Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
Genre: Adventure
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

I’ve always been a big fan of the end-of-the-world genre of mass entertainment. It’s fascinating to me to speculate about what I would do if I survived some sort of universal holocaust. So, in theory, Ubisoft’s survival horror opus I Am Alive should be right up my alley. But in all the years that I’ve been playing games, I can’t remember a darker, drearier and more depressing 12 hours spent in front of a TV screen.

You play an unnamed family man who’s nearing the end of a long, perilous journey. He was caught on the other side of the country a year ago when an unexplained cataclysm known as The Event occurred. He’s finally returned (on foot) to the east-coast city of Haventon in search of his wife and daughter, who were in the city on that fateful day. Haventon’s not the town he remembers. After climbing and jumping across the remains of a bridge to enter the city, he finds it covered in gray dust, wrecked skyscrapers and a choking mist that makes walking the streets a life-threatening activity. After discovering that his family has moved to a refugee camp, he sets out to find them, but ends up rescuing a little girl named Mei from dangerous survivors with unknown (but most likely evil) intentions. So he puts his family reunion on hold so that he can escort Mei to her mother and Henry, her guardian.

Original developer Darkworks began work on I Am Alive in 2008, with Ubi Shanghai finishing it off, and it seems that they both were going for realism. On-screen information is at bare minimum: you get an indicator that shows which of the game’s two possible projectile weapons (pistol and bow/arrow) is equipped, and a two-part graphic that shows your stamina and health levels. If you do anything other than walk, your stamina decreases at various rates, depending upon what you’re doing. Stopping refills the meter, but your maximum stamina level can degrade if you wait too long to pause, and it can only be totally replenished by consuming certain collectible items that you find along the way. You start the game with a machete and a pistol. Ammo for all weapons is scarce (you only get one reusable arrow until the last scenario), so combat becomes much more tactical than in most similar games. When approached by a group of enemies, you have to quickly figure out which ones have guns (bad guys with knives will back down if you draw your pistol) and take them out first, then pick up their dropped weapons before one of their colleagues finds the courage to do it himself.

The predominant color in I Am Alive‘s palate is gray, almost to the point where you might think the game’s in black and white; the Unreal engine never looked so drab. Background visuals are all in a very soft focus, so you can almost never see anything clearly more than a half a block ahead. Your character, though very athletic, doesn’t have the unlimited stamina of Nathan Drake or Lara Croft, so you have to keep a close eye on the meter when you’re climbing and traversing, which you do for at least half of the game. Music cues help to keep you informed about your current condition, becoming more and more insistent as your stamina depletes. It’s very important to collect consumables as you travel, and the developer has helped you out in that regard, placing a bright white sheen around everything that you can acquire. You feel a pervasive sense of dread throughout the story, making every turn of a corner tense and unnerving.

I’m all for realism in games (where possible), but this one takes it a bit too far. The scarcity of ammunition makes combat insanely frustrating, and it doesn’t help that enemies with guns are crack shots all the time. For some reason, villains don’t fear the bow and arrow, even though it kills them just as quickly as the pistol does. The stamina meter continues to drain even when you’re hanging motionless from anything except a climbing piton. Because stamina management is a key factor, you have to look before you leap, planning out your climbing path in advance, because if you get caught on the side of a building with no pitons, then you’re eating the dust-covered pavement. Loading screens between areas are about as slow as your character’s movements, which are very deliberate. You have access to a basic street map that is automatically annotated as you discover shortcuts or blocked pathways, but you have to leave the game screen to see the map because it wasn’t included in the HUD. In a nod to the glory days of arcade saving, you start the game with three “retries” (lives). You gain retries by helping survivors, and you’re reset to at least three at the beginning of each area. But you lose one when you die, and if you run out, then the game puts you all the way back at the beginning of the area. And it appears that there was originally going to be more story in I Am Alive, but instead the developer treats us to an extremely disappointing ending, one that certainly didn’t make my dozen-hour trip worthwhile.

I have all the respect in the world for a developer who wants to make their games as realistic as possible. But sometimes realism just isn’t fun, and I Am Alive is a prime example. The graphics do a fine job of setting a dark, dangerous mood. But the frustration level generated by the combat mechanic and the constant stamina management make this a journey that only the hardest of the hardcore will want to see to the end.

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