If one can easily say thatUbisoft finds its place among the most profitable companies in video games, notably possessing large and excellent licenses such as Assassin’s Creed or Far Cry, his proposal is nevertheless not very original. With a lot of open worlds, sometimes devoid of life or lacking in personality, the firm offers us great gaming experiences, without aiming any further. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, let’s be clear.
In recent years, however, we have had the right to a few surprises. For example, and to cite only him, a certain Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. A title that comes out of the nails a bit, on the universe side, but which nevertheless remains relatively agreed in terms of progression and gameplay. However, it is not so far away the time when Ubisoft still managed to surprise the audience, with a lot of new ideas.
Sadly, that time seems to have started to wane with the slow death of the seventh console generation. Thus, one of the last truly original games offered to us by the French company was none other than I Am Alive, released in 2012 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. A survival-oriented title which has since fallen into oblivion, in particular because it is only available in dematerialized form and has not benefited from a large treatment.
Test conditions: We played a dozen hours on PlayStation 3. Time to complete the classic adventure, then in survival mode, all without rushing. As we do not have the necessary equipment to take captures on the medium concerned, the images used in this article were not taken by us.
It’s the end of the world as we know it
Like a Disaster : Day of Crisis – or more recently Summer Memories – I Am Alive starts from a simple and yet catastrophic premise: the planet is upside down following a series of unusual earthquakes. Moreover, it has already been a year since the ground began to vibrate for the first time, and the followingshocks are still numerous and powerful. To the point that nothing remains, the buildings are collapsing, as is civilization, which seems to have packed its bags and gone into exile, perhaps far from the mainland.
In this hell, men have become beasts once more, not hesitating to steal the neighbour’s resources, killing their neighbor for a few stale food… However, not all of them are bad, some survive without doing any harm, sometimes even in groups, hidden to avoid the bandits who now rule the roost. Adam, on the other hand, is alone, and has been since day one. Moving to the western United States when the tremors began, it took him nearly a year to cross the country and walk home, hoping to find his wife and daughter.
Arrived in the city center, he finds his house still standing, surprisingly, but no one inside. The luggage was packed in a hurry, there are still tins and photos left… Everything leads us to believe that his little family left the place in a hurry, perhaps to join a convoy of survivors. Disoriented, Adam resumes his wanderings and comes across a sick young girl, whom he first takes for his own, having lost track of her mother. As a good and just man, he decides to help her, at the risk of having to face multiple dangers.
Technical wanderings, artistic success
The first thing that hits when you throw I Am Alive, it’s the dark grain of his image, bordering on black and white. Let’s be clear, the title is not very beautiful. His adventure is smeared with filthy textures, reuse of 3D models – which shocks especially at the level of the enemies – and tries in vain to hide its delay behind a surrounding dust which makes the horizon disappear. A little nod to Silent Hillat this level, which used the same stratagem to face the limitations of the first PlayStation of the name.
Nevertheless, the atmosphere is there, and it is successful. From the first grip we are caught up in the dusty, sad and frightening atmosphere of this destroyed city, where the slightest makeshift pontoon can prove fatal, where the slightest fall of gravel can be a harbinger of disaster. To the point that the various encounters with bandits are so surprising, at first, that they can make you jump. And they have reason, because it is never easy to get out of a situation requiring violence in this game of survival.
Thereby, I Am Alive is therefore not very beautiful, but in the end it hides it rather well, and even makes people forget it, behind the expert work carried out on its atmosphere. We quickly overrode what the restricted display distance hides, in order to immerse ourselves body and soul in this lifeless city. Too bad that some pitfalls still remain, including a large number of bugs of all kinds, from the relatively common collision problem to the textures that take time to display, or even AI problems.
And what would be the atmosphere of this survival game without its incredibly stressful soundtrack, which goes to the rhythm of our character and his adventures, sometimes tipping the scales on the side of Survival Horror. Too bad that at this level the work on the dubbing was so sloppy, offering no life, no intensity, where the characters should convey strong emotions to the point of creating empathy; or on the contrary accentuate the anguish rising to a crescendo of encounters with ill-intentioned survivors.
The heart of the problem
I Am Alive is a third-person survival adventure game. So far, nothing extraordinary. Nevertheless, it partly draws its strength from its devastated environment, in which you will have to make your way through perilous climbing and recovery of resources, sometimes well hidden. At this level, the concept works wonderfully, especially coupled with an endurance system that adds a lot of stress to its recipe. Especially since it is not always easy to determine the best passages, the best takes, enough to waste time and energy quickly.
Because it will not be enough to find the right holds to climb a building. Stamina management is key, and stamina melts like snow in the sun as Adam begins to scale a steep surface. Thus, it is easy to garner the maximum resources before embarking on a difficult undertaking. From the bottle of water to recover a little stamina, to the piton giving the hero time to catch his breath in the middle of the climb. Despite the dangers outside, we will not neglect any track that can lead to useful items.
Which also includes revolver bullets, in extremely limited numbers across this small world. There is indeed less ammunition to collect than enemies to kill, which probably gives you an idea of the type of stress to which I Am Alive delivers the player when he hears survivors nearby. That being said, encounters with bandits almost always happen the same way: one of them advances to pick our pockets while the others stay back, the time for us to deal a mortal blow to the first and draw to parry the attacks of others.
A system that works well, at first, and offers a significant gain in challenge. Nevertheless, handling suffers from real problems that greatly affect these phases which, without that, would have found a certain interest in the oppressive atmosphere of the software. A defect which regularly makes the clashes frustrating, in the same way as the uneven AI, and can quickly make the less conciliatory lose patience. Especially since it unfortunately does not stop at the fights, and affects the climbing sessions on many occasions.
And god knows it’s not nice to see your character die stupidly following a problem resulting from poorly calibrated gameplay. Too bad, because otherwise the difficulty is well balanced, offering a limited number of checkpoints – without which you will have to start the adventure once more – for a story that you complete in less than five hours of play. It’s short, of course, and yet intense, and the experience is ultimately spoiled only by a perfectible handling that often makes us die for nothing.
