I Am Alive

I Am Alive is the story of a regular guy searching through a world in ruins for his wife and daughter. A year before the game begins there was what characters throughout the game call ‘The Event’. Whatever this event was it has caused massive destruction. Earthquakes occur frequently, rivers are overflowing, and ground level is covered in a thick layer of dust.

A trailer was released for I Am Alive years ago. It was pretty interesting. Displaying a post-apocalyptic world with a protagonist who saved himself from a kicking by throwing a bottle of water at the gang of angry people chasing him through ruined buildings. I made a mental note to keep an eye on this game. A few years later and news of I Am Alive as a downloadable title surfaced. The atmospheric, intense, full retail title that was expected was to be ‘condensed’ into an XBLA and PSN game. Not necessarily a bad thing, but mildly disappointing all the same.

Which is almost how the whole game can be described, except that it’s still interesting. It’s not great or horrible, it’s not exciting or annoying, it just kind of exists. Moving through the game is a mostly quiet experience. The story is standard, unimaginative, safe; combat is simple, hanging on from being boring by the skin of its teeth, and the game has an underlying, feeling of solitude without the despair.

With much of the area filled with dust that chokes you and massively impairs visibility, large cracks in the ground, and a lot of rubble blocking paths, climbing is a necessary part of  getting from one objective to the other. Climbing burns stamina and running out of stamina while climbing will decrease your stamina capacity until it runs out and you lose your grip. Once stamina capacity has been lost it must be replenished by consuming items otherwise, once resting, stamina will only fill up as far as the capacity will let it. Finding the best route, and calculating how much stamina you can risk to leave the most direct path to collect supplies adds a slight challenge, but you will hardly be tearing your hair out over it.

Some of the people you encounter along your way are out to get you, and some will ask you for help. The more notable ones are the ones who just want you to get the hell away from them and will threaten you but leave you alone if you don’t come too close. Ammo is scarce so conservation is an absolute must. Most fights play out the same way with a group of attackers slowly walking towards you so you can ‘surprise kill’  one before dealing with the others. Drawing your pistol, whether loaded or not, will intimidate attackers, and some will even back down completely, allowing you to knock them out.

The people that you help will either need an item or an assist with an attacker. These are nowhere near side quests or missions, though. If you have the item, or gun down the attacker, they will be over with and the person you have aided will then say a little about The Event, and you’ll be awarded with a Retry. Retries allow you to try checkpoints again. Once all your Retries are used, you’ll have to restart the chapter. It may seem strangely old-fashioned and unfair to some to have to start a level again these days, but this will give you the chance to play the section more precisely and efficiently.