I Am Alive review

I Am Alive review

As I Am Alive catalog except as a disaster game, like films of the genre of so-called disaster movie? Not because it is a way of making disastrous, indeed quite the opposite! The game, to be a Live Arcade, has a great layout, and a depth of gameplay that allows him to easily compete with any security or so-called retail shelf. Ubisoft has delivered a very unusual, which could hardly have found its spaces, except in the form of low-cost product.

The plot, it is a game distributed via digital delivery is not mentioned on any printed book, nor was it designed a counterparty in an electronic format. I Am Alive is therefore leaves out gradually from the player, and I certainly will not be to spoil the fun of learning to survive in the harsh reality theorized by Ubisoft's Shanghai team. Just know that you will find yourself in the shoes of a survivor of a giant earthquake, a father intent on finding traces of his family in a dusty, run-down scenario of global destruction, where staying alive is not easy.

In a world where the usual rules of civil society have been broken by a natural disaster that shows no signs of stopping, any other survivors who will meet a potential threat. In I Am Alive the Latin expression "eat-dog" is very fitting. The man is a wolf to other men, and that you have to learn to be: sly wolf, who knows when to abandon a dangerous prey, who knows when to bluff or dare. Because you will often cornered by other survivors, who sometimes just want to defend the territory, other times it will take your head ... and the shortage of ammunition available, meaning they rarely have more than one bullet in the magazine.

The first impression not clearly understand how the game is extreme in terms of game design choices: it suffices to note that the selection of the Normal difficulty, instead of the more challenging Survival, preclude access to some of the goals of the game. The level of survival, for its part, will limit the number of attempts allowed to try to overcome a certain area.

All the dynamics of gameplay are designed to give the impression of actually being a survivor, with little energy available and limited resources. Choosing the difficulty level of survival, as mentioned previously, the challenges to be overcome in I Am Alive will be a bit 'more cumbersome, but do not worry if the difficulty is too high for your style of play, or for your needs casual player, you can always lower it.

The mechanical movement offering an interesting concept, based on the fatigue bar. Every effort, climbing or jumping requires a certain amount of energy, which becomes exhausted easily lose his grip. It is precisely at this moment that prompted a last effort to get out of trouble with character and, simultaneously, to you that you have to repeatedly press the RT to be able to come out from an otherwise lethal.

The important thing is that you manage to metabolize the Soundbar and the fatigue, the most canonical energy. The great thing is that I Am Alive is able to offer an experience very survival varied, during which you can even decide whether to help other survivors in distress! All the more reason to move cautiously, weigh all your choice and evaluate the use of each item of inventory.

In terms of pure sensations of play, I Am Alive emblée leaves of the feeling of being in front of a mix between a Splinter Cell, of course, reduced to essentials, and a series of thiols Disaster Report of IREM. Continuing the adventure if you appreciate the special features, especially the dynamics of climbing and exploration, so special, always tied to the bar of fatigue and often affected by the deadly dust storms. The only flaw, if you will, is the slight repetitiveness of clashes with the more numerous groups of enemies, which are reduced to the identification of an armed enemy more dangerous and its subsequent elimination by surprise with the machete, after having done enough to approach . The level design, although very well studied with regard to the vertical development of the action, sometimes leaves a feeling claustrophobic. It remains to be seen whether this is a conscious choice, or a real design flaw. Sometimes you have a sense of being able to take alternative routes, which are almost all too often blind alleys. Other times you will find, however, faced with potential avenues, blocked, for example, by a padlock that you delete only if you had a bullet in the barrel. There are moments like these that leave the game to favor the hypothesis that the level design has been deliberately calibrated to be claustrophobic, accentuating the feeling of insecurity that hovers throughout the game. Technically, as already mentioned, I Am Alive is defended very well and suggests that the most evocative and richly detailed environments, where the game's depth of field blur skillfully blends the simulation of dusty atmosphere in which each light source is a spectacle of rays filtering through the dust. The graphics engine that drives everything the LEAD, engine already seen in Spliter Cell: Conviction. The only limit is obviously a graphics processing slightly rough texture and three-dimensional models, honestly compatible with the low budget nature of I Am Alive and space limits imposed by the likely distribution channel chosen. Good sound accompaniment, composed of valid suggestions that sound come together in a dynamic way to create a soundtrack always in line with the action onscreen.