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The glowing previews for Amy isn't a result of anyone "failing" us; the publisher/developer wanted to put their best foot forward with a game they thought was interesting (they had no reason to adhere to the game otherwise, since it wasn't an entry in a long-running franchise), and editors played it and thought it looked cool. The game's problems (a bevy of technical issues and poor long-term design choices) are the kinds of things previews either aren't capable of letting you see or, in the case the tech problems, something that anyone who's seen a number of games would think be ironed out.
And at a show where sequels are plentiful something that promised to offer something different is likely to get a bit of praise.
So, you're right. We need to understand previews for what they are. I read those same previews for Amy and was planning on playing it, but after reading the reviews, I decided it probably was not worth my time. An anecdote doesn't prove a process works, but in this case, again, if you decided to pull the trigger on Amy from the first word you read about it, you can't blame a preview for something it's not intended to do."
Edit: So that this comment isn't entirely useless:
I also had to use a guide to reach the end of Braid. I used to be pretty big into finding every little thing in a game, and thus used guides as companions for much of my early life. Nowadays I don't care enough to do that for most games, but I'm too hesitant to find a guide when I get stuck. The exceptions to that rule this year so far were Portal 2 and Ghost Trick, both of which I found to have perfectly solvable puzzles, even though a few of them stumped me.
In general, though, getting through games is better than not doing so, and I end up enjoying games I use guides for more than those I bash my head against for days."
