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I Am Alive – review

March 8th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

This article titled “I Am Alive – review” was written by Nick Cowen, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 6th March 2012 17.10 UTC

The last time I clapped eyes on Ubisoft’s I Am Alive was when its teaser trailer was released ahead of E3 in 2008. It then dropped off the radar almost completely until news of its impending release started flitting about game websites at the end of last year.

The promotional push behind it seemed miniscule, and even though a couple of previews sounded promising, the general consensus did not. After all, what is one to make of Triple-A game that went dark after its first trailer, only to resurface four years later as a download-only title that its publisher is keeping rather quiet about? Sounds like it’s probably a dud, right?

Well hang onto your hats, kids, because I Am Alive is arguably one of the strongest games that will see release this year. On paper it doesn’t sound particularly original; it’s packed with familiar elements such as platforming third-person combat, and its story is set in a lawless, broken future. But I Am Alive’s developers have applied these familiar gaming tropes in a unique and compelling manner, resulting in a game that stealthily burrows under the player’s skin and then begins to chill their blood with an ever-increasing sense of dread.

The only respite against this horror comes in the form of empty-handed resignation. Players are likely to feel emotionally drained by the time the end credits roll.

I Am Alive is set in a post apocalyptic future where a cataclysmic series of earthquakes known as The Event have reduced much of the US to a pile of rubble. The player takes on the role of a man named Adam who has spent a year since The Event trekking across the country to the fictional city of Haventon, to be reunited with his wife and child.

As the game opens, Adam – a gaunt, dust-covered individual with a thousand-yard stare – is recording messages to his family on a video camera. He then begins clambering over the broken highway and pulverised cars and heads towards home.

I Am Alive starts off as a slow-burner. Initially, as the player guides Adam through the collapsed city in the dust-bleached daylight, I Am Alive threatens to turn into a fairly standard dystopian adventure with some interesting free-climbing mechanics thrown into it. In what amounts to the game’s opening tutorial, Adam navigates his way across a broken bridge by pulling himself up support columns, shimmying along ledges and balancing on beams – and it’s here I Am Alive tosses its first curveball.

Unlike every other free-running hero in gaming today, Adam is limited in the amount of energy he can exert on his vertical travels. A life-bar and a stamina-bar appear at the top of the game’s HUD. The stamina bar decreases if the player makes Adam climb something or run (walking and standing still have no affect). If the stamina bar runs out while Adam is in mid-climb, the player has to frantically tap the right-trigger to force him to push on. This, however, decreases Adam’s overall stamina over time. Once that runs out, Adam will fall to his death.

As the stamina decreases, players are alerted to Adam’s plight by the game’s increasingly urgent orchestral score. Players can restore Adam’s stamina with items such as water bottles and cans of soda. They can also restore his health with first aid kits and food. However, knowing when and where to use these items is crucial to Adam’s survival and as the player slowly realises this, I Am Alive begins to stick the knife in.

You see, the world of I Am Alive is an unforgiving and ruthless place. Food, water and other human necessities are in very short supply and, after the first hour, a dust storm covers the streets of Haventon, which makes foraging a potentially lethal activity. So for most of the game, players are urged to safeguard every useful item they come across. They should only use items from their inventory if they have no alternative, whether it’s a can of food to restore their health or a piton they can gouge into a wall and take a breather on a long climb. This goes double for any bullets they find for Adam’s gun, which is empty at the beginning of the game.

The reason for this is because the only law in Haventon is the law of the jungle and the only other people Adam encounters are either predators or potential prey. The former roam in packs, killing anyone they come across and looting their bodies for food and supplies. When Adam encounters them, the player has the opportunity to lull attackers into a false sense of security and get an early quick-kill. Once the weapons are drawn, fights are short, sharp and tactical. If the player can take down any opponents armed with a gun first, they can threaten remaining foes with an empty gun and they may surrender. But if they find themselves being rushed by more than one opponent, and they’re out of ammunition, they’re dead.

Adam will face more than just random attacks and looting, though. Over the course of its plot, I Am Alive presents players with a harrowing look into the dark side of the human psyche and the sort of horrific acts people are capable of when might-is-right becomes the rule of law. The moral depths that some of the people in Haventon have plummeted to are sickening, but the developers explore them in a way that is never cheap or tawdry. They always feel like realistic by-products that would occur after the collapse of civilisation.

Not every human the player encounters will attack them on sight. Some simply threaten them until they back away. Other reach out to them for help, begging for an item – perhaps some food, or water, or bandages from the player’s very rare and very hard-to-come-by first aid kit. Some may offer information about Adam’s family in return for this help. Some may offer more. Most will ensure the player receives another “re-try” token that stops them from being dumped back into early stages of the game should Adam die.

The player can choose to help them or not. I Am Alive doesn’t force a choice on the player with these survivors. It simply puts someone in need in the player’s path and leaves the decision up to them. Sometimes the player might not even have the item these survivors are after, while in other instances, they may decide that helping someone else comes secondary to their survival.

Adam isn’t some superhuman he-man who can hang indefinitely off the side of a building or machine gun his way through rooms full of enemies. He’s a tired, haggard shell of a man and he’s relatively easy to kill. It’s a hard, brutal world and those who give charity too often don’t survive in it.

In this way, I Am Alive uses its post-apocalyptic environment far more effectively than many other games that share its nightmare vision of the future. I Am Alive joins games such as Fallout, RAGE and Left 4 Dead in its setting where a some horrendous event put paid to civilisation as we know it, but in truth, it’s far closer in its atmosphere and aesthetic values to Cormac MacCarthy’s grim post-apocalyptic novel, The Road.

It takes a hard, unblinking look at how humans behave when social order is destroyed and then builds horror upon horror, allowing only the briefest glimpses of human decency to shine through. It’s a work of art that speaks to the human condition. It shows us what we could become if we allowed our basest impulses to take over and what we could be if we cling to our humanity at all costs. It reminds us that there’s more to being alive than simply surviving.

• Game reviewed on Xbox 360