Amy XBLA Review

She looks innocent enough.

Amy plunges you into a world where psychic powers are real, known and at least partially accepted by society. The game opens with Lana and Amy sitting on a train, making their way from a facility seemingly specifically set up to study people with psychic powers. They plan to get answers elsewhere as it's hinted at the scientists at the facility don't necessarily put much importance on the welfare of their subjects.

This has obviously rubbed Lana the wrong way and because she has a doctor friend, who she thinks will be able to give them insight into Amy's condition without the questionable ethics, they decide to escape and head there. However Amy is some sort of psychic wunderkind, so the higher ups are upset she has gone missing and all hell breaks loose. They end up besieging half a city, loosing a virus on an unsuspecting population, and killing nearly everyone just to try and recover her.


Overview
You play as Lana who has taken it upon herself to take care of, and protect, Amy. Amy isn't completely defenseless though, as she has a strong psychic affinity and gains a couple of different powers along the way. She is still a small child though and you will need to do most of the heavy lifting, attacking the monsters and figuring out how to make your way safely past the soldiers searching for you. You aren't as well equipped or prepared for the situation you've found yourself in so discretion is the better part of valor for now. You'll be required to sneak past, distract and hide from your pursuers through most of the stages in Amy. This is the better part of the game, leading to some tense moments, interspersed with some frantic combat.

The mutant has gotten a hold of Amy, bash his skull in while he's busy!

Lana isn't just protecting Amy however, it seems Amy's abilities can stop and reverse the spread of infection. Lana has been infected like just about everyone else, but Amy's aura is healing her and stopping the infection from taking hold. This is another cool idea, that leads to some tense moments where you need to send Amy away or hide her somewhere while you do something, knowing that the infection is creeping up and taking hold. If you don't make it back to Amy in time to heal it's game over.

Lana's appearance will change, and you will be able to see the infection taking hold.
Hurry back to Amy before it's too late!

Rational
The game opens with you on a train heading to a nearby hospital to meet up with Lana's friend, when it crashes at the next station. You discover things aren't entirely normal when people start turning and attacking you. You quickly find a 2x4 and get introduced into the combat mechanics. One button swings while another dodges. It's a nice mechanic when used in one on one fights, with properly timed dodges opening the enemy up to a devastating flurry.

Group combat seems to rely more on luck than skill

Where it all goes wrong is when you find yourself in a situation with more than one enemy. While you could argue you're better off running and hiding in these situations, it's not your combat abilities that make this group combat hard, but the way the camera locks on to an enemy. It gives you little to no combat awareness, and leaves you open for cheap hits you could have otherwise dodged. Couple this with sections in the game where they purposely throws you against waves of enemies and the combat becomes super frustrating  I didn't feel like I did any better in the combat the times I succeed than the times I failed, it just seemed like luck.

The game actually gives off a fairly good impression and I found myself enjoying the first two thirds of the game, but the last third completely destroys any and all good faith built by the previous two. The second last level resorts to complete stealth with being detected leading to an instant fail state, unlike the rest of the game. It also takes away your ability to dispatch any of the monsters in your way, which leaves you to trial and error your way through a level with only one exact way of completing it, which even if followed exactly still may see you retrying if one of the mutants decide to look in a place he shouldn't. After struggling your way through many, many reloads the level ends with you having to search out the key to opening the exit door while is sends an unending stream of mutants at you to deal with.

This is the end boss, hopefully I spoiled it for you and
stopped you from wasting your time by playing this game.

Once you finally beat that level and you've made it into the hospital to find your friend, you're greeted with one of the worst end bosses I've seen. I'm not sure if there is even a legitimate way to beat this guy but after cheesing my way past him you get a quick wrap up, some more questions and the game just ends. There were clearly plans to give Amy more powers down the road because her power selection wheel is massive with a bunch of slots and only two are used throughout the game. There is no resolution to the story, you never get to interact with the doctor you spent all game trying to find and the guys with guns are still after you. This game is clearly unfinished, and I'm not sure if they were planning it to be some sort of episodic series, or to release a sequel but with the reception this game has gotten I doubt any of that will pan out. This leaves the story unfinished and the game feeling the same.

Summary
While the first half of the game gives off some interesting ideas, and sets up what might have been a cool story, none of it ends up paying off and the last half of the game is filled with frustration and feels like it was hastily wrapped up. There is no resolution to be had and you are left hanging wondering what happened. It's too bad because like I said the start is interesting and there are some cool mechanics to play with. As basically a huge escort mission the game could have been immensely worse and just for pulling that off it deserves some recognition. If you're bored and pick it up cheap, there are worse ways to spend your time, but I just con't recommend this game.

It's a shame Amy turned out the way it did, but some interesting mechanics
just can't overcome the feeling that the game is incomplete.

