SPOILERS BELOW:
I find it ironic that TheChineseRoom developers (who boasted and bragged about this game, along with criticizing the first to no end), said that this game would have "several interlocking storylines, some of which may or may not be real."
Where are these "several" storylines? The game has ONE story to tell, and it's still a rather shallow story to boot, barely explored and terribly underdeveloped.
And as for the "some of which may or may not be real", where WAS that, exactly? Unless they're referring to the whole "YOUR SONS ARE TOTALLY ALIVE--OH WAIT, NO THEY AREN'T LOL" thing...and even that is kind of a stretch.
Meanwhile, Amnesia: The Dark Descent managed "several interlocking storylines", and still was a credible game.
I like A Machine For Pigs, but not only is it a letdown to the Amnesia Franchise, it's a letdown all by itself. Like I said, the story is pretty shallow and unexplored. "He made a machine, the machine was evil, he killed the machine--the end." That's the entire game. At least Justine had an excuse for it's story flaws--it was an extremely short DLC. I thought TheChineseRoom was known for it's great stories. Oh well.
6/10
PS: Holy SHIT was Mandus boring. And it didn't help that most of his storyline was told through those long, thickly-written notes. With TDD, we have several ways of (for lack of a better term) infodumping--read notes, narrated notes, mementos, those cylinder thingies, vocal flashbacks, the active flashbacks (paint the man, anyone?). This game is just notes. Holy shit the notes. Notes notes notes and more notes. Notes.