I was a HUGE fan of The Dark Descent and Penumbra's style of horror and I was so very excited for MfP to come out. To my dismay, after completing the game in less than 2 hours (compared to more than 10 for TDD) I was left feeling completely unsatisfied. I did not speed through the game by any means and in fact, only really got slowed down by the common obtuse puzzle. The game left me incredibly unsatisfied and here is why.



Throughout the entire game, ignoring the last half hour or so, you encounter the monster probably twice. Both times, the encounters lasted less than a minute or two as I just wait for the monster to walk past and exit through a door or just sneak past while he patrolled the area. This aspect almost completely killed the atmosphere after the first 45 minutes or so when I realized that the monster is never a threat. During the last half hour of the game when it bizarrely turns into a Michael bay sequence of explosions and pigs running everywhere doing little dances, I basically ran through it all because they were never a serious threat. There is also no sanity meter and no pickups in the game whatsoever including fuel for your lantern which makes it less important than it was in previous games to scour your environment to find necessary items. Having the items absent on their own isn't necessarily a bad thing but there is nothing else other than the notes to encourage exploration except when desperately searching to find "missing item #x" to progress past the latest puzzle.



Along the lines of not encouraging exploration is the level design itself. Much of the game is claustrophobically linear to a fault and feels very forced at times with locked doors absolutely everywhere in the game. This felt like it was designed in a way to keep the story's pacing from coming to a screeching halt for too long or to keep the puzzles from becoming even more complex.



This game is also developed solely by The Chinese Room (unknown to myself until after, I had thought they were simply working with Frictional Games) who are best known for making Dear Esther. The story for MfP is absolutely impenetrable for many if you don't get the symbolism involved and you don't read the notes scattered around the map (because of the aforementioned lack of items). When I made it to the end of the game, many things began to make sense but a lot of the circumstances leading up to the game's introduction made very little sense to me.



The other issue I have, while a small gripe, is with the graphics of the game. They look uglier than TDD mainly due to the dark brown camera filter that is placed over 80% of the game as opposed to simply being in the environments' color palate. While TDD's color palate was more of a bluish hue which ironically promoted a sense of calm in the player when in shadows (blue being a calming color and most visibly present when your "eyes" adjust to the darkness in-game).



With those negatives in mind, I must say that despite the lack of a real threat in the game, the game's atmosphere and soundtrack are incredibly tense and deserve mention as the game could almost be carried entirely by the atmosphere imo. If there was one thing that kept me pinned down behind some boxes with my eyes wide and unblinkingly searching the room for potential threats, it was the atmosphere.



The voice acting is also very emotional and I was quite moved by many story sections leading up to the game's conclusion. I wasn't bawling over it but it left me in a very sorrowful mood though in a good way. By the end of the game, except for my lack of understanding the story behind it all, I genuinely cared about the protagonist's goal and once again the soundtrack helps emphasize these moments beautifully. While I didn't understand the finer points and symbolism hidden within the game's story, I got enough of an idea to find it interesting, though the dominant symbolic idea (pigs) quickly grew repetitive by the end of the game's very short runtime.



With all this in mind, I do not recommend this game to anyone but those who liked Dear Esther AND aren't too picky with their horror experience. The Chinese Room very obviously wanted to make another game like their previous game but also wanted to make it seem like an Amnesia game what with a monster to chase you and physics puzzles to solve. Stripping out much of what made the previous game and other Penumbra so unique and even making the monster a rare occurrence took out much of the soul of this game. I know there is much deeper meaning within this game than I could really understand but it should not be the only part about this game. If they had just added more encounters with the monster in this game that were actually dangerous, while still keeping everything else the same, this game would have been incredible if not damn-near perfect. As it is, this feels more like "Dear Piggies" than an Amnesia game or really a horror game of any kind. An incredible atmosphere and believable voice actors could not save this game from feeling like more than a rather mediocre custom story from TDD.

