CES 2012: I Am Alive Hands On

Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai / Publisher: Ubisoft / Release Date: Very Soon 2012 / ESRB: Not Yet Rated

Games too often take a fantastical approach to the post-apocalypse, making their antagonists silly things like zombies or aliens or robots or zombie alien robots. In doing so they fail to fully explore the most frightening enemy of all: ourselves. This is probably why the first 25 minutes of I Am Alive struck a chord with me. The game is a bleak and brutally realistic reminder of just how stretched thin the strings that hold our society together are and how often times the most affecting experiences are the ones that hit closest to home.

I Am Alive opens up in the protagonist’s fictional home town a year after a catastrophic disaster simply referred to as “The Event,” the specifics of which are left unsaid. What is clear is that the world (or at least this particular part of it) is pretty messed up. You’re greeted with a severely desaturated cityscape in the distance and a dilapidated bridge packed with abandoned cars in front of you. What follows is a cinematic platforming and climbing sequence that a passer by might call “Uncharted-like.” But that description isn’t entirely accurate. Your climbing, running, and jumping are all dictated by a stamina meter that drains as you preform these actions. This coupled with some increasingly harsh background noises (I’m hard pressed to call it a soundtrack as it isn’t really music) create a palpable sense of tension missing from games of a similar style.

In fact, it feels like just about every mechanic is in place specifically to create tension. I saw only a handful of enemies through out my time with I Am Alive and each encounter was totally unpredictable. One enemy I was able to hold off just by pointing my unloaded gun at them. But another opened up on me as soon as I pulled it out, killing me with just two shots. And I know a lot of games like to use scarce ammo as a selling point but I Am Alive fully commits to this idea more than any game I’ve ever seen. I literally had picked up two bullets by the time my demo was finished. Now imagine having two bullets in your gun and seeing three enemies with machetes coming at you. Try and figure that one out.

But maybe my favorite aspect of I Am Alive came from a realization I had about myself (and humanity in general). At one point in the demo I came across a mother and her dieing son. I was given the option to give the son a health pack but I had just used up my only one, thus being forced to leave the kid to die. The mother pleaded with me to help but I couldn’t. As I started to walk away she asked if I was going to get assistance but I knew full well that I wasn’t. When humans have nothing to lose we are sometimes forced to become the things we hate for the sake of our own survival. Despite the humanizing touches given to the main character (he’s out searching for his missing wife and daughter), your actions through him are no less horrific than the enemies you are fighting. It’s not everyday a game explores these very grey themes.

If my short time with I Am Alive taught me anything it’s that the post-apocalypse is going to suck. And also that I’m really looking forward to playing more I Am Alive when it comes out as part of this year’s Xbox Live Arcade House Party promotion.

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