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Genre: Sci-Fi Action Adventure
Developer: Mad Head Games
Publisher: Prime Matter
Release Date: February 28th, 2023
Edited by AlexKnight2005
One of the oldest question humanity has tried to answer is, “Are we alone?” Statistically, it’s effectively impossible that we’re not. That said, we have yet to collect a shred of evidence to that effect. That’s the current state of things in the world we all know. In the world of third-person shooter Scars Above, that question has been answered—we are most decidedly not, and the evidence presented itself in the form of a massive inverted pyramid over northern Mexico six months ago, according to the game’s opening dialogue. Enter the Sentient Contact Assessment and Response team: SCARS Mission leader Richard Robinson, Mission Specialist Kate Ward, Doctor Tamara, and Mike the Scientist. I never caught Mike’s or Tamara’s surnames, sadly. During the opening minutes, we get to look around the ship, make a tool (read: weapon. They’re not fooling anyone), and get to use it on the ship’s engines (or all the things) to get more power to run the sensors. The electronics technician in me raised its best Mr. Spock eyebrow at that one; that’s not how any of this works. From there, their ship Hermes does a crash landing, and Kate (our protagonist) wakes up alone, in a tank top rather than what she’s been wearing just moments before.
From there, she departs on a journey of discovery, blindly following a thing marked “Apparition” through the next three to five hours while trying to keep from being eaten by the local (and extremely violent) fauna on this romp through a set of pretty (and some not so pretty) branching hallways, in a linear progression of setpieces and puzzles. We learn a lot about who the apparition (known hereafter as Mission Control, or MC) is, what happened here, and what needs doing to make it right. Progression is by picking up bits of things dotted around the landscape and scanning everything that moves. There are save points all over the map, which will also heal you of all the things at the cost of respawning all the enemies every time you activate one. If you happen to die on this excursion (you will. A lot), you rematerialized, unharmed, at the last one you hit.
Of the things that are well done, the variety of environments is well-done, even if the game is overly linear—you’re going to hit every story bit in the same order, and your exploration options are incredibly limited. You will have to check every rock to get all the bits to clear the puzzles and find the little data cubes that make up the bulk of the progression points you will need to fill out the ability lists. Mission Control looks good and stays out of the way most of the time, only appearing (or being heard) at generally appropriate times. They do a good job of giving the other human characters some level of characterization without it getting intrusive. They do all the exposition you need to get started at the very beginning and a smaller info dump at the end to wrap up the threads that are dangling at that moment. The rest of the story is told through the eyes of the characters through audio logs and internal dialogue, alongside Mission Control’s occasional comment and the environment itself. There’s more there, but I’m already headed for spoiler territory. The game also does a good job aurally, as well. Lots of ambient sounds, monsters (and monsters they are), and weapon sounds. There’s not a lot of music, but what we get is particularly effective.
What it doesn’t do so well is the look of the characters, among other things. None of the human characters got the sort of love the monsters or MC did, and there are several spots where you can be driven into the geometry and then can’t get loose short of dying and being sent back to the last pillar. I’m pretty sure I hit all of those, but there may be a few lurking about, ready to catch the unwary. I’m counting these as bugs, as I have a hard time believing that’s the intended behavior. It’s certainly frustrating.
Don’t get me started about the Hypothermia mechanic or the frustration that comes with the “spot the exact pixel” minigame that makes up the four or five instances where you have to find objects in or on a body or device to generate new data and gear necessary to proceed.
All in all, Scars Above isn’t a bad game. It certainly has its ups and downs, and it can be a pain in the butt occasionally. That’s not enough to make it terrible. I have a hard time justifying the forty-dollar asking price for a game that’ll run you four hours if you know what you’re doing and no more than six on a first playthrough. There’s no replay value beyond picking up the few achievements you may have missed the first time (all of those combat-related), and it can be knocked out in an evening if you really try. Kate’s facial animation is a bit janky, sometimes she’ll tell you the solution to the puzzles, and so on.
However, the nice environments, the story, fairly rich in terms of lore, internal consistency, the alien thinking of the primary antagonist, and some of the more clever challenges really do make up for a lot of it. Its short length for a single-player-only game at its price point, on the other hand, drags it down immensely. If you want to buy it, maybe wait for a big sale. I’m sure there are some people that will be okay with the price and really want to get stuck into it, and those people really should. It’s a good romp, but not for the money.
Pros:
- Environments are nicely varied.
- Mission Control is applied sparingly.
- Decent characterization for the length.
- Limited verbal exposition.
- Environmental storytelling.
- Internal consistency in story elements and enemies.
Cons:
- Character animations can be a bit janky.
- Terrain bugs can get you trapped and no way out.
- Little to no replayability.
- Linear, with the little exploration available required.
- Frustrating research minigame.
- Short game for the price tag.
Lord Crocosquirrel gives Scars Above a Drastik Measure of 7.1 out of 10.0 (71)