You know, it’s not very often that there’s a clear-cut contender for “worst X of the year” only one or two weeks in, but it looks like gamers and reviewers alike seem to have found one in AMY (I’m not sure whether this is supposed to be in all-caps or not), a survival horror adventure game on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Common complaints are about the busted controls, lack of checkpoints, boring puzzles, the player characters looking like they came straight from the uncanny valley, and other baffling design decisions that prevent the player from experimenting with ways to proceed. I don’t usually like adding games to the So Bad It’s Horrible pages on TV Tropes unless they’ve “earned” it, but when you’ve got a group of disparate reviewers all saying the same thing and giving the same review scores (GameRankings composite rates the Xbox Live Arcade version of AMY below 25%), it’s hard to resist the temptation not to do so.
For the record, I did try out the demo, and while I don’t think it’s “worst game ever” material, it’s…pretty dire. The main reason I didn’t get to the end of it was because I got lost trying to find a way to the next door, spending naybe 15 minutes walking in circles trying to find the door I’d just opened with a switch I forced Amy to press. You mean to tell me that Lana couldn’t put her big-girl pants on and crawl under those grates herself? Come on!
But if you’re curious and want to play it anyway, it’s on Xbox Live and PSN for $10 right about now.