AMY (Xbox 360) review "Tragically, though the poor presentation is the first thing you’ll notice, it’s not the worst. Not by a long shot. In fact, an argument could be made that the presentation is the best thing the game has going for it."

You are Lana. Lana’s an attractive blonde, wearing an outfit that is decidedly inappropriate for what she’s about to get herself into. She’s absconded with a mute, mushroom-coiffed little girl with mysterious powers that we’re not yet privy to, and with special needs that are never made clear. Her name is Amy. Lana and a group with whom she’s affiliated have decided that Amy did not belong at the medical facility where she was staying, that she’d be better served attending at a hospital which you find out, is not at all nearby.

The two of you board a train for wherever, and never get there. Things of note: the black train conductor who stops by to make small talk is remarkably creepy. When he leaves, the train derails. When you wake, Amy is gone.

A Silent Hill-esque beginning, is an auspicious beginning, I say. And really, the idea of Amy was always promising. It was to be a throwback to times when popular survival horror titles were actually scary—if slightly clunky—rather than oily smooth Michael Bay-inspired shoot-em-ups (Resident Evil 5, I’m looking at you) or iterations so poor it’s clear the developers forgot what it was the series used to do so well (you too, Silent Hill: Homecoming).

Yes, a return to past glory is a romantic notion fans of the genre can’t resist. And the good news is that Amy really does remind one of Resident Evil 2, or the original Silent Hill. The bad news is… that’s not fucking good news. It’s 2012, and Amy made my mind race back to the very best graphics on the PlayStation console—you know, the grey one. (Granted, it looks better than that, but the flashbacks were unexpected and unwelcome.)

I realize that this is a download-only title, but the colours are washed out, the backgrounds are dull, the characters have a severe case of the jaggies, and any movement of the protagonist threatens with screen tearing. The camera too, gives you a headache, and playing for any period of time will uncover a host of glitches that shouldn’t have made it past testing.

Tragically, though the poor presentation is the first thing you’ll notice, it’s not the worst. Not by a long shot. In fact, an argument could be made that the presentation is the best thing the game has going for it. There’s a long list of things that make Amy’s questionable looks absolutely shine in comparison: The voice acting is so offensive you’ll actually want to turn the volume off. Lana isn’t bad, but there’s an NPC you meet at the start of the adventure who is so bad it becomes laughable, before ultimately arriving at irritating. That the controls work only sometimes is understandably problematic (the clunky camera often tag-teams with the clunky controls for fantastic effect). Collision detection too, is temperamental. Your dodging almost always works, but even when you aim your attacks correctly, and the arc of your weapon passes through an enemy, there’s no guarantee of inflicting damage.

Of even greater concern is puzzle consistency, or lack thereof. Sometimes you’ll hide in a closet, and an enemy will run right past and stare at a wall at the dead end just past your hidey-hole. Like, forever. (Somewhat amusingly, you, in all your wisdom, would have solved this sticking point sooner, but you didn’t consider that a viable hiding spot, because you gave the enemy AI more credit than it was due.) And yet other times, you’ll hide in a closet and enemies will surround it, and you’ll be screwed.

That’s a small example. Though this train wreck (LOL) is beyond needing a coup de grace, I’ll give you a game-killing example of inconsistency now anyway: after chapters of being able to take enemies head-on with varying results, chapter five decides to change the rules completely. At this point, if an enemy even sees you, it’s game over. Really? Really. It’s like the game designers are saying to you, “Okay, check this out. Yes, we know—don’t interrupt. So, remember how the bad guys would have to kill you before? That’s out now. From now on they’ll just look at you. Yeah. And then you’re dead. Just go with it.”

Any of these flaws on their own could sink a project. And yet, unbelievably, in Amy, none of the above constitutes the most crippling flaw of all (which, ironically would have been the easiest to correct, to improve the game instantly). Because that distinction goes to the game’s checkpoint system.

It’s absolute, utter garbage.

To wit: there are only six chapters, and they don’t add up to a very long game. But the game manufactures false challenge and false longevity by furnishing checkpoints which are set in the most counter-intuitive and sparse way imaginable—and worse still—by not allowing player saves of any kind. If you manage to get to a new chapter, when you come back to the game, you’ll have access to it; however, if you make it near the end of a chapter, and don’t finish it at that particular sitting, all progress is lost upon your return.

If Amy were a more typical survival horror (whether of the old-school ilk, or the new), this inexcusable limitation could conceivably be suffered through. But it’s not. Amy is an escort mission with horror window dressing. Many enemies can kill you instantly. And the radiation that hangs in the air following the train crash will kill you over time unless you’re with Amy. Add these facts together, and consider that to solve most of the game’s puzzles requires you to direct Amy to enter a crawl space or otherwise be apart from you in order to push a button or collect a key card, and you’ll realize quickly that progress comes on the back of countless deaths.

At its core, the Amy experience is about trial-and-error, co-operative problem solving, with terrible combat sequences interspersed for good measure. Had the developers allowed a ‘save anywhere/anytime’ function, it would be playable, for all of its other faults. It would still be ugly, and combat would still be literally hit or miss, and the story would still be poorly told, but those of us with patience (or nothing else to play) would soldier on for completion’s sake.

But alas—‘twas not to be! Playing Amy is singularly stressful because you know you have to beat chapters in single sittings. Because bad controls and instakill-capable enemies conspire to send you who knows how far back if you place a foot wrong. Because it’s difficult to stay the course after countless retries in Amy’s dark, uninteresting and unsightly environs.

After spending several valuable hours of my free time squinting in the low-res gloom that I might bash crudely drawn monsters with sticks I found lying about, and ridiculously scan corpses for DNA in order to assist child-savant Amy in hacking doors to gain access to new areas… that I might cower in closets and under desks for fear not of enemies, but of repeating the same mind-numbingly boring and broken sequences above—I am glad to be through with Amy. Let my misfortune serve also as a cautionary tale.

Staff review by Marc Golding (January 18, 2012) There was a bio here once. It's gone now.