I Am Alive Review

Have machete. Will travel.

Somebody never learned his lesson in kindergarten.

After finishing Deadlight, I thought I would continue the motif of playing as a father who is trying to save his wife and daughter in a post-apocalyptic world. Of course, the previous game had zombies. I Am Alive has The Event. The development of I Am Alive is one of the darker stories out there, rife with delays, altered expectations, and entire gameplay changes. What's left is a game severely pared down from early trailer footage but otherwise shows little evidence of the development woes it suffered.

The story features an unnamed though still vocal protagonist who has spent a year trying to make it back to his home town of Haventon prior to the beginning of the game. As mentioned, The Event happened, and though it is never made explicitly clear what it was or what caused it, its impact is clear – earthquakes and dust storms have been ravaging the land since it happened, and almost everything is in shambles. In the opening tutorial level, Protagoniste, as I shall refer to him henceforth, makes his way through the exterior ruins of Haventon to his home in the hopes of finding his wife and daughter, who are sadly not there. Shortly afterwards, he finds a lost little girl, and this leads to the bulk of the narrative thereon.

What I want you to think about is how well that chandelier was installed.

Getting around Haventon involves mechanics similar to the Uncharted series with a lot of platforming coupled with automatic handhold grabbing. The difference is in the stamina meter Protagoniste must monitor in order to traverse safely. While climbing large structures and jumping from grip to grip, the stamina meter continuously depletes, which also results in tense music getting louder and louder as it does so. Once stamina hits bottom, Protagoniste's stamina capacity begins to deplete rapidly, and when that's gone, he will fall to his doom. Although stamina recharges automatically and quickly as soon as you're on solid ground, stamina capacity can only be regained through the use of items you find in the environment. Although a little trite, the game highlights usable items in white so that they are easier to discern from afar, especially in the dust cloud-filled streets of the inner city. It may lack a real-world explanation, but I was thankful for it. The developers do hide a lot of these items behind corners and objects in an effort to make finding them a little bit more challenging and rewarding, however.

Along with stamina is a health meter, which mostly depletes from being attacked by the neighborhood transients. As is common in post-apocalyptic stories, the dissolution of any kind of government has led to some folks being just plain mean to others, and it's your job to decide how best to deal with them. There are the innocents out there, who found safe spots and often ask you to provide some form of aid, usually in the form of those precious items you find along your journey. Others threaten you with guns from a distance but will not attack you as long as you keep walking along. To complete the triad of personas, there are the aggressors, who will kill you if you let them.

What is that guy looking at?

Dealing with the aggressors is actually a fun puzzle. Instead of turning into a predictable cover-based third-person shooter every time one appears (though just like the Mass Effect series, you can still kind of tell when they're going to appear), it is up to you to be resourceful and handle them carefully. Protagoniste is equipped with a machete and a gun, but bullets are the scarcest resource of all in this world. You rarely have even one bullet, especially in the earlier sections of I Am Alive, so you can't just go in shooting. The trick is in knowing when to brandish your empty weapon to enemies who don't know any better. If you face two enemies who clearly only have melee weapons, you can lure one in close, slash his throat by surprise, and then point the empty gun at the other, providing an opportunity to knock him out with the the grip of your weapon. You need to be wary of enemies who are carrying guns, though, because they won't be afraid to pop a bullet in you just for being so bold. These scenarios boil down into quick reflex thinking where you decide who to surprise, who to threaten, who to shoot (with the hopes of picking up another bullet from the body), who to push off a cliff, and who to go toe-to-toe with in a button mashing QTE to assert machete dominance over.

I loved dealing with these scenarios for a number of reasons. First, they require more brains over brawn, so to speak. Rather than reward aiming prowess, most aiming is automatic, so combat is easier to tackle than in a shooter but still challenging to a player who is not used to putting thought into it. Next, it invites real resource management, better than I've witnessed in games that touted the feature, such as Dead Space. I wasn't kidding when I said you spent a good amount of the game with no more than one bullet, and you'll go stretches with no bullets either because you haven't found any or because as soon as you got one, you had to use it. It wasn't until close to the end of the game that I had up to four bullets in my gun, but a few encounters after that dwindled the number back down. Last, these encounters feel raw. By facing only a handful of guys (always men) at a time and needing to mind your weapons, the weight of killing other human beings isn't as diminished as games where you have to shoot thirty guys to proceed. Don't get me wrong. You don't really care for these people, but at the same time, you realize you're not in a world or a game that is teeming with them to the point of instigating apathy in the player. You're never in a situation where a door won't unlock or you'll never get off an elevator if you don't kill every last one. The consequence could be death or severe loss of health but not always progression.