I was a HUGE fan of The Dark Descent and Penumbra's style of horror and I was so very excited for MfP to come out. To my dismay, after completing the game in less than 2 hours (compared to more than 10 for TDD) I was left feeling completely unsatisfied. I did not speed through the game by any means and in fact, only really got slowed down by the common obtuse puzzle. The game left me incredibly unsatisfied and here is why. Throughout the entire game, ignoring the last half hour or so, you encounter the monster probably twice. Both times, the encounters lasted less than a minute or two as I just wait for the monster to walk past and exit through a door or just sneak past while he patrolled the area. This aspect almost completely killed the atmosphere after the first 45 minutes or so when I realized that the monster is never a threat. During the last half hour of the game when it bizarrely turns into a Michael bay sequence of explosions and pigs running everywhere doing little dances, I basically ran through it all because they were never a serious threat. There is also no sanity meter and no pickups in the game whatsoever including fuel for your lantern which makes it less important than it was in previous games to scour your environment to find necessary items. Having the items absent on their own isn't necessarily a bad thing but there is nothing else other than the notes to encourage exploration except when desperately searching to find "missing item #x" to progress past the latest puzzle. Along the lines of not encouraging exploration is the level design itself. Much of the game is claustrophobically linear to a fault and feels very forced at times with locked doors absolutely everywhere in the game. This felt like it was designed in a way to keep the story's pacing from coming to a screeching halt for too long or to keep the puzzles from becoming even more complex. This game is also developed solely by The Chinese Room (unknown to myself until after, I had thought they were simply working with Frictional Games) who are best known for making Dear Esther. The story for MfP is absolutely impenetrable for many if you don't get the symbolism involved and you don't read the notes scattered around the map (because of the aforementioned lack of items). When I made it to the end of the game, many things began to make sense but a lot of the circumstances leading up to the game's introduction made very little sense to me. The other issue I have, while a small gripe, is with the graphics of the game. They look uglier than TDD mainly due to the dark brown camera filter that is placed over 80% of the game as opposed to simply being in the environments' color palate. While TDD's color palate was more of a bluish hue which ironically promoted a sense of calm in the player when in shadows (blue being a calming color and most visibly present when your "eyes" adjust to the darkness in-game). With those negatives in mind, I must say that despite the lack of a real threat in the game, the game's atmosphere and soundtrack are incredibly tense and deserve mention as the game could almost be carried entirely by the atmosphere imo. If there was one thing that kept me pinned down behind some boxes with my eyes wide and unblinkingly searching the room for potential threats, it was the atmosphere. The voice acting is also very emotional and I was quite moved by many story sections leading up to the game's conclusion. I wasn't bawling over it but it left me in a very sorrowful mood though in a good way. By the end of the game, except for my lack of understanding the story behind it all, I genuinely cared about the protagonist's goal and once again the soundtrack helps emphasize these moments beautifully. While I didn't understand the finer points and symbolism hidden within the game's story, I got enough of an idea to find it interesting, though the dominant symbolic idea (pigs) quickly grew repetitive by the end of the game's very short runtime. With all this in mind, I do not recommend this game to anyone but those who liked Dear Esther AND aren't too picky with their horror experience. The Chinese Room very obviously wanted to make another game like their previous game but also wanted to make it seem like an Amnesia game what with a monster to chase you and physics puzzles to solve. Stripping out much of what made the previous game and other Penumbra so unique and even making the monster a rare occurrence took out much of the soul of this game. I know there is much deeper meaning within this game than I could really understand but it should not be the only part about this game. If they had just added more encounters with the monster in this game that were actually dangerous, while still keeping everything else the same, this game would have been incredible if not damn-near perfect. As it is, this feels more like "Dear Piggies" than an Amnesia game or really a horror game of any kind. An incredible atmosphere and believable voice actors could not save this game from feeling like more than a rather mediocre custom story from TDD. Check this box if you received this product for free (?) Do you recommend this game? Yes No Cancel Save Changes