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Review: Amy

Before anyone could actually go and buy Lexis Numérique’s new survival horror title, Amy, on Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network, we’d already been bombarded by IGN’s early review. With a tag-line of “horrifyingly bad” and a score of “painful”, Amy‘s future did not look bright.

IGN over-exaggerated. But not by much.

Available for approximately $10 on your chosen platform, Amy heavily borrows from the genre it’s part of, with visuals from Silent Hill and a story from the Sherry Birkin sequences of Resident Evil 2. Or, really, the Ashley Graham bits of Resident Evil 4. I digress. In any case, Amy is definitely as frustrating as either of those first two titles.

You control Lana, a heroine charged with the guardianship of a mute (oh, and also psychic) girl named (you guessed it,) Amy. After breaking your young ward from an oppressive institution, the train you’re riding on derails and you take control of the game, mid-zombie outbreak. Amy’s psychic abilities shield her from the contaminated air, offering her immunity from the zombie plague; that immunity is passed to Lana as long as she’s within hand-holding distance.

The relationship between Amy and Lana is extremely symbiotic, and that is awesome.

What follows is a game where you’re constantly managing resources – you can carry one weapon that breaks down over time, and you’re able to use syringes to keep the contamination away when you’re unable to stay with your young charge. If you’re low on syringes, meeting back up with Amy will stave off the contamination and cause you to rapidly heal from any injuries you’ve taken in combat with any of the numerous zombies of the game.

On combat: it involves holding down a shoulder button to take on a ready-stance, then pressing one button to fight and one to block. Those reviewers who manically mashed buttons to try to play enough of the game in order to review it claim that the combat is broken. They’re wrong. Strategic combat involves watching your enemy, and blocking when you see them about to attack. Successful combat involves hitting the attack button when you’ve got an opening. Simple as that.

The sound design in the title is fantastic, and it’s little touches like Lana’s reactions to a crumbling environment that really add to the tension you’re already feeling whilst playing.

Now, don’t mistake this rebuttal review as a glowing recommendation for the title. As soon as you start playing, you’re going to want to turn up the brightness straight away. Occasionally, Amy’s movement and physics go wonky and she flies in the air as you’re running hand-in-hand past rubble.

Coincidentally, the best part about that particular issue is that the game stops to show Amy with a concerned look on her face after the physics go wonky; it’s like the developers knew about the issue and built a small easter egg to poke fun at the situation. In the end, it’s not a big deal.

Anyways, back to critiquing. A broken checkpoint system means that you’re going to be doing a lot of trial and error to get certain tasks done, and you’re going to be paying the price if you fail: dying will usually mean you’re going to have to replay the last 15-20 minutes of the game to get to where you’d really left off.

That last bit? Fair enough, but that’s exactly what happened in Resident Evil if you got too cocky and ignored a typewriter or two. Let me put it this way: Amy will be an enjoyable experience for you if you’re an old-school, retro survival horror fan willing to deal with some clunkiness to go along for the ride.

I was. It was worth my money, and after this, you should be able to decide if it’s worth yours.


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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.