By Adam Smith on December 16th, 2011 at 11:18 am.
What happens when Ico, Clocktower, Silent Hill, Dead Rising 2 and Resident Evil meet in a darkened motel room, get drunk and share their genetic soup? Leading ludobiologists inform me there’s a good chance they may bring a downloadable offspring into the world by the name of Amy, whose habits include hanging out with infected children, obsessive hand-holding, a tendency to hide beneath tables and a clunky yet strangely effective technique of clobbering zombies with pieces of junk lying about the place.
Me and Jim have both written about Amy in the past, admiring the apparent emotional undercurrent that runs through its survival horror tendencies. A new video showing the combat makes me worry that we might be in for an extended escort mission interspersed with unsatisfactory combat. What do you reckon?
The protagonists in survival horror games are often described as being inept at combat, but they don’t seem to have a problem beating dead things to death. I think ‘untrained’ actually means ‘poorly animated’ more often than not. I also have no idea why teleportation occurs at the end. Or even if it that’s what’s happening, to be honest. Something went wibbly. Still, horror games don’t come around often enough for my liking and there are definitely some interesting ideas here.
Amy was originally a PSN exclusive but should be arriving on Steam after its initial release on the Third Station of Play, which is Q1 2012.
16/12/2011 at 11:24 The Tupper says:
Mmmm….genetic sooooup….
16/12/2011 at 11:36 westyfield says:
Soup, soup! A tasty soup, soup!
16/12/2011 at 11:42 Elltot says:
Spicy Carrot and Corriander!
16/12/2011 at 12:15 Lambchops says:
Chilli chowder!
16/12/2011 at 12:20 MonkeyTwat says:
Crouton Crouton!
16/12/2011 at 13:55 Andrew says:
Crunchy friends in a liquid broth!
16/12/2011 at 15:30 Dances to Podcasts says:
It’s not mustard soup, is it? It’s never mustard soup. And I like mustard soup. :(
16/12/2011 at 18:14 RagingLion says:
(It pleases me immensely that that just happened)
16/12/2011 at 11:28 Kits says:
To be fair you don’t need to be especially well trained to hit a shambling corpse over the head a few times with a stick. I like the look of this anyway. Though the “amy’s powers” part seems a bit unnecessary.
16/12/2011 at 22:57 JKjoker says:
have you ever tried to swing something heavy and not balanced for swinging like a big crowbar or a pipe ? not easy and very tiring
saying she is not trained for combat and then show her beating zombies with a pipe doing 3 hits per second is pretty stupid
16/12/2011 at 11:28 Faceless says:
‘Coping with enemies’? Does this game involve some manner of counselling?
16/12/2011 at 11:34 The Tupper says:
Weren’t they an indie band back in the nineties? They had the xmas number 48 with “No One Understands Me”.
16/12/2011 at 11:29 hypercrisis says:
Can’t say I’m blown away by it. Mostly it just aakes me wish Sony would put out the Siren series on PC
16/12/2011 at 16:01 unless says:
Christ, I’m still waiting for Siren 2 in North America, on any platform.
You hear that, Sony? I’ll buy your damn Vita thing for this, I swear!
16/12/2011 at 23:12 Kaira- says:
Also, Nintendo, why won’t you bring Fatal Frame 4 to Europe/NA? I really don’t want to go modding the console just to play it.
16/12/2011 at 11:42 Fierce says:
Short skirts and high heels are clearly prerequisite zombie fighting equipment.
Oh gaming industry, never change.
[Christopher Hitchens, 13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011]
[When a Great Beacon fades, the World darkens twice.]
16/12/2011 at 11:53 westyfield says:
Did Christopher Hitchens really say that? Never had him down as a gamer.
16/12/2011 at 12:02 Fierce says:
No, it’s not a direct quote. Usually if one quotes someone, they’ll put it in quotes on the same line as the speaker, but I can understand your confusion.
It’s actually a statement I heard about 12 years ago in Barbados that I never forgot. It seemed appropriate when I awoke to the sad news.
16/12/2011 at 12:04 westyfield says:
I was jokingly referring to the way that it looks a bit like a quotation – sadly not everyone uses the same convention for indicating quotations and such. Do you know who said the beacon one?
16/12/2011 at 12:11 Fierce says:
I know what you were doing, I was mocking it friendly-like with my response. =)
The beacon line came from a speaker in Barbados 12 years ago. I was at a funeral.
16/12/2011 at 12:14 westyfield says:
Ah, the joke’s on me then. :)
16/12/2011 at 13:07 outoffeelinsobad says:
RIP, Hitch! “Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!”
16/12/2011 at 13:20 torts says:
christopher hitchens was a terrible human being and the world is better off with less racist xenophobes.
16/12/2011 at 13:25 Kaira- says:
@torts
What.
16/12/2011 at 13:42 Homercleese says:
Balls, Hitchens *has* died.
Oh and bravo torts. I’m certainly not a fan of speaking of someone as a saint (obviously inappropriate in this case) just because they’ve died but I think even his idiologically polar opposite opponents would show more courtesy than you.
16/12/2011 at 14:19 westyfield says:
Personally I’d prefer it if the xenophobes weren’t racist at all, rather than merely “less racist”.
16/12/2011 at 14:51 Tacroy says:
Torts is presumably referring to Hitchens’ position on some versions of Islam, as well as the (second) Iraq war.
