I Am Alive

I Am Alive starts of great thanks to a combination of great ideas, interesting locations and a compelling story. Subsequently, the game rushes to an end with limited game mechanics and weird story related choices.

Many people first caught glimpse of I Am Alive four years ago and I can't say four years was worth the wait. It's not that this is a bad game-that's hardly the case, as it's worth buying simply if you like the post-apocalyptic genre. The survival and intimidation/combat tactics are both the best and worst elements of the game, a love/hate relationship that can sway either way depending on the type of player you are. Running gameplay is short, but as a downloadable content only, this game at 15 bucks doesn't hurt.

You are better off to tolerate the cracks in the façade of this game and use them to dig deeper into it. Then, I Am Alive will have the desired impact. We need more broken, bleak and bitter games like this.

Like its scant narrative backbone and starkly drawn world, I Am Alive is just evocative enough to keep you playing for the five or so hours it lasts. You'll come away with the feeling that what good ideas it has are mere specters of a more ambitious past. That said, few games are willing to go to so dark a place as Haventon.

I Am Alive has finally arrived, and although it isn't the game it was promised to be some years ago, this is still a good action and platforming game in a post-apocalyptic world with a well-told, yet a bit generic, story and good gameplay mechanics.

One of the most successfully depressing survival games ever made, and a fascinating portrayal of an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.

It's distinctly lo-fi in terms of visuals and environmental detail, and far from being either groundbreaking or epic, but the bold manner with which the aesthetic and set of mechanics support an overall theme of survival and hopelessness ensures I Am Alive is an experience worth undertaking.

The game occasionally drags, arguably due to representing the bleakness of its environment and the challenges of existing within it a little too keenly. Autosave points are few and far between, which means that on anything above normal difficulty your frequent restarts will result in much repetition. Likewise, I Am Alive's platforming is occasionally cumbersome and inexact. But nevertheless this game offers a journey worth charting, one of physics, social decline and welcome terror in a market overrun by zombies.

I Am Alive only really becomes a proper tale of human survival if you can look past the wonky mechanics and rough engine, if you can see past the rustic models and amateur dialogue, and if you can actually connect with the wailing cast of cardboard cut-outs. Ubisoft's vision is clear and ambitious, but it lacks the development talent and budget to be effectively realised.

I Am Alive is a brave experiment, and one that works more often than not. In terms of creating tension through a scarcity of resources, creating combat that relies on something other than twitch action, and creating an atmosphere so thick you can taste it, it's a total success. It's a shame that it doesn't do more with all of this, and that the mechanics in question are never really pushed, but if you're interested in spending a few hours with a very unique game possessing a very unique atmosphere then it's certainly worth your while. Even at its absolute worst, it remains... interesting.

It's a harrowing tale, but a frustrating one too. Odd arcade touches and cost-cutting measures poke through the skin like broken bones. Bluffing your way out of a fight sounds promising, but it's a clunky, repetitive business and bodycounts are high.

With so many great games on XBLA let alone on disc, it's hard to recommend I Am Alive. It feels like it never reached its full potential. Maybe with more time or a bigger team Ubisoft would have a classic like Assassin's Creed on their hands, but unfortunately it falls flat on too many levels.

The tension-inducing design present in I Am Alive's mechanics extends to its checkpoint system, which I would describe as torturous.

The combat is really interesting the first few times you encounter it, but the simple system behind it becomes too obvious after that. [May 2012, p.61]

A wonderful job creating the bleak and oppressive atmosphere of the post-apocalyptic world you find yourself in, the combat and character development leaves much to be desired.

Ruins of a post-apocalyptic city have great potential but not there yet. The game is bringing up many interesting ideas but those are halfway through it. It's obvious that earlier plans have been much more ambitious, however, their outcome is ruining experience, not to speak of game's difficulty creating an imbalance in it.

There are certainly worse games selling on the digital marketplace for both systems and I Am Alive is eons better than the somewhat similar Amy released early this year. Still, you'll need pretty strong rose-tinted shades not to be absolutely disappointed in what I Am Alive could have been.

It has a taste of an ambitious Easter European game – the budget was tight but the developer had some good ideas and managed to create an interesting, disturbing atmosphere. On the other hand I Am Alive is really ugly, unbalanced and repetitive. [April 2012, p.83]

I Am Alive has its strengths, and is certainly entertaining when you're climbing alone on the side of a toppled skyscraper, but the generic and repetitive combat drags down the overall experience.

Gamers who are looking for an experience thick with atmosphere and who don't mind this linear approach will probably enjoy I Am Alive, but the rest of us might want to wait and see if there's a more interesting survival experience provided by the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot.

Yes, you may tire of I Am Alive before you reach the credits, but the overall experience is still an intense and worthwhile one - the game not only forces you to take risks, it takes some great risks itself. If you've already tired of every other shooter's and climber's formulas, this hybrid will surprise you, test you, and remind you why experimentation in games is always a good thing, even when it doesn't fully work out.

It has very good ideas, but somehow the game derailed while on its cursed development.

I can't even begin to describe how much I tried to like this game...Unfortunately the execution was so unresponsive and flawed it destroyed any immersion or emotion the experience could have potentially delivered and that is a crying shame.

Core ideas that exist in I Am Alive show an exceptional amount of promise, but the title shows its hand far too quickly, running out of captivating tricks within the first few hours.