I Am Alive: Xbox 360 Arcade

    I Am Alive is a Survival/Action/Adventure game developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, and produced by Ubisoft. I Am Alive has had quite a bit of hype around it ever since the project was uncovered in 2003. Rumors of a post-apocalyptic Survival/Horror game with amazing features (for the time) such as dynamic encounters with other survivors swirled around online gaming communities. Eventually, in 2008, information was uncovered about the producer of Assassin's Creed working on a new title which was assumed to be I Am Alive. Any excitement that had died down in the five year drought of information was re-ignited as leaked screenshots from an early build of I Am Alive shot across the internet in 2009. Finally, in early 2012 Ubisoft announced a release date for the game as well as information explaining that I Am Alive would no longer be a full on-disc release, but rather an Xbox 360 Arcade game. The game was released soon following this announcement in April 2012 on Xbox 360 Arcade, PC, and the Playstation Network.

    I Am Alive takes place around a year after a cataclysmic disaster destroys much of the United States. This disaster is referred to only as "The Event" and is not explained in any way during the game. In the aftermath of The Event, a lone male survivor returns to his hometown in order to search for his lost wife and child. You play as this survivor as he struggles through his old home of Haverton in search of his family.

    The game begins with an unknown female finding a video-recorder and playing back the tapes. The recorded video shows the male protagonist as he explains his mission. The majority of the game's story plays out through these videos with the gameplay being flashbacks to the man's journey. Through these videos, we learn that the male protagonist meets up with a small child named Mei. The majority of I Am Alive deals with the protagonist working to keep Mei safe and to reunite her with her family.

"The Event" apparently robbed the United States of color.

    I Am Alive plays much like a Prince of Persia or Tomb Raider game in that the majority of the time you will be climbing. The game's protagonist quickly finds that climbing old pipes and rebar sticking out of buildings is the most convenient way to traverse the ruined city. The game's hud features the expected health bar, but it also includes a stamina bar. While your character is climbing, this white bar slowly decreases. Pulling off more physically demanding maneuvers (such as jumping from one ledge to another) eats up your stamina much faster. When the stamina bar empties completely, the game goes into desperation mode in which you are required to quickly mash a button to keep the actual stamina maximum limit from decreasing to zero. If the stamina limit hits zero, your character falls to his death. It is extremely interesting that the actual maximum of your stamina bar decreases in this desperation mode. Even if you find a resting place, your stamina will only recharge up to the new, lower stamina limit. Luckily, items such as bottles of water both recharge your stamina and help to restore your maximum limit. This management of stamina greatly increases the stress of climbing and gives the game a palpable sense of danger.

    Movement around Haverton is very easy to learn. The main character can move freely about the environment as well as climb on surfaces which are suitable. The really interesting part of the game comes in when the protagonist meets other humans in the wasteland.

This game would be a lot shorter if the protagonist were afraid of heights.

    I Am Alive handles encounters with other humans in the ruined city in an interesting way. The player learns quickly through in-game tutorials that not all people are hostile to the main character, though very few are outwardly friendly. Some NPCs will threaten the player as you approach them, not attacking unless provoked. Others will harass you in the hopes of bullying you out of some of your supplies, or your life. Still, there are the occasional scum which seek only to kill your and take your gear. Not knowing what sort of person you are approaching adds an exciting unpredictability to each encounter. This unpredictability slowly gives way to predictable encounters as you quickly catch on that each encounter is scripted, taking away from the excitement of meeting a new NPC.

    When push does come to shove, our protagonist begins the game equipped with a pistol and can use it to defend himself. Though he has no bullets (some are found throughout the game, though they are a rare commodity), the pistol can be used to intimidate those who would seek to harm others. This intimidation only works as long as the enemies believe that you are willing too shoot them, however, so having a plan for what to do after holding up an aggressor is extremely important. The first, obvious answer would be to shoot one to let them know that you are serious, however as bullets are rare, other ways of dispatching enemies are preferable. The game features many pitfalls and firepits in which to kick aggressors, though you do eventually recover a machete for use as a weapon if the situation calls for it. While holding up an aggressor, the protagonist can order the enemy to back away from him, effectively positioning the brigands in order to pull a Sparta on them (http://tinyurl.com/3rar8c6). The majority of the time you will be attacked by a group of enemies. I Am Alive features group dynamics which, when taken advantage of, can greatly help your usual one against many odds. For instance, successful encounters with hostile survivors usually play out as figuring out which enemy(ies) has a gun and prioritizing them, then from there you find which enemy is likely the leader. Once a leader type is killed, the remained, weaker, enemies will usually surrender. The entire encounter system in I Am Alive amazed me and I found it to be the coolest thing in the game, even though it did become obvious how encounters were going to play out after a while.

Soo, I take it that you guys don't want to buy any cookies?

    I Am Alive's visual style is very dreary and gray. In most environments everything surrounding the character seems to be in grayscale with dots of color from fires or other items. While this color scheme fits the post-apocalyptic setting, it seems as though Ubisoft uses it more to distract from the muddy textures and jaggy lines throughout Haverton. Character models are well done, though still seem to show their age (after all, this game was originally built years ago). While I wouldn't normally complain about textures as much, I Am Alive sees you climbing walls for more than half of the game. When you're staring a wall textures for this long, you'd expect the game developers to spend a little bit more time trying to make things look good.

    While the game is mostly linear, there are a number of hidden areas to explore. These areas normally contain additional resources to be picked up. There are also 20 "victims" hidden throughout the game which ask you to help them. This help usually entails finding an item and returning to the victim. Successful helping others rewards the player with a retry, collectable resources which enable you to start over from a checkpoint after death rather than your last save. These retries are actually pretty annoying as the game doesn't give you the option to start from your save or to use one. In many cases I would die close enough to a save that I would rather just load that game than spend one of my precious retries. This, however, was not possible without exiting the game and restarting from the save.

Have a seat right over there. So what were you planning to do here tonight?

    The game's protagonist will find upgrades and new weapons as the story goes on. These range from a grappling hook allowing you to swing to new areas to a bow, which greatly evens the odds against enemies as arrows are reusable, unlike bullets.

    I found combat to be relatively solid, though the game's autoaim feature often had me targeting the wrong enemies. Climbing and attacking commands are somewhat sensitive in that you need to be in exactly the correct spot for them to work. Many times I ended up dying because I hit the attack button when I was just out of reach from the enemy, leading to the group dog-piling on me with machetes. Other times I failed to escape as I attempted to drop down from a ledge or climb up something only to have my character stop in his tracks and stare stupidly at the wall while enemies hacked at me like a shwarma of lamb with their blades.

If you learn one thing from I Am Alive, it's that apparently machetes are everywhere.

    It is clear that I Am Alive is a mere shell of its former potential. The game lasts only a short 6-7 hours and the story ends abruptly and feels as though it is incredibly incomplete. Surely if the game had gotten the support and funding that it needed I Am Alive would have been a much better game. While the release does explore some interesting ideas about human survival, and the ways that we can choose to go about it, I Am Alive falls short in being anything more than a short demo of what it could have been.

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