Basically, Hitchens believed that it was the USA’s responsibility to take Saddam Hussein down anyway, regardless of the faked up reasons for going there (since, after all, the only reason Saddam was in power was because the USA put him there in the first place).
This is not exactly a topic that many people agreed with him on, but I don’t think that it can be reduced down to “racist xenophobe”.
16/12/2011 at 15:31 formivore says:
Lol, I first hear the news that Hitch is dead on RPS. He must be right about there being no God.
Whatever he was he was certainly neither a racist or a xenophobe. Discourtesy on death is not inappropriate though: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2008/07/farewell_to_a_provincial_redneck.html
16/12/2011 at 11:45 Kazz says:
It looked promising from previous coverage, then the combat started. Ugh.
Ah well, there’ll be other games.
16/12/2011 at 11:51 Vexing Vision says:
I like the look of the combat.
The “Powers” however…. ugh.
16/12/2011 at 12:21 RyuRanX says:
It was going well until… teh powah!
16/12/2011 at 12:39 CaspianRoach says:
One animation to swing and one animation to dodge we need no more hello the dark 2000′s
16/12/2011 at 12:42 Johnny Lizard says:
I was with it until the voiceover said that sticks could have health. Sticks don’t have health.
16/12/2011 at 13:01 Spakkenkhrist says:
Let the record show Johnny Lizard has an unhealthy stick.
16/12/2011 at 13:02 theleif says:
Maybe it’s a walking stick?
16/12/2011 at 13:27 Red_Avatar says:
Looks piss poor.
Let’s see:
- hiding in or under stuff looks very gimmicky and a cheap and simplistic alternative to proper stealth
- this goes for the “sneaking” sessions as well – looks lame and again, simplistic
- animations are laughable at best – she pushes the enemies away? Her hands never even come CLOSE to touching them!
- combat looks pretty horrible – 15 year old games could do better than this
- the powers … ugh.
Really, looks like yet another typical (console) game which recycles old elements and manages to make them even more simplistic. Are we really taking steps back instead of moving forward?
16/12/2011 at 14:54 Pathetic Phallacy says:
I agree, it’s not stealth unless she’s doing splits jumps in hallways and dangling off ledges. Hiding isn’t stealth . . . oh wait . . . yes it is.
16/12/2011 at 18:23 Felixader says:
Really? Really? You just HAD to blame consoles. Really?
It has been ridicouless before what PC Gamers where throwing at the Consoles and i wont say that some of the stuff is rigth BUT the shit that gets pushed at beeing “the Consoles fault” is really getting deep into fucking retarted territory now.
Perhabs someone should repeatedly and with a rock point out the fact that Console gamers do not produce games.
16/12/2011 at 13:53 Untruth says:
The camera looks abysmal. With the fluid Arkham City camera this would almost seem playable. Right now it’s like the worst control problems of all Resident Evil games wrapped up in one.
16/12/2011 at 14:11 Kefren says:
Please, no more dissolving corpses.
“The virus is it means it dissolves when its heart stops… oh yeah, it’s dead already… erm the virus detects contact with the floor. Or like in Doom 3, things evaporate back to hell. Or erm, Quake 4. They get teleported out by friends. What, you prefer Duke Nukem 3D and the original Doom, where corpses stayed on the floor? Weird.”
16/12/2011 at 14:30 Eynonz says:
Evaportaing Zombies…….hmmmmmmm
16/12/2011 at 14:50 Shooop says:
Survival horror for me died after Silent Hill 4.
16/12/2011 at 15:50 Synesthesia says:
shut up! you’re lying! why do you lie? i hate you! *sob*
16/12/2011 at 15:52 Synesthesia says:
but really, this is the genre i miss the most. I know, amnesia, amnesia, but i do miss a nice ambiental 3rd person, clunky sh. oooh i see, silent hill did a super meat boy there. Hadn’t noticed it.
16/12/2011 at 15:58 Chaz says:
For a horror game, it doesn’t look very tense or scary.
16/12/2011 at 16:38 Noni says:
Rule of Rose (old-ish PS2 game) also featured an “untrained” main character, and they actually made the fighting really awkward. It made being forced into combat a bit of a chore every time.
The concept sounds pretty interesting, I would really like them to fix their combat system if they’re going to make players fight…
16/12/2011 at 17:04 Germanunkol says:
Ah, the camera movement and the animations ruin the great story/gameplay idea for me.
Protecting a child is pretty cool idea. It’s so different from the standard get-a-weapon-and-shoot-everything-heorically stereotype.
16/12/2011 at 17:49 Freud says:
I don’t think I ever played an escort quest that was so enjoyable that I wanted a whole game like that. In fact, most escort quests become more enjoyable to play when you have a “wait here” command and can avoid escorting while you play.
16/12/2011 at 18:49 TensaiBoy says:
Resident Evil 4? ICO? Stuff?
I dunno, at best it’s mostly not-annoying, but you better pray the other parts of your game are top notch then…which they might not be here.
16/12/2011 at 18:09 Syra says:
oh my, that is terrible animation
16/12/2011 at 19:53 gordy the gopher says:
” on the left there`s an icon that tells you the health of your stick”. Oo-err Matron…
16/12/2011 at 22:58 JKjoker says:
interesting ideas but the implementation looks extremely clumsy
17/12/2011 at 15:32 JohnnyMaverik says:
I think it looks quite good…
*reads over the other comments*
…is it just me of has the general levels of cynicism around here been ramped up somewhat in recent weeks?