AMY Doesn’t Suck. It’s Just Hard.

Despite what everyone’s saying, AMY‘s developer wants you to know that the game isn’t broken. People are being mean because they don’t like how hard it is.

Last week, survival horror game AMY hit Xbox Live Arcade. Today, it’s been released for the PlayStation Network. Both versions have been slammed by critics: The XBLA version currently has a 22% rating on Metacritic, while the PSN build is hovering at 35%. The general consensus from critics has been that AMY is the kind of game so terrible that it’s the stuff of legend. Developer VectorCell has finally addressed the criticism leveled against its game, and it’s claiming that critics are upset because the game’s just too dang hard.

VectorCell took to Facebook today to address the issues with AMY, which is claims aren’t really issues at all:

Hi all,

Today is the official release day of the PSN version in the US and we wanted to take this opportunity to come back to you.
As many of you have already heard, AMY is a HARD game. Some people totally disliked that while other really enjoyed it.
We believe this is part of the survival experience we tried to build as we wanted the game to be challenging.
However, we actively listen to the community and comments and hence recommend the non-hard core gamers to launch the game in EASY mode (in the settings) for now.
This will give them a much more pleasant and smoother experience, especially as the checkpoints are scarce.

In addition, we wanted to thank those of you who bought the game and rated it on the XBOX market and the PSN Store.
Indeed, AMY has been #1 in the daily XBLA charts since its launch in all major territories and players have rated it between 3 and 4 out of 5 on XBLA and more than 4 on the PSN despite the controversy.
For us, the players’ ratings (almost 9500 so far) are the most important ones.

As always, we will come back to you with updated information as soon as we can.
Thanks a lot.

This statement is amazing. It completely ignores the fact that parts of the game are entirely broken, like the issues Susan Arendt mentioned in last week’s Escapist Podcast. One memorable point is when an enemy appears and the character model is (sometimes) inexplicably missing a head. Susan also noted there were typos in the subtitles and “the controls are such shit that they actively prevent you from playing the game.”

Instead of acknowledging there’s anything wrong with AMY, this statement just puts all the blame on people who don’t like the game by effectively saying “everyone else likes the game just fine; what’s wrong with you?”

Other problems noted in reviews have included an inventory system that’s wiped clean when you die, save points that are so few and far between that you’re forced to play through the same areas and watch the same cutscenes over and over again, and subtitles full of typos.

By this logic, here are a couple of other games that weren’t bad, they were just too hard to be appreciated: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, Drake of the 99 Dragons, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Superman 64.

Source: Facebook