![]() ![]() Aside from carefully pronounced pipes and ledges, there's no clear exit point, requiring pans of the camera to plan the next possible direction, and note stop points along the way. In one stage the developer climbs up a leaning skyscraper, its guts torn open by a neighbour's fall. It's a well-integrated mechanic it returns player urgency to a now-familiar manoeuvre, and turns every ascension into a multipart trial, cutting a standard A to B run into a number of smaller feats. Once emptied you got to hammer RT to keep from falling, and hope you're by a ledge you can pull yourself up on to rest and let your bar recharge. Bigger leaps between grab points knock off bigger chunks of stamina. Every exertion, from running to hanging off ledges, eats away at the on-screen bar. Maintaining stamina if a key mechanic in I Am Alive. Against the limited stamina of your own body. Because every action you perform is against the clock. Health's a slug on a water bottle, a climbing piton gives you momentary break mid-clamber to plan your next move. Items are sparse, and most are there to recover health, bolster your stamina, aid climbing. Visibility is poor, the high density of the air pollutant a killer, and other dangers hide in the murk - excursions below the dust line are high risk, but can yield collectables useful to your survival. The emphasis on climbing suggests the obvious names to compare, yet interestingly the only game the studio reference the entire presentation is Silent Hill, and that's to mark the atmosphere of dust-clogged and tomb-silent streets. A quick glance of the map shows it to be almost Manhattan Island in shape if not size. You'll play through a series of story-driven stages, mostly linear in path, but Interconnecting with the game's gradually expanding hub world - the city itself. You begin having arrived on the edges of Haventon (as well as echoing present day horror and survival films in its opening framing sequence, which we won't spoil here). It's a year since "The Event", and a year since the central protagonist - business suit turned Nathan Drake - set out to return to his home city to find his wife and daughter. It's post-apocalyptic territory by way of present day. What we're faced with today is a decent-looking title, an action-adventure that mixes extensive wall-climbing up decaying skyscrapers and skittering along twisted bridges, and urgent runs through city streets covered in a heavy dust that can kill if you linger too long. ![]() Whether it matches that bold claim we won't know for some time. ![]()
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