I Am Alive Second Opinions

A few weeks ago, I -- Greg Miller -- reviewed I Am Alive. And I really didn't like it. However, it turned out that I was the minority. While Giant Bomb and UGO were in line with my 4.5 out of 10, sites such as Game Informer and Destructoid gave I Am Alive an 8.5. When I gathered comments for IGN's I Am Alive Comment Comeback, I saw a lot of you asking for second opinions from IGN editors. So, I asked Ubisoft for download codes and gave I Am Alive to my coworkers. These are their thoughts.

---

IGN's I Am Alive Comment Comeback

For me, I Am Alive is a game that's thematically brilliant but mechanically eternally unsatisfying. I was very, very excited about the prospect of a mysterious, subtly presented post-apocalyptic story that had more to do with human nature than shooting mutants in the face. I was intrigued by the platforming aspect, imaging a sort of post-apocalyptic Uncharted. But within the first hour, I Am Alive did three things that broke the experience completely for me: it gave me magical items, it gave me superfluous HUD elements that totally destroyed the atmosphere, and it gave me a gun mechanism that fundamentally doesn't make sense.

I couldn't get past the fact that enemies instantly forget that you have a gun the instant you lower it - for the whole game, that got on my nerves. Thematically I think I Am Alive is a success - it's bleak, it's depressing, it's a chillingly realistic portrayal of what life might look like after a catastrophic event, and the story hooks you in. But mechanically, it fails for me personally. It's just not the game I wanted it to be - I'm hanging all my hopes on The Last of Us now.

---

I wanted to give I Am Alive a fair shot, but the game is so riddled with technical problems I couldn't get past the third chapter. Even after downloading it a second time and starting it over it still crashed at the same point (and a quick Google search reveals crashes are not unique to me).

Perhaps it was some deity smiling down on me, though, because the hour or so I played of I Am Alive left me counting the minutes till I could stop. Clunky combat, brutal, learn-by-dying scenes, and a general lack of polish made every second with it a chore. Reflecting on my time, I'm hard pressed to find any redeeming qualities with I Am Alive; it takes a great premise and completely squanders it with a technically flawed and poorly realized game.

---

Much like the crumbled cityscape where the game takes place, I Am Alive is mere shambles of what its past represented. Throughout its troubled development, we saw promise of what could've been but ultimately never came to fruition. I Am Alive is a collection of half-baked ideas and concepts that could've been a truly refreshing take on post-apocalyptic gameplay as well as the very definition of what "survival" horror means, but in the end, it feels like we were given an incomplete experience that doesn't quite work.

I Am Alive introduces several gameplay elements way too late in its running time and never really gels before it's abruptly over. You'll find yourself dealing with groups of enemies using the same strategies, the climbing mechanic results in too much trial and error, and many of the side missions are simple fetch quests. It's hard to say what went wrong with I Am Alive, or at what point the game's dev team felt that they had to push it out of the door. But one thing is certain; I Am Alive is simply not the game it should've been.

---

I can't explain why I finished I Am Alive. The introduction of every new gameplay element caused unneeded frustration. While there are some great ideas at play and an interesting setting, the developer haphazardly threw mechanics into the mix to create a false sense of difficulty. Stamina, while interesting, doesn't make sense when you can slam a soda while hanging on the outside of a skyscraper and feel better, or hang from a Piton (not a solid metal bar) to restore strength. Collecting Retry cameras doesn't make the game more difficult either, it's just a tacked-on element that gives you a few tries to not start at a save point 30 to 60 minutes prior.


IGN's I Am Alive Video Review
Early tutorials suggested that it was sometimes better not to fight; rather, choose to back away and save ammo. But creeping deeper into I Am Alive's world of survival, every encounter proved that choice was an illusion. The formulaic handling of every fight with more than two people went like this: shoot the guy with the gun, shoot the next toughest looking guy, get the remaining machete-wielding foes to back up, kick one dude off a ledge/into a fire, and struggle-kill the remaining bad guy. There's no choice there; you can't avoid those fights. I Am Alive is a good idea and a bad game. It blends unnecessary mechanics across a buggy, poorly-paced world.

---

When I started I Am Alive I thought that my opinion would vary greatly from the reviews. After a few hours with the game, however, I wondered if we should have been harder on it. My experience was greatly hampered not only by the fact the voice acting was grating to say the least, but also because I was caught off guard and shot near the beginning of the game. The result was a red screen and dulled sound that made it impossible to hear dialogue between characters. The entire time my health was at this level, the controller also vibrated making the objectives secondary to finding health anywhere I could. Finally, after an hour, I was able to find a health pack and play the rest of the game normally. Another design choice that I had a huge problem with was the Retry System. Why would you implement this if you're given a retry every single time that you fail? When I encountered a difficult situation that's what happened with me. Doesn't it make more sense just to allow the player to infinitely respawn? It does to me, especially if you're going to just give them infinite retries anyway. Then, there's also the choice of using a map that you have to constantly open to see where it is that you're going. This is an outdated system that's been replaced with a type of radar in most games, but more forgivable than forcing a player to walk around for an hour with a red screen and a vibrating heartbeat.

All that said the combat is functional yet wonky, the characters you encounter are unlikable and annoying, and overall, I would highly recommend that you pass on the entire experience.

---

What do you think of I Am Alive? Sound off in the comments below.

• More Xbox Live Features
• Latest Xbox Live News, Reviews, and Videos