Single player games that are around eight hours long have a special place in my heart. I love a good RPG or competitive shooter, but there’s nothing quite like sitting back and enjoying a full story in two or three sessions, and Scars Above offers just that. From the hands of Mad Head Games, this third-person sci-fi adventure and action takes place on a cruel and unforgiving planet where the protagonist is the doctor Kate Wardand his friends were transported after interacting with a mysterious alien artifact.
There’s an aura of mystery and intrigue to this adventure, and it’s really compelling, but it’s also nothing particularly revolutionary. The influence of HR Giger and other sci-fi works is more than evident, resulting in a story that is simply entertaining but won’t blow you away with what it offers.
Many action-adventure games would treat a story like Scars Above as a survival story, and while that title fits the bill, so does the game. rather it is about documenting, discovering and reconstructing what this world is And how did you get here? You will use Kate’s scientific skills to analyze and study the planet’s fauna, flora and environment, while using her technological knowledge to build weapons to take on the aggressive species that live here. As you can see, combat is also a crucial part of the Scars Above cycle.
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Kate must fend off the creatures that attack her with an arsenal of item-matched weapons, as well as a list of crafted consumables and limited abilities. since it is a fairly linear gameMost of the time, it’s about eliminating the enemies that stand in Kate’s way, but occasionally she’ll have to face a larger group of enemies in some kind of battle arenas.
In my experience, the combat is very fluid and has an interesting depth. The manner different types of elements interact (e.g. a wet enemy takes more damage per hit) along with the unique attack styles of firearms give the player many options. And Kate’s mobility keeps the pace and action going and doesn’t look like an indomitable action heroine who isn’t immune to opposition or deters death, although she is, but there’s a good narrative reason for it. The “bosses” also offer unique mechanics to test your knowledge of the item pool, although I never really found them to be a threat or more of a challenge compared to the rest of the game.
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Thing is, while I like the Scars Above fight and appreciate its story, I’m less than impressed with other things. The skill upgrade system revolves around gathering knowledge cube scattered throughout each level, with a single skill point rewarded once you’ve acquired a specific but unclear amount of “knowledge”. For not being that hard to find, the whole process is a bit monotonous and feels like you don’t quite know what you want to become. On the one hand, you’re studying the new life forms you encounter in your quest for knowledge, and on the other, you pick up a floating brick midway along your path. It just didn’t convince me.
To this must be added the visual effects. Although I have to say that Scars Above generally has nice and delicate graphics that Facial animations are hideous and quite frightening indeed. If you’ve ever seen a silicon-faced android in a movie showing its emotions just by moving its mouth, this is what the characters in Scars Above look like. They don’t feel real at all and it’s very hard to appreciate the seriousness of the scenes when the characters seem like something out of the Uncanny Valley.
That means the monsters look very real and they are quite evil. It’s clear that Mad Head Games has spent a lot of time researching and creating a terrifying ecosystem for Kate to feed on, as the monsters you encounter in Scars Above are terrifying. They’re not particularly difficult to kill (except for the poisonous humanoid mushrooms), but they’re fun to take on.
Based on my experience with the game, another downside I noticed was the Environment puzzles. Some are too easy and require you to extract the energy cores at the right time to solve the problem, while others can be annoying. One of the first puzzles I found particularly difficult as the mechanic of rotating tetrahedrons to fit a specific pattern didn’t work well with the mouse, forcing me to shake the object aimlessly until it landed in the correct position.
However, I appreciate and appreciate how Mad Head Games didn’t overcomplicate Scars Above. What you see is what you get, and this allows you to truly experience and immerse yourself in the gameplay without worrying about excessive resource management, skill trees, or large open worlds filled with an endless list of collectible “for brought to life” will be found. This is a single player game with a simple and strong narrative, and that should be celebrated (and encouraged) more these days.
All in all, Scars Above is an enjoyable but familiar action-adventure that, while it has its flaws, has enough gameplay elements and compelling tropes to keep you wanting to see through to the end of its relatively short (by current trends) story to get. It won’t blow your mind, but if you’re looking for something new to complete in a weekend, Scars Above is the ideal candidate.