Mondaily Update

I've got a
Nokia Lumia 710

This weekend was a busy one, and most of Sunday was taken up with my brothers birthday. I did manage to squeeze in a lot of gaming in the time I had. I even managed to find 30 minutes of time at the birthday celebrations making a little bit of headway in iStunt 2 on my Windows Phone. I'm not too fond of the game, seeing as I'm already over the main gameplay gimmick before I've even completed the first world. This is compounded by the two achievements for collecting all the stars in 1 and 2 worlds, but I'm hoping that if I manage to eventually work my way through the first two worlds with all the starts then I can just bomb through the rest of it and be done. That's wishful thinking for the foreseeable future though, as progress is intermittent and slow.

I managed to finish up Renegade Ops not long after writing about it in the last Fridaily Update found here. Alien rank ended up not being too hard with the right level and change in tactics. I had Armand leveled up to max with all my upgrades in the Tactics category maximising my shield usage. Level 3 ended up being the easiest if you manage to hit the shield every time one of the tanks or SAM sites try to shoot you. The mini-bosses throughout the level can be beaten pretty easily just by driving around them in circles while shooting. That puts a lid on Renegade Ops and be sure to check back tomorrow for the review.

Amy is enjoyable for the first three levels, then descends into frustration.

After beating Renegade Ops I decided to give Amy a whirl. I'd heard a lot of bad things about it but found it to be surprisingly OK.... in the first 3 or 4 levels. Amy can be super annoying throughout the game, running off all the time if you forget to tell her to stay put. You'd think a little girl trying to make it through a world with all these infected-zombie things would stay close to the adult trying to help and protect her. The last 2 levels are a nightmare and pushed the boundaries of my patience. In the second last level they decide to go stealth for the first half and if you get seen it's restart at the last checkpoint, which the game isn't so liberal about handing out. Combined with Amy's penchant for running off and you're fast reaching my frustration limits. Amy turned out to be a short romp, which felt unfinished and the story is left without any conclusion. I think they were planning on making another, but with the way this has turned out I doubt they will. I'll have a review on Thursday.

Red Dead Redemption is an amazing game. One of the best I've played on my Xbox 360.

After beating Amy I decided to revisit Red Dead Redemption. I would say that Red Dead Redemption is one of my favourite games, if not the favourite, I've ever played on my 360. I love the western setting, the atmosphere is amazing. The gameplay is tight and varied, I think I must have played close to 100 hours just in single player exploring and hunting. This is one of the only games I've spent time in just enjoying the atmosphere instead of pushing for the next objective. I've done absolutely everything in single player, so this weekend I revisited the multiplayer side.

Can't we all just get along?

Red Dead Redemption multiplayer is a different experience than that of single player, due to the insistence of everybody playing to just randomly kill everyone and everything in free-roam, instead of playing some death match, can be frustrating. Spawning into any multiplayer game only to be gunned down seconds later is frustrating at the best of times, but when it's completely pointless and it seems the only real reason is to troll people it gets plain annoying. Especially because when you die you drop out of any menu you were in, even if you were trying to jump to an actual game mode, to respawn. It makes it a race against the clock, to try and get to where you want to go before someone decides you deserve a bullet. You don't get anything from killing in free roam, why not play Deathmatch? Team Deathmatch? Or any of the other multiple multiplayer modes that reward you with XP and unlockables for doing what you are doing for nothing in Free Roam.

That's what you get for looking in them there menus!

I'm just trying to enter Co-op Mode,
leave me alone!

The last thing I've got to do in Red Dead is complete the Advanced Coop Missions with a Gold Medal
ranking. I could have sworn I'd already done so, but it never unlocked and I wasn't keeping track properly. Maybe an update or patch wiped my progress? Since then I've kept track and every time I've gold medaled a stage I've written it down. I'm down to one last mission, and if it doesn't unlock I'll be furious. This mode is probably my favourite out of all the multiplayer, which sucks because it seems like I'm in the minority. Either most people have moved on from this game or everyone just wants to run around killing for no reason in Free Roam. Most of the times I've tried to play barely anyone is on, and whoever is on always seems to be impatient and bad at the game. A lot of the Coop Missions require 3 or 4 people to stand a good chance of beating it. It can be done with 2 if you're both on point and really work together, but whenever I pair up with someone they don't want to wait around for another person and they don't want to work together so we end up dead within minutes. It's annoying and factor in the fact that people like or dislike certain missions and flat out refuse to play the ones they don't like and I have one mission left which just may be one they refuse to play and it's almost impossible to get the one you want to play. I hope I complete this someday soon, as I love the game, but relying on selfish randoms to get your last mission done is akin to pissing into the wind.

This updates getting rather long, but I've got one more game to touch on. I started playing through Joy Ride Turbo yesterday. It seems rather short and I have already placed 1st in all the races available. All that's left to do is grind for a bunch of coins and collect all the upgrades and trophies scattered across the freeroam/stunt park sections of the game. I'll write a bit more about Joy Ride Turbo next time because this is getting long.

Renegade Ops review coming tomorrow, check back for that. Leave a comment below and I'll see you Wednesday with another update!