Review: AMY

Amy

PSN (reviewed), XBLA, PC

Publisher: Lexis Numerique

Developer: Vector Cell

Release Date: 17 January 2012 (11 January 2012 on XBLA)

The key to any good survival horror game is the terror and fear that they produce. Characters in situations that are far beyond their control and horrific monsters are the order of the day. But the truly special horror games don't put us in control of highly trained police officers, mercenaries or other folks that can handle this sort situation. No, the special ones put us in the shoes of average folks forced to do the extraordinary to survive. Silent Hill did this (more than a few times), Siren does this and so does Alan Wake. Amy tries, but is is encumbered with so many faults that it isn't worthy of being mentioned with the best of the best.

Stars Lana and Amy

The story of Amy is centered around an autistic 8 year-old, the titular Amy. Her caretaker is a young woman named Lana, whom the player controls. The two of them have escaped from the Phoenix Centre, a research facility of some sort, and are on the run to Silver City and freedom. Amy exhibits some strange powers, and Lana is worried about what was done to her. As they approach the city, a flash of blinding light appears in the sky, the train derails and terrifying zombies show up. When Lana comes to, the train is wrecked and Amy is gone. The journey to save Amy and survive the flesh-eaters begins here.

The premise is intriguing. Lana must help Amy along, and Amy can do simple actions like crawl through vents and hit switches on command. Through the use of Ico-like hand-holding, Lana and Amy travel about the 5 stages trying to survive. Lana can use melee weapons (normally 2x4s or crowbars) to beat zombies, and she can dodge incoming attacks. The weapons are breakable, so management of when to attack and when to sneak by (theoretically) comes into play. Lana isn't a tank and only a few hits will end her life; fighting isn't generally the answer. And little Amy can copy glyphs to gain psychic powers. Well, only two powers, actually: a shockwave to push/attack enemies or break down barriers and a sphere of silence for sneaking. There are five slots for powers, but you only ever find two. To keep you together, Amy has a healing effect on Lana. If Lana strays too far from Amy, or hits red gases/puddles, she begins to show signs of zombie-itis. You can heal without Amy by using a serum found lying about, but it's only a temporary fix. This can be useful in some areas, as you can walk right by fellow zombies but you have to be quick or face permanently turning. This base seems like a solid foundation for a great horror game: weak characters that depend on each other, melee and range attack options, incentive to remain together. Unfortunately, everything goes wrong.

Our heroines set off into darkness

Graphically the game is sound, but not stellar. The environments are bland, but have some personality to them. The character models are great. Lana looks roughed up with her torn stockings and bloodied hands. Amy looks like a kid, and that's about the best I can say. The animations are stiff and lifeless. The little “Yay, you!” animations you have to watch whenever Amy does something right are terrifying. Amy and Lana have the lifeless eyes and “thousand yard stare.” Lip synching was off most of the time, and the voice actors don't really make that better. Of particular mention is the first character you meet after the train crash. He's a real treat to listen to (please note the sarcasm). The sounds in the level are passable, and the music is decent. As a technical showcase, Amy might have wow'd a few years ago, but today it just comes across as a cheap game.

The combat is a bloody mess, and not in a good way. Swings lack heft and the animation is stilted. Enemies telegraph their attacks by a mile, but the dodge is iffy. Hell, even if the enemy hits the air, Lana may take damage anyhow. On harder difficulties, the weapons break too quickly and not having one strangely leaves you unable to run. Couple this with the fragility of Lana and you will see a lot of the Game Over screen. Amy's psychic powers are terrible to use, too. Triggering them is hit and miss, and involves holding a trigger, selecting the power and then some sort of alchemy to get it to launch. Of particular annoyance is that the shockwave has “ammo” and if you miss your target, you may be backtracking quite a ways to refill it. Sneaking is abhorrent, especially as a zombie. The line between “Yes, you are zombie enough to sneak by” and “Hey, she isn't one of us!” is not defined at all. Lana has an indicator on her back that goes from Green (when around Amy) to Yellow (away from Amy but OK) to Red (hope you like brains!), but it fails to register at times. My indicator was green, but my screen was red, wavey and the whispers of the damned filled my speakers. So, the game was telling me two separate things: one said, you are A-OK and near Amy (which I wasn't), but the rest of the zombie symptoms had gone haywire.

