Well, today is the moment of truth. Survival Horror travesty AMY comes out today on the US Playstation Network. Since I'm primarily a PS3 gamer, today I'll be picking it up. As you may know, I was rather excited about the title, but the reviews haven't been kind. Metacritic shows the game sitting at a woeful 35 out of 100 on PS3 and below 3 on Xbox 360. Nearly all the major sites have blasted the game as being broken, unfair and outright horrible. The AMY Facebook page sent out this message today:
Hi all,
Today is the official release day of the PSN version in the US and we wanted to take this opportunity to come back to you.
As many of you have already heard, AMY is a HARD game. Some people totally disliked that while other really enjoyed it. We believe this is part of the survival experience we tried to build as we wanted the game to be challenging. However, we actively listen to the community and comments and hence recommend the non-hard core gamers to launch the game in EASY mode (in the settings) for now. This will give them a much more pleasant and smoother experience, especially as the checkpoints are scarce.
In addition, we wanted to thank those of you who bought the game and rated it on the XBOX market and the PSN Store.
Indeed, AMY has been #1 in the daily XBLA charts since its launch in all major territories and players have rated it between 3 and 4 out of 5 on XBLA and more than 4 on the PSN despite the controversy. For us, the players’ ratings (almost 9500 so far) are the most important ones.
As always, we will come back to you with updated information as soon as we can. Thanks a lot.
I like that the developer is listening to fans. I don't like that they seem defensive about the scores and are ignoring the elephant in the room. That elephant is that the game has some serious and fundamental flaws that sap enjoyment out of it. It seems that "difficult" and "broken beyond playing" are synonymous. I am still going to get the game and play it, but my enthusiasm for it is tempered. I've liked some bad games, so maybe this will be one of those. I'm a bit worried that many reviewers couldn't even finish the game because it became too frustrating. However, if a patch is released, that may fix enough problems to make the game playable. We shall see this afternoon.
On more awesome news, EA is doing a nifty crossover for it's two big Spring titles. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (due out 7 February) and Mass Effect 3 are sharing armor. Much like the Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2 crossover, players can deck out their heroes with cool (if weak) pieces of equipment. Amalur's demo drops today on both the PSN and Live, so it should be there now. The demo save data is all that's needed for this, so if this floats your boat, grab both demos and keep the save!
Check out these sweet armors!
And finally, the game I'm super excited for announced a multiplayer demo! Syndicate is launching a demo from the co-op campaign soon! The four player campaign is all about a team of agents working together to keep their syndicate on top. I'm excited because many of the missions will be re-tellings of missions from the PC original. And speaking of that gem, Good Old Games announced that they will have the original Syndicate available starting Thursday! So, if you are curious about this new game or you really enjoy isometric strategy games, keep an eye on GOG!
The demo's trailer
The 8 minute co-op demonstration
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