➤ Amy, review 🎮

The game is available for download via PlayStation Network and Xbox Live
Version tested: Xbox 360

There is something terrible about it Amy. And we are not referring only to the protagonist of this bizarre survival horror, but to her controversial gestation. We have more than one reason to think that the VectorCell project, the company founded by Paul Cuisset (formerly the author of Flashback), ran out of funds at a decidedly premature stage and left to its tragic fate in the digital delivery market. Let's see in detail what awaits us in this high-tension title, in every sense.

Anni '90

To tell the truth, since the release of the first teaser the expectations for this product were quite high and with good reason. The genre is far from prolific on the new generation platforms and the opening words are decidedly intriguing. In the role of a woman named Lana we face a journey in the company of little Amy, who gives her name to the game, an eight-year-old girl with autism and keeper of strange powers.

We soon discover that we have taken the little girl away from a research laboratory with systems perhaps not very legitimate, but motivated by what will soon happen, the explosion of an apocalyptic epidemic, capable of transforming most living beings into ravenous zombies. and abominable creatures. Lana herself is infected by the virus, thus seeing her not very rosy future as an undead curbed only by miraculous vials and the very presence of the little girl. That's right, Amy's closeness erases any influence of the nefarious infection, as long as you remain in close contact with the child. A symbiotic relationship then begins on which the entire game system develops, in a similar way to what is seen in products such as Ico. But VectorCell looks more at the Silent Hill and Resident Evil sagas, especially the former, and aspires to return the survival horror genre to its ancient, glorious origins.

Every man for himself

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and never is a proverb more apt as in the case of Amy. The setting, as we have said, follows that of the adventures of fifteen years ago, with a precarious and frightened protagonist, protected only by some weapon remedied in the best possible way and the powers of little Amy, able to copy on her own Pad some glyphs capable of give special features. Taking advantage of the indefinite futuristic setting of the story, the title shows off technological instruments, in reality a mere pretext for the preparation of a series of puzzles aimed at lengthening the soup.

Among these we include doors loaded with DNA, which require backtracking sessions from the first minutes of the game (!) Whose understanding is totally up to the player, switches to be managed with four hands (with Amy) and terminals to be unlocked, essentially some hacking mini games with even embarrassing conceptual errors. Try your hand at Amy it offers sensations strongly unbalanced towards the unpleasant, the good atmosphere of the game is contrasted by the controls that are difficult to tolerate, a totally random collision system and various bugs, some very serious. In our sessions, everything has happened to us, from zombies suspended in the void, to the little girl who refused to follow us, getting stuck in the backdrop. The most dramatic aspect, however, is represented by the rescue system, which is truly insipid. The game automatically saves in preset points of the 6 chapters, but the checkpoints are reduced to the bone, and the strongly trial and error structure forces you to repeat the same steps an excessive number of times. Particularly disturbing is the lack of logic of many deaths, inevitable as they are cynically planned by programmers to accumulate hours of play. Last but not least, resuming a game means having to restart the chapter from the beginning, a condition that is simply unacceptable.

Xbox 360 achievements

Amy proposes the canonical 200 player points, divided into 12 objectives. Being a single player adventure, you can get almost all of them by concluding the main story along the 6 chapters, in the three difficulty levels proposed. An operation that is anything but easy, given the difficult task that the player has to do to see the coveted credits, good luck.

The Walking Dead

Even technically Amy does not scream miracle, the polygonal modeling of the characters is not stingy in detail, especially the inexorable transformation of Lana when distant from Amy. This is really impressive and increases the tension exponentially, not to mention that in a certain passage we have to exploit our despicable state to pass unscathed among the zombies (reminds you of anything?). The artistic direction is much more questionable, Lana inspires more fear than an undead even when she is in healthy conditions, and the disproportions of the limbs have a frankly horrible rendering. The scenarios are the most canonical you can imagine and strongly derivative towards the Konami horror saga, so we have unhealthy and depressing environments, wrapped in darkness and red blood cells spread on the walls. Unfortunately, everything runs in really bad conditions, with a framerate that barely exceeds 20 frames, the screen devastated by tearing phenomena and various slowdowns. It is clear that the optimization phase and, we suspect, beta testing have completely failed. The audio section is normal, with a series of effective ambient sounds. The game is spoken in English with Spanish subtitles.

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In Amy almost nothing works, if we exclude the right atmosphere for a survival horror, although very derivative, and the good idea of the two protagonists. And it is a pity, with a competent realization and a better cleaning phase, fans could have experienced an authentic flashback towards a genre that is no longer done today. This is unfortunately not the case with VectorCell's product, plagued by all kinds of problems, from technical implementation, bugs and a game system full of errors and absurdly punitive, which finds its culmination in the unacceptable rescue system. So you are warned, the ticket price is not high (about 10 Euros), but it guarantees a trip that can only be tolerated by such diehards.