System: Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: September 12, 2019
Publisher: Frictional Games
I picked up Amnesia Collection a while back and only recently started playing it because I realized I had only played each of the games once, The Dark Descent back in October 2012, Justine (the short permadeath expansion) at the end of October 2012, and A Machine for Pigs shortly after it was released in September 2013. This time around, I played it on the Nintendo Switch, wanting again to support the developers Frictional Games and The Chinese Room with this collection (currently) being the only games that they have made that are available on the Switch. Since none of the gameplay changed, from what I could tell between when I first played these games nine years ago, I will just give briefs for each title included in this collection.
When I started this collection, I decided that I would start with A Machine for Pigs, having been developed by The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture) I wanted to start off with a game that I knew was going to be mostly walking, occasionally running and just experiencing the world and the story. Based on the first time I played The Dark Descent, I did not want to have to worry about managing my sanity and worrying about how much oil I had left in my lantern and how many tinderboxes I had left as the darkness closed in around me. So I started off with A Machine for Pigs, being the last entry chronologically in this series. Then I went back to The Dark Descent and finished it up with Justine.
The Dark Descent was in some was exactly as I remembered it and in other ways, a lot easier and at times, less scary and stressful than when I first played it nine years ago. When I first played TDD, it was on Steam using keyboard/mouse controls and had my laptop hooked up to my TV. This time around, I was playing through the Switch using a Switch Pro Controller and by this point in my console gaming career, I feel that I am more proficient playing first-person games with a controller than I used to be (although I still prefer kb/m). What made me the most anxious before even starting was the water monster stage taking a fair amount of time to work my way through without running out of lantern oil or tinderboxes and the something about solving puzzles in the sewer stage (which turned out to be the Cistern).
The biggest difference in the way I played TDD this time around was that I had the developer's commentary turned on (I do not think it was available when I first played?) so scattered throughout the game in different rooms were golden gears with a microphone that you could click on to hear someone from Frictional Games talk about some relevant aspect of the game. I feel a bit like an idiot because in the beginning (really up until the final area in the game) I would click on the floating icon then run to a well-lit area to finish listening to what was being talked about so that I would not go insane in the process. I did not realize that you could just pull up the inventory menu to essentially pause the game and listen to it that way. I think I must have tried actually pausing the game, bringing up the Save & Exit portion of the menu and that stopped the commentary so I figured I could only listen to it in-game.
For the most part, I impressed myself with being able to solve most of the puzzles, although there were a couple, more towards the end of the game that I had to look up solutions to. In the Cistern, I did not remember/realize that you had to jump from the Western Bridge as you raised it
back up to the Eastern Bridge to dislodge it. The in-game text telling you to "dislodge" the bridge I felt implied that there was a tool you needed. Then in the last section of the game, I had to look up GameFAQS two or three times because I could not figure out how to escape prison (I think I may have glitched through the bars?), where to locate a bone saw, and where to reassemble an orb when the game told me to look for a more suitable place not thinking/remembering that it was the pedestal that the orb would sit in and not a laboratory or a table. I did end up experiencing two of the three endings, with the third being one that I had already seen when I first played the game and was apparently impatient during the final ceremony. I was pretty amused by the end, being as stingy as I was with tinderboxes for the entirety of the game, that at the end, I did have a surplus of 23 tinderboxes, one jar of oil, seven bottles of
laudanum, and a wooden crank that I ended up never using.
Justine is a strange beast of its own. Unlike The Dark Descent or A Machine for Pigs, this is a single run permadeath short story where you are presented with SAW-like puzzles where you decide to either solve a puzzle to save a person's life, or take a quick choice, kill them, and open the door to the next area. Oh, and the whole time you have at least one Grunt-like creature hunting you. My biggest issue though is that there does not seem to be a run ability, which I do not remember, but maybe that can be explained away in-game by the character just waking up from a drugged sleep? There is a story here told through gramophones and notes/letters scattered throughout the rooms, but it is sometimes hard to focus on that while you are being hunted and figuring out how to save person number two. I still have not figured out how to save person number two, and for whatever reason, I refuse to look up how to do that. So my counter shall remain, two out of three people saved. I still love the puzzles in this game and would love if an entire game, another game, were developed with a similar approach.
Lastly, and the first game I played was
A Machine for Pigs for all of the reasons that I mentioned above. While the game played fine, and I know that there were moments when the game is purposefully supposed to slow down with the graphics becoming blurry, there were additional times when it felt like the game was not optimized well and the frame rate really plunged. There were also times when it felt that the colors were not as dark as they were supposed to be, like instead of there being a gradient of darkness, instead there were four shades. I have no pictorial evidence of that, so maybe it was just me?
Either way, I love A Machine for Pigs. Mostly. Having gone through the game before, I knew to look in every cabinet and desk for notes/letters to further tell the story of Mandus and his sons. And by the end of the game, I still felt that there were letters that I was unable to locate, which was a criticism my first time around. Also taking the time to sift through desk drawers seems like a very video-gamey mechanic when the main character is trying to hurry through areas to reach a sub-sub-sub-sub-level of a meat processing factory that is apparently flooded to rescue his two trapped sons. There was a real sense of urgency in Mandus' voice but there is a lot of time spent traveling back and forth that any real sense of urgency is lost. This is not so much a criticism of The Chinese Room, just video game mechanics in general taking over the implied urgency created by the story which is in nearly every JRPG.
Having gone through all three games before purchasing this collection on the Switch, I can say that there is really not a big reason to purchase this collection if you have already played through the games. There did not seem to be any added content that did not already exist in previous versions of the game. I did purchase this collection because I loved these games and I wanted to be able to support the developers; the collection was also on sale at the time. If you have not played through any of these games, or just one of the three, then I would recommend picking this up on whatever platform is your preferred. The stories are all well-conceived and written, the voice acting is phenomenal, and as long as you do not suffer from first-person-motion-sickness, and enjoy solving puzzles in a survival horror setting, then I would definitely recommend any and all of the games here.
I really wish that Frictional Games and The Chinese Room would release more of their catalog on the Switch because I again would throw money wholeheartedly at them.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Is This Your Gift?
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