There’s a special place in my heart for single-player narrative games that are roughly eight hours long. I love a good RPG or competitive shooter, but there’s nothing like being able to sit down and enjoy a full game two or three times. Type Scars Above. This sci-fi third-person action-adventure game from Mad Head Games is set entirely on a brutal and unforgiving planet, where protagonist Dr. Kate Ward and her friends are transported following interacting with mysterious alien artifacts.
The story has an aura of mystery and intrigue that’s exciting, but it doesn’t come across as anything particularly revolutionary. The obvious influence of HR Giger and other sci-fi works shines through, and it keeps the story simple and interesting, but doesn’t blow your mind with what it has to offer.
Many action-adventure games also treat stories like Scars Above purely as survival stories, and while this title hits those beats, the game is also more regarding documenting, discovering, and piecing together what the world is and how you got there here. You’ll use Kate’s scientific skills to analyze and study the world’s flora, fauna, and environments, while utilizing her technological knowledge to craft powerful weapons capable of knocking out a peg or two of the nasty invasive species that live in the world. As you might infer from this, combat is also a key part of Scars Above’s game cycle.
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Armed with an array of element-tuned weapons, as well as a host of craftable consumables and timed abilities, Kate will need to fight back once morest creatures that attack her. For the most part, since Scars Above is a very linear game, this involves dispatching enemies that appear in Kate’s path, but occasionally sees her having to deal with larger groups of enemies that exist in some kind of arena , this type of gameplay is also the way to introduce bosses.
In my experience, the combat actually plays very smoothly and has an interesting depth. In addition to the unique attack styles of the guns, the way the different element types interact with each other (such as wet enemies taking extra impact damage) provides players with a lot of choice in the experience. Kate’s mobility makes things feel fast-paced and action-packed, all without making Kate seem like an indomitable action hero, not immune to stamina, or dismissive of death – and even if she did, there is a Good narrative reason. Boss enemies also bring unique mechanics that will put your understanding of elemental kits to the test, though I’ve never really found bosses to be much of a threat or a challenge in the grand scheme of things.
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But here’s the thing, while I did enjoy the fighting in Scars Above and I appreciated the story, I found myself less impressed elsewhere.The power-up system revolves around picking up knowledge cubes scattered around each level, once you’ve gained certain but unclear“Knowledge”, an ability point will be awarded. Considering these aren’t hard to spot or find, the whole thing feels a bit monotonous, as if it never really understood what it wanted to be. On the one hand, you research new life forms you encounter to gain knowledge, and on the other, you just pick up a floating brick in the middle of the path. It doesn’t quite work.
Then there are the visuals to add. While I will say that Scars Above generally has beautiful and enjoyable graphics, the facial animations are abominable, downright scary actually. If you’ve ever seen a robot with a silicon face in a movie who only moves his mouth to express emotion, that’s exactly how Scars Above’s character came out. They’re not lifelike at all, and it’s hard to appreciate the gravity in cutscenes when the characters feel artificial.
Having said that, Monsters does feel real, and is a very nasty piece of work. Mad Head Games clearly spent a lot of time researching and creating a terrifying ecosystem for Kate to chew on, because the monsters you encounter in Scars Above are eerie and disturbing. Note that they’re not particularly hard to kill (except for the poisonous humanoid fungus), but they’re fun.
The environmental puzzles are also a bit of a hit or miss in my experience with the game. Some are a little too simple and basically require you to remove the power core at the right time to fix the problem, while others can be annoying. I had a particularly hard time with one of the earliest puzzles, as the mechanism for rotating the tetrahedron to fit a certain pattern didn’t work at all on the mouse, causing me to just shake the item aimlessly until it finally landed in the correct position.
However, I appreciate how Mad Head Games didn’t overcomplicate Scars Above. What you see is what you get, allowing you to really experience and immerse yourself in the game without having to worry regarding excessive resource management, the ability to have multiple skill trees, or a large open world that “comes to life” with tiring collectibles to find. It’s a straightforward, narrative-heavy single-player game that should be celebrated these days.
All in all, Scars Above is a fun but familiar action-adventure game that, despite its flaws, is backed up by enough compelling gameplay elements and tropes that it makes you want to end its relatively short (for this era of gaming) story. It won’t get you on your feet, but if you’re looking for something new to spread out over the weekend, Scars Above is an ideal choice.
