AMY

Amy impressively showcases how underdeveloped gaming generally is on an emotional level. But unfortunately the moments of frustration about the controls, the lengthy storytelling, frustrating AI and too much trial and error prevail.

Sadly, the gameplay is drab and badly paced, with lots of fetch quests and a few uninspiring puzzles. [May 2012, p.89]

After a complicated first launch, Amy is reborn again to give some scares to this needed generation. It's a shame that all the good ideas the game has in its basics are not applied to the final version, plagued with multiple bugs of AI, control and visuals.

Amy is been far away of better horror titles. Its poor combat system, wrong plot, weak puzzles and shoddy checkpointing make it a bad game.

An imaginative concept and some strong design are undone by a game that's gruelling in all the wrong ways.

AMY is a total delusion: poor game design and a underwhelming graphic trasform an hyped game in one of the worst digital delivery game of this winter.

Unfortunately, it doesn't get the basics right. [Mar 2012, p.80]

If I were to recommend the game to a friend, I'd argue that it would be better to know, beforehand, that the production values and the playability really lack polish, before choosing to purchase it. It's so much so that it can, from time to time, completely ruin the experience. Despite this huge shortcoming, Amy has an atmosphere, stress-inducing and game world that are all powerful enough to overthrow the rest... if you're one to be hugely tolerant and really in need for a horror fix.

Quotation forthcoming.

I wanted Amy to be good. It's a small developer trying to do something different, and a quality PSN survival horror game would have been perfect. But this is technically shoddy, poorly designed and unbearably frustrating. There's the odd moment when you care, but a dose of pure anger is never far behind.

Amy has all the survival horror elements, but the execution is so poor that the result is a poisonous chimera. [March 2012, p.113]

Amy is a game that I absolutely believe was originally conceived and designed with the best of intentions-but one which horrifically fell apart into a broken mess by the time it landed on our consoles.

AMY lets you down in just about every possible category. The mechanics are bad, the Lana/Amy tandem is barely mediocre, the acting and writing is sub-par, the game design (from the ridiculous checkpoints/saving system to how the environment is laid out) is poor and immensely frustrating, and lastly, it just isn't scary.

As a downloadable title, I wasn't expecting Amy to measure up against the triple-A juggernauts of the survival horror genre. However, I was expecting a game that was at least playable and contained some kind of entertainment. Make no mistake: Whether Amy is delivered to you via download, retail SKU, direct brain wave, or retinal implant, it is terrible and should be avoided.

The trial-and-error nature of the level design, and the heinous save and checkpoint system make it a game that's infuriating to play. A slew of fundamental design decisions ruin a collection of great ideas, and that's unfortunate. AMY is not a tense game, it's a frustrating one. But what's most disappointing of all is that beneath the shoddy execution, it had real potential.

The fact that Amy's concept was so intriguing sadly magnifies the feeling of gross letdown in its execution.

It's hard to watch a game stumble with every step, but AMY repeatedly demolishes any reason to suspect Occam's razor shouldn't be employed; it's a dreadful game and a miserable experience.

Decent ideas can't rescue this shoddy survival horror game.

With the exception of a few scary moments Amy is anything but frightening. The puzzles are uninspired, the controls awkward, the voice acting horrible and the checkpoint system is one the worst we've ever encountered. [February 2012, p.100]

Amy makes us understand parents who hit their children and that statement on itself is scarier than the hours we wasted playing this piece of crap.

Amy is a game that somehow managed to take all of its bright potential and turn it into a dark shadow of all that it could have been. No matter where you look, all you see are bad design decisions, poor execution and broken mechanics.

If Amy ever had a chance of keeping its head above water and surviving these problems, the awful checkpoint system ensures it drowns in them.

AMY could have been one of those cult games if it wasn't for its tremendous flaws. Its controls are terrible, and its gameplay is very repetitive. It tries to frighten the player, but it is too full of used cliches and hardly will achieve it.

Amy is the special kind of bad that rarely comes along, spoken of in the same breath as Superman 64. The plot is incoherent and unenjoyable, the characters are bland and unlikeable, and the setting is poorly established. The gameplay is broken and awkward to a degree that would be inexcusable in 2000, let alone 2012. Not even the budget price of $10 can come close to making this remotely worthwhile.

Amy purports itself to be survival horror, but the only surviving you'll be doing is trying to make sense of the muddled gameplay mess laid before you as you're "scared" by the same gimmicky frights, like bursting gas pipes and falling portraits, over and over again.

Amy fails on all counts. It's plagued by jerky movement, poor scripting, weak puzzles and shoddy checkpointing, but it's also a characterless mess of themes and ideas swiped from a dozen better horror titles. Neither quirky enough to be forgiven its unfinished feel nor polished enough to satisfy the base gaming itch, Amy is a crushing disappointment with little to recommend it.

The stealth sections are quite possibly the worst designed section of any game that we've ever seen. [Issue#215, p.85]