Lana starts to zombie-out

Glitches aside, the game has some terrible design behind it. The pacing is awful. Lana and Amy move slowly. While this makes sense, and could add to the scares, it's just annoying. Lana can't go through vents, but she can climb ladders and shimmy along edges. Amy can do the vents and she can also hack open doors for Lana. Walking slowly through the stages means that most stages take about an hour to beat, even though the stage area isn't that large. The amount of backtracking you have to do makes the slow pace of the game go from “annoyance” to “forget this” in about 10 minutes. The “scares” come from steam pipes hissing, or boards falling, not enemies or the atmosphere. The tension building parts do their job. Walking down a pitch-black hallway with only a hand-lamp that lights a meter ahead is nerve-wracking. But, when I gathered the item at the end of the hall unmolested, I figured the monsters would assault me on the return trip. Nope. I made it back to the well-lit, and enemy free corridors and all the tension melted away in an instant. The “pop-out” scares (like the pipes) are infrequent, and Lana is forced into an animation of, I guess, surprise. That's great when an enemy finds you and back into a “scare zone” and take a few cheap hits. It's disappointing that a survival horror game fails at the horror aspect, but even worse when it fails at both parts.

Games like Amy are supposed to be about being scared and managing items to make it out alive. Breakable weapons go towards this end well. However, the serum you find to keep you from being a zombie is plentiful, but hardly necessary. Amy is with you nearly all the time, and when she isn't, you want to be on the edge of death to sneak by your fellow zombies. The game, however, makes this a frustrating exercise. I ended the first chapter with 4 weapons and 6 syringes. I thought I was set for Chapter 2. But, much to my dismay, I started Chapter 2 with NOTHING. They took all my inventory and left me with nothing but an empty feeling. Even Amy loses her powers between chapters, so you cannot use the silence sphere unless you find that glyph in the level. This becomes even more hurtful when you die on harder difficulties. You die, you lose everything you've collected, no matter what. So, they've taken the survival aspect out of the game, too. If you have no horror, nor survival, what are left with?

Rawr!  I'm a zombie!

Puzzles. And those are also awful relics of a by-gone era. Most stages are smaller affairs that involve a lot of backtracking and shifting things about to proceed. Whoever designed the areas you explore was a right jerk. Nearly all the puzzles in Amy involve elevators and switches. Of course, these switches are scattered about and are inaccessible by normal means. So, there is a lot of “Send Amy up, have Amy hit a switch, ride elevator up to Amy, send Amy down, go around...” It's not fun, it's tedious. These tedious puzzles become unbearable with the slow traversal. The game breaker (as if there weren't enough already) comes from having to redo puzzles because you died. Twenty minutes to get through an area is bad once, but two or three times and it becomes more work than it's worth.

The gripes are enough to turn most gamers away, but they are nothing compared to a save and checkpoint system that is hateful at best. Let's start with the checkpoints. They are few and far between. In a stage that takes about an hour, each checkpoint comes after 20 minutes of work. So, dying on the last part means redoing about a third of the stage. Since death comes easily (either through the glitchy combat or legitimately dying), you get to spend a lot of time redoing the same asinine puzzles and traps. Later chapters are especially bad because you are forced to do a lot of sneaking in zombie mode, and taking just too long to use the serum (or using it where another zombie can see you and kill you cause you are unarmed) means you keep retrying. The first checkpoint can be after about 35 minutes (if you're lucky). So, say you fail a few times, waste about 2 hours and decide, “I made the checkpoint, I'm frustrated, I'm going to save and quit.” Well, congratulations, you've got to start the chapter over. That's right. The saves only start you at the beginning of each chapter. This becomes especially bad towards then end when being seen means Game Over. Since the enemies will see you (or come to you even though you set off a distraction the opposite direction), you'll spend a lot of time retrying entire stages.

Broken combat against dull enemies?  Sounds fun!

Playing Amy is a chore. The slow pace fraught with frustration rather than horror was not enjoyable in the least. The puzzles were insultingly stupid and annoying. The saving and checkpoint system is outright vile. The combat is glitchy and lifeless. Stealth is broken, but required. This game is bad all around. It could very easily score lower, but that's what's so frustrating. Lana is a great character. I love how you can see that she cares for Amy and wants to do what's best for her. Their relationship is a brilliant foundation for a horror game to build on. Instead, the game fails to make us care more about them. The story is interesting, though it never really goes anywhere. This might have something to do with the “To Be Continued” ending, but maybe not. Amy has a foundation that could have been great. I hope that the team behind it learns from the missteps and gets a chance to try again. Despite the solid base, this game is neither survival, nor horror and the gameplay is so broken that slogging through was more trouble than it was worth.

Their relationship is believable, but the game is terrible

Score: 3.5 out of 10

Bottom Line: Good ideas are buried under too much garbage to be any fun

Check it out if you like: PSOne-era Resident Evil knock-offs like Countdown Vampires (or, Don't do it, just don't even bother)