Is the building sideways, or am I?

In terms of execution, the mechanics of the game work well together, creating a mostly believable atmosphere. There is some variety to the environments and buildings you need to explore, so you don't get too tired of going down the same hallways over and over again. The street level in the center of Haventon is under a dust cloud, so stamina continuously depletes just by walking through it, the effect eventually tempered but never eliminated by finding a gas mask. Although this made basic sense, it became a little tedious running from ladder to ladder to get above the dust and regain stamina. This was I Am Alive's version of hiding behind cover until you regain health, more or less, and you get a little tired of it by the end of the game.

Despite my joy in figuring out enemy puzzles, I did wish the developers created scenarios whereby I don't have to kill every last guy. There are some moments where holding out your gun will get your enemy to crouch with his hands behind his head and surrender, but if you try to walk away at that point, he'll come at you again as if he forgets that you still have a gun (and automatic aiming). I'd like to believe that in reality, some folks would just give up despite the setting. There is also an armored machete-toting enemy type that appears later in the game that requires manual aiming, which is an easy button toggle. Although more challenging, it's hard to believe the guy wearing the armor would never carry a gun so as to be a better threat. Yes, it works better for the player, but it ruins immersion. They could have been excluded.

His talents never cease.

By the end of the game, mostly because of exerting extra effort, Protagoniste was basically a walking pharmacy replete with snacks and water. I would argue that this breaks the atmosphere and the need to be resourceful, but in all honesty, it's nice to be rewarded for looking around every corner like a true forager should do. The white highlights helped. What also helped was performing admirably in combat and while climbing structures. Quick thinking in the former and taking time to plan your route in the latter result in less item waste, which helps you provide to the needy around you. Doing so gives the player extra retries, which allow Protagniste to begin from a recent checkpoint instead of restarting a chapter. I was not a big fan of managing checkpoints like a resource, but it wasn't the burden I was predicting. For those who are not as good at the combat puzzles and traversal, it might be a bane, especially if they hadn't managed to help those asking for it. But for someone like me who is better at puzzles than shooting, it was a friendly survival setup. I would encourage people to consider restarting a chapter instead of using a retry depending on how much ground or time was covered. The game keeps track of inventory, so if you started a chapter strong, the penalty is low.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that after the opening to the game, Protagoniste spends time trying to assist the lost little girl. However, the amount of time the game spends on helping her was unexpected. Though it's easy to complain that the game doesn't focus much on Protagoniste's efforts to find his own family, what transpires is ultimately believable. It is harder to fathom that a father desperate to locate his wife and daughter would allow a little girl to remain abandoned or in danger afterwards. It ultimately demonstrates an admirable amount of compassion, but much of what you're tasked with makes you seem like an errand boy, a common problem present in many games. Still, the story has a lot of heart and ultimately resonated with me. It's nice not to dislike any of the characters, including the child.

I do take mild umbrage with the ending, though. I'll start that argument by telling you the ending makes absolute sense. That isn't the problem. After completing the final mission, there are some obvious events that happened between then and the end that really should have been included in the game. It is tough to swallow the idea that the writers did this on purpose, and it appears this is one of the major victims of the troubled development cycle. That said, everything that gets you to the end is well-written, and investing time in the stories of the other survivors, however small, complements the experience. I also really like the declarative nature of the title. Rather than being cool or witty, it captures the nature of survival in three simple but bold words.

The Ritz-Carlton, this is not.

Presentation in I Am Alive offers mixed results. On one hand, the environments, especially the exteriors, can be striking. Dictated by the story, you'll travel around Haventon during various times of day, and one sequence near sunset also contains the most opportunities to view the ruined city against the horizon. Interiors are restrictive, as they should be, and the minimal lighting provided by infrequent light bulbs and bonfires works well to set mood and tone. Character and object models need more refinement, though. Up close, characters look a little off, and Protagoniste's hair is notably awkward and grungy. Also, some character models are used way too often. The items you find don't blend with their environments very well, white highlight notwithstanding. They just look too clean next to the areas surrounding them. In the sound department, sound effects and music are subtle and understated – not much to talk about there, but the voice acting is good.

I was reluctant to play I Am Alive because of what I read about the development and the mixed reviews. That said, I'm really glad I did. Despite lacking a resemblance to the disc-based blockbuster it was supposed to be, this is a great survival game that really requires wits and resourcefulness, sometimes being scarier than what passes for a survival horror game nowadays. If you want a great downloadable game with an amicably slower place compared to most AAA games, you can't really go wrong with I Am Alive. Despite the trauma of its troubled history, it has barely a scratch on it and no PTSD.

All images taken through Steam.