"I Am Alive has the ideas, but not what it takes to become an intriguing survival game."
Positive
+ Interesting, desolate setting
+ Good, chilling soundtrack
+ Some smart using of combat
Negative
- Poor and outdated visuals
- Minimal environment interaction and exploration
‘I Am Alive’ has a lot of potential. The city of Haventon and probably the rest of America had been struck by a massive earthquake that has left the land in shatter, lifeless and full of strange dust. It is occasionally a brilliant game, but most of the time; it fails to deliver on its premise with the end result being a game that needed a lot more development time.
You play as a male survivor that has returned to Haventon after some time, expecting what he sees. Haventon is devastated but he is back in search of his daughter and wife. He immediately arrives at home, finding no one unexpectedly. Later he follows and rescues a little girl named Mei from a few thugs and decides to take her to safety, guided by someone. The setting of the game is quite intriguing and emits the aura of survival and desolation.
There are a few survivors lingering in the lawless streets of the game’s fictional city. None of them are your friends… The game employs an ingenious mechanism that left me dubious if it’s an interesting gimmick or a complete ruin due to the AI. You have a pistol, and rightfully so devoid of any ammunition so don’t expect gun fights, at all. But you can still threaten and scare enemies but pulling it out. If the enemy doesn’t have a gun, he will stop. This is quite interesting, and if you pull the trigger without bullets, the enemy will realize and will resume running. Anyhow, this also happens every single time you pull the gun away. The enemy comes at you, almost as if forgetting that you had the gun in the first place, and if you take it out again, they stop and resume pleading. Alternatively, this could mean the enemy taking advantage of you lowering your guard. If it was the latter, the enemy does it too often too poorly.
‘I Am Alive’ passes combat carefully. You can’t go out and slash 5 dudes like it was nothing. You have to be careful when approaching foes. With a melee weapon you can wait for the enemy to approach and kill them by surprise, and then take out your gun to threaten to shoot. Otherwise you can put some force and struggle to kill the enemy by button mashing. Another method is to threaten your enemy close to a ledge and push them off. Either way, combat isn’t really fun as it is tense when encountering enemies. The killing animation is average. Also being a normal human being, two gun shots will kill you.
But throughout most of the game you will be climbing ledges, buildings and bridges. Climbing sections are interesting and challenging, thanks to the limited stamina system that will trouble you in these sections. With limited stamina in hanging, you are challenged to arrive to the other side before it depletes, otherwise you will fall and die, and there are limited replays in ‘I Am Alive’. The tension is removed thanks to an item that restores some of the stamina while hanging, but it’s something minor and can be a blessing. Your character realistically climbs ledges and moves in these sections, although the sliding parts are a bit off. There is also almost zero exploration to be found. There are items scattered around the limited areas, some items to help fellow survivors, but most of the time you can just push forward in the linear adventure. My explorer instinct forced me to pointlessly search areas pointlessly, and there is minimal, to zero interaction with the environment.
‘I Am Alive’ looks the part of a dust covered disaster aftermath, but it still looks a bit poor. I am unsure if it just looks dated and manages to hide it well. It still doesn’t look better on maximum visual settings. It has a suffocating feel to it especially when the dust is around. Character models look decent though, but the little girl that the protagonist carries in the game, Mei, looks too attached to him, even though she is well secured with a rope. The textures don’t look good, and are bland all around. Cinematics and camera recordings look good on the other hand. The music does a good job of emitting the tension, especially when the stamina is depleting.
In the end, ‘I Am Alive’ is a weak game. It tries and at some point manages to establish the tension of its unique setting that doesn’t employ terrorists or zombies. But even some unnecessary hand holding in the game can be annoying, much like its questionable use of threatening with a gun, whether it works with realism in mind, or crushed by the AI. Non-existent exploration further hurts, with gameplay that isn’t really good; help further sink this game into its barren wasteland.
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Graphics = 6.9
Does a great job of portraying to lonely, dust-covered city. May look to greyish and low-textured. Environments are often uninteresting.
Sound = 7.5
Some good voice acting and tension-inducing music.
Presentation = 6.5
Video camera cinematics are emotional but not memorable. Checkpoint system can kind of suck, since if you lose or quit, you might be taken back quite a bit back.
Gameplay = 6.0
Platforming and climbing are fine and challenging. The questionable mechanism of the enemy resuming running towards you when you pull your gun back maybe a smart gimmick or stupid AI. Either way, combat is weak. But sticks to a survival sense, since ammo is really scarce.
Story = 5.5
No Achievements. And story is linear without exploration. And it starts losing sense of the protagonist searching for his family. Setting is pretty impressive though.
Recommendation Level = Low
It’s an old game now, plus it could have used a little more time in development, even if the development cycle was long apparently. Haven’t played a game so linear in quite a while.
Level of Difficulty = Medium
Multiple difficulty settings at the beginning. Limited retries. Also the game loads at the start of a checkpoint, so if you load you’ll start at the beginning of that checkpoint. Climbing is challenging, or so are fights against armed enemies if you aren’t careful.
OVERALL = 65 / 100
I Am Alive has the ideas, but not what it takes to become an intriguing survival game.