AMY Review: Herp meets mega Derp in this survival horror
AMY
AMY tells a story about a “special” little girl whose powers have an untold ability to save the world from its current Armageddon. You star as Amy’s guardian, Lana, and are tasked with taking her safely to a hospital where she can get some real help. For a game entering into an already popular genre, AMY had some promise to offer us something new and exciting. Did this promise come through, or does this indie entry into the survival horror ranks fall short on it? Read below to find out.
What’s Good
Intuitive play style - Amy has a unique way of interacting between the two characters. While Lana does most of the heavy work i.e. fight baddies, collect items, or move heavy objects, Amy has special powers which allow you to solve various game puzzles. Along with that is the partner system where you must command each character to open doors, flip switches and the like (a la Ashley Graham in RE4). This helps break up the monotony of the monster slaying and running around.
Back to your roots - AMY brings the survival horror genre back to the old days with the tank controls, and the flight rather than fight mentality. Often times you are faced with enemies that perform one hit kill actions, and no matter how many times you hit them, they keep coming back. You are also forced to be very stealthy when approaching situations or be punished with that particular baddie sending you back to your last check point. This reminded me of nothing more than the very first Resident Evil (which in turn was the first survival horror game I played). The tank controls mimic perfectly to that game. Only here, your running is drastically updated.
What’s Bad
This is a next gen game?! - As the first cut-scene unfolded I thought I had turned on the wrong system. This was supposed to be a PS3 copy, but I swore I was looking at something that used the same engine as Silent Hill 2. Nope, this is the PS3 I had on. Not to be a total snob and expect 1080p graphics at 60 fps, I continued to keep an open mind. That openness flew out the window when I came across some major chopping and frame rate issues right when I had control of Lana. C’mon AMY, don’t spill anymore derp into my hard drive!
To add insult to injury, the animations are robotic, the dialogue is laughable at best, and the characters over dramatized so much hat this should have been advertised as a B-rated horror movie. I may be acting a little hard on it, but this is the same game that was rumored to have been a full retail release title for both the Xbox 360 and PS3. There was already the stigma over the pricing issue, so what makes you think gamers in their right mind would shell out 40+ dollars for this?
AMY is “special” all right - While nothing is really known at first about Amy’s condition, it is told that she doesn’t speak and is very timid. Hell, any child pitted up against this game’s scenarios would be. Hoping to have seen an idiot savant bloom, I was left with only the idiot part. Sure, she can cast useless spells, like Silence, but why does her full-retard face not show emotion ever?
Couple that with Lana’s mandatory congratulations whenever Amy presses a simple button and you receive a cheerful jump and arm flailing from Amy. When Amy is tasked with operating computers to hack into the next room, the pause that you must sit through is atrocious. I used to gladly sit through some games that made a loading type interface for the next scene, but that was circa PS1, not 2012.
I think this game would have been a lot cooler if they used the Amy from Congo, and not this watered down vegetable with some drawing “powers.”
“The game is too hard” - In response to a slew of horrible reviews concerning the game’s cheap AI, flawed controls, and outwardly broken fighting system, AMY’s developers said that the player should just get better. On their Facebook page they listed a condescending retort. I can understand when a game is supposed to be so hard that you will want to destroy everything of value in your house (read: Demon Souls), but when the broken system counts as the primary difficulty, it’s not the gamer’s fault.
Testing and feedback fix these issues in the developmental stages, not become a reason to argue. When the main character can’t perform c-c-c-c-c-combos that will decimate everything in its wake of terror, that’s understandable. But I also know that when I am trying to attack a soldier (human, mind you), I shouldn’t have to hit them thirty times only to get bested with one gun-butt. Realism maybe?! Add to that the infrequent checkpoints and any time you don’t do exactly what the game wants you to, you are forced to play over the last 30-45 minutes.
This does not sit well with most players. In games that you may forget to save at times, you can only blame yourself. In games that you have no other choice, you tend to get a little peeved. I am all for games challenging players, I just don’t want to sit through every bit of character banter each time I have to start over. I’ll whine all I want dammit!
Worth Remembering
Not too much honestly. You could remember all the time you spent playing the game and think about what could have been a better use of your time. I know I did. Hell I tried to give the game another shot, just to make sure I had it all down, and sat watching the PS home screen move for 30 minutes realizing that that was a better use of the PS3′s power than AMY. Honestly, this game does one thing well: make other games look better.
Worth Forgetting
The game. But do yourselves a favor and read all the reviews. If mine didn’t cause you to not ever want to touch this, others will.
Without a doubt this was the most painstaking review I have done to date. Not from sheer volume I had to overcome, but from boredom and annoyance. In my eyes, AMY had some promise. This promise should have come with a quality guarantee. Usually I don’t go into full detail about how a game made me feel sorry for the developers, but this one almost makes me hope that any of the talented people in that company jump ship and start anew elsewhere.
*MMOMFG was provided a review copy of AMY for the PS3 from Lexis Numérique/VectorCell
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