VIDEO GAME REVIEW: ‘Amy’ doesn’t provide anything new

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The middle of January is a great time for a game like “Amy” to gain the attention while it might be harder to find other times during the year.

There isn’t much else coming out right now, and it only costs $10, so it seems like an easy option for anyone looking for something new.

The one thing “Amy” doesn’t do right is provide a fun experience for the player.

The game begins in the year 2034 on a train going through Silver City. The player controls a woman named Lana throughout the game, and it’s her job to keep the young and psychic-powered Amy safe after the train crashes and strange monsters begin to attack.

Keeping Amy safe is no small task, especially considering the game’s uncooperative controls and the fact that Amy tends to do whatever she wants.

There is a hand-holding mechanic reminiscent of PlayStation 2 classic “Ico” that the player must use to guide Amy through each level. There will be times when Amy gets stuck on something or clips through a wall giving away your position, but the hand-holding is functional for the most part. It isn’t very fun, but at least it works.

It’s when Amy lets go that problems arise. For someone so young, Amy sure isn’t scared of the zombies or other monsters in Silver City. She tends to just wander off and get killed if she is left unattended for a couple minutes.

For some reason, she also refuses to run any faster than a light jog when the player isn’t holding her hand. This leads to some immensely frustrating deaths for the player. Dying because of one’s own mistakes is one thing, but it’s maddening to restart at a checkpoint because Amy refuses to move her legs a little faster.

The rest of the game play isn’t much better. The combat is bad, Amy’s psychic powers are uninteresting and the stealth mechanics are passable but offer little enjoyment and plenty of frustration.

“Amy” would actually be a pretty good-looking $10 game if it could keep a stable frame rate. The Playstation 3 version suffers constantly from a poor visual performance, and the Xbox version seems only slightly better.

“Amy” has some interesting concepts but does nothing useful with them. It seems like mechanics from a bunch of other games were taken and thrown together in hopes of making something fun, but it made a mess instead