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I Am Alive Review

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I Am Alive is a good game with original ideas implemented in interesting ways… for the first hour or two. After that, we descend in to a large dose of repetition, and something new and interesting is quickly distorted to be nearly as bland as a pop-up shooter “blockbuster” campaign.

That things start off well really is most of what keeps the player going through this title, as we’re treated to a glimpse of a post-apocalyptic-ish city that protagonist Adam Collins tries to navigate in search of his wife and daughter. The game doesn’t throw any cheesy excuses to throw dozens of card-cutter badies at you for you to wade through with a character that somehow becomes a weapons expert in their time of need and combat is refreshingly slow paced and rare.

I Am Alive Review

Instead, the enemies are just seemingly average guys who have lost their ways after the collapse of society. You can almost empathise with them as they try to knock the hell out of you. Almost. But then you realise there is absolutely no moral greys in this game and that your character has no regrets in opening some dudes throat with a huge machete if he attacks you. Far be it from me to assume that’s not the done thing post-society, but it just makes the game feel much flatter story wise and counters the good work mentioned above. Wouldn’t a normal guy feel some remorse about wading through knots of lost souls with a sharp object while searching for his family? It’s the Max Payne 3 issue without the brilliant game to back it up.

The pattern emerges early on in the game and the formula wears thin far too quickly. Climb some stuff to reach a place, slice up some blokes who just look like they need a cup’a soup, find an item to give to a person and keep squinting in hopes of that horrible grey sheen fading away (it won’t).

This brings us on to the graphics this games pushing. The screenshots don’t show it but they are broken and gritty, and not quite in the super edgy way the developers may have been hoping. It just looks like it still has a few stages of the graphical process left but someone was too busy with a Ridge Racer tournament. That’s what I’m going to assume most of the development team spent their time on here, as nearly every aspect of this title feels like it could have used a bit more attention to detail and effort to bring in some variety.

The core climbing mechanic just repeats throughout the game, and as with all the other good elements of I Am Alive, gets stale after 2 or 3 times. Your stamina bar depletes speedily and if you don’t reach a resting point/have a wall stabby device handy you’re in for a painful/deadly fall which will either use some of your precious healing items or take you back to a checkpoint. Bummer. Get too low on stamina and you can make a last ditch attempt to clamber over the nearest ledge. This mechanic sets off a cool bit of tension building music, but it’s canned like the rest of the game and will just prompt a roll of the eyes rather than any panic after the first couple of times. Some of the buildings you scale are very well designed however, but this really just highlights the fact that a bit more development time could have made this much more of a winner.

As it stands, I Am Alive falls short in a lot of areas and is living proof that even strong and original ideas need polish. This really doesn’t hit the mark for £11.99 and far better titles can be found on PSN. It’s not a disaster for Ubisoft Shanghai and if they can keep coming up with great ideas they’re sure to hit a winner in the future. Present day however, is looking bleak like Adam Collins hometown through a grainy filter.


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