The Story

In typical survival horror style, the tale revolves around two characters who must survive what looks like the zompocalypse. The two characters are Lana and title character - an 8-year-old autistic child. You must pass through a city that is over run by these "crazies," monsters and the military that seems to always have a shoot on site mentality. The whole story starts you off after what seems like Lana has "liberated" (read: jail break) Amy from some facility in order to bring her to yet another facility via train. The train crashes and the two need to find their way to the perceived safety of a hospital. Oh, and for some reason Amy has psionic powers that she was forced to learn at the first facility.

Hated

Ok, first off the story, while typical of the genre, had HUGE gaps with no explanation. Then, you encounter characters who seemed completely shocked about the outbreak and other events. In fact, the first time Amy used her psionic powers, I portrayed more shock than any of the characters on the screen. It was like this was to be expected by them yet they had to act surprised like someone who knows about their own surprise party. I mean how often in anyone's lifetime is there a full scale outbreak and a little girl with crazy powers? In the game world here, it would seem like a weekly thing.

Speaking on crazy powers, Amy is a master at hacking and puzzle solving. Yes, this is in the realm of possibilities with her being autistic, but how about the fact that her guardian does nothing but stand and watch.  This translates to you standing idle for a minute or two while Amy goes to town. Maybe the dev team missed the opportunity to attack during these parts in this escort game, but I don't find it all that fun to ask for the door to get hacked and then literally have to sit there while she works. This could have been a quick cut scene or hells, have me fight a wave of monsters but no. I get to stand there and watch while the AI gets to play a game of "Hack The Planet" - biggest missed opportunity by far.

Oh yeah, I did mention that the game is all one big escort mission didn't I? We love those, don't we gamers? Well, I'm not a big fan of them unless they are accompanied with really good AI that can handle themselves every now and again. But AMY has you escorting a child so you can forget amazingness there. The AI is about on par where it should be for Amy, which would be fine if everything else helped you with the micromanaging of the character. Spoiler alert: It doesn't.

What am I talking about here is the controls. They are the least responsive or intuitive that I have played with to date. It is so bad that when I ran Lana around a corner and saw a monster that I needed to avoid, I let go of the movement stick to stop and she kept running - right into the monster. In some cases, the game's invisible walls have been one of the greatest helps since Lana obviously never wants to stop walking when near a ledge. Maybe it was just Amy seeing how retardababy Lana was being and she used her new psionics to keep her from falling. I guess we'll never know since she doesn't speak.

As for the combat in the game, well, it was one of the many reasons I really didn't want to force myself to finish the game. It was like they looked at Dead Island and thought, "Hey, let's steal their idea and make it worse." The weapons degrade, which I'm fine with, but when you can only swing three times before needing a breather it kind of doesn't make sense to add that in there. She has to be taking power swings right? I mean she swings so slow that even a basic walker could bypass the attack. You have to very specifically time everything or you will be dead real quick and this "feature" isn't for game balancing reasons.

One last thing before I move on for your sakes. Let's talk inventory and items in the game. It is common in most games that when you end a mission, you get to carry over all your gear as you move forward unless the story events give reason for you to lose everything. Well, apparently Lana and Amy have huge holes in their pockets because walking through a door into the next chapter empties out your inventory. For instance, I played the first chapter and ended with 8 syringes, health replenishments, and a weapon. Chapter two starts up and I walked through maybe a door or two from the last location. EVERYTHING was gone. Maybe this is a glitch or maybe it was by design, but it still led to me having nothing I worked for in the previous section. Why punish people for doing well in the game? That is how that feels - not a game play feature.

Loved

So what did I love about AMY? Um… *Crickets Chirp* I am seriously at a loss here. I mean if I had to choose something it would be getting me into the mentality I will need when BioShock Infinite comes out and I try to play the 1999 Mode. You know the mentality of "I'm going to show this game who is the boss and finish it no matter how hard it is." Granted the difference will be Infinite will be hard by design and AMY was hard due to design flaws. That counts, right?

Overview

Far be it for me to say how you spend your money, but I would feel like I deserve to rot in the deepest part of Tartarus if I recommended you to purchase AMY. I had high hopes for the title when I first saw it and the screen shots leading up to the release, but it seems that they didn't want to take the few extra months to perfect the game. So much potential wasted here and I don't think any number of patches can fix it. Like I said, it is sad.

Just know that if you do pick up AMY, I will say I told you so if you start complaining about it.

Amy was developed by VectorCell and published by Lexis Numérique for the 360 and PS3 on January 11^th and 17^th, respectfully. A PSN review copy of the game was supplied by the publisher for review purposes. It can currently be purchased off the PSN or XBLA for $9.99.