Descent. The tension isn't there, there's hardly any moments in the game where you need to hide at all because there are hardly any encounters in the entire game.

This was one of the biggest disappointments of the year for me, along with X:Rebirth.

[Periphereality]

This is the most interesting and contentious point. As an indirect sequel, it didn't really need to be like Dark Descent - and that's really my over-all point. It 'failed' because it wasn't, but it shouldn't have had to had been. That, though, is an issue with how both games were marketed, and how expectations were managed.

[WeAreLegion]

The Chinese Room was a strange choice to take over the series. Though I do love their work, so far.