I Am Alive

[radiator]

Anyone else getting this?

Been looking forward to it a while. Reviews have been a bit mixed, but something about it just appeals - perhaps the survival/post-apocalyse theme which has never really been nailed in a game before.

Bit worried about the apparent linearity - what ever happened to  a bit of freedom/exploration in games?

Will give it a go if and when I get the time - but would be interested to hear what anyone else makes of it.

[Satanist]

Have you played Fallout 3? Open world post apocalypse. Buggy as hell but will be patched by now and I loved it to bits.

I'll get this one when its on sale

[radiator]

Have you played Fallout 3? Open world post apocalypse.

Not really quite what I mean - Fallout is very much in the RPG genre and has a lot of fantastical elements, monsters/mutants etc. I'm talking about a more realistic action/adventure game with the emphasis on platforming and survival. I'm after a game that is tonally more The Road/28 Days Later than Mad Max.

IAA has no fantastical or sci-fi elements as I understand it, just skirmishes with other survivors, a focus on traversing a ruined city across rooftops etc - lots of quiet moments and tension.

I've always wondered why they've never done a proper post-apocalypse (either zombie or otherwise) take on GTA/Assassins Creed, something like I Am Alive, but with a whole ruined city to explore.

[Mudcrab]

Looks good...
http://iamalive-game.ubi.com/iamalive/en-gb/index.aspx

I'm reminded of Manhunt a bit too, though less gruesome and with friendlier options of course 

[radiator]

Played the first twenty minutes of this last night.

Hmmm, does seem incredibly scripted and linear, even down to the combat - the lack of ammo, rather than forcing you to improvise, just means that there's only really one way of defeating a group of opponents, at least so far. I despair at the increasing trend for 'cinematic' games (like this, Uncharted etc) - it reduces the player to simply pressing the right buttons in sequence and having the exact same experience as everyone else who plays it. It gets to the point where it just becomes a semi-interactive film, and I just end up thinking 'why not go the whole way and let the computer press the buttons for you?'.

[Mudcrab]

Ewwww, are they still doing that? I got sick of that with God of War/Heavenly Sword doing that way too much. Couldn't finish GoW2 purely cos my reaction time isn't quick enough, being an old codger.

Having been around for the original Dragon's Lair etc, that kind of thing got old very quickly.

[radiator]

I don't mean QTEs so much (though they are utterly hateful, and IAA has many instances where you have to rapidly press the right trigger to open doors/stab someone etc).

I just mean in the way that a lot of modern games feel almost on-rails - there's only one way to progress, the levels are just glorified corridors set up to funnel you from one set-piece/encounter to the next. Give me a game with a bit of exploring to do, something that doesn't hold my hand all the way, where the combat is dynamic and encounters never play out the same way twice, not scripted, empty 'spectacle'.

Maybe I'm just growing a bit tired of games full stop?

[Professor Bear]

I hate QTE sections in games purely because you're so hung up on watching for the button prompts that you aren't following what's happening on screen and only observers get the full benefit of such a sequence, making me think that developers include them because they get their feedback from crowds at gaming conventions.  I'm sure the crowds are wowed by cinematic sequences, but I'm sick to the back teeth of them and view them as this generation's "defend NPC character/object from enemy fire" level - easy for the developers to make and helps pad out the game, but hated by actual gameplayers.

IAA doesn't appeal too much to me as it looks too much like SOS: Final Escape, though if you want a less fantastical post-apocalypse scenario thing than Fallout 3, Metro 2033 is cheap as chips now.  There are some fantastic elements, but they have little bearing on the game and you spend the vast majority of your time fighting humans.
The upcoming Tokyo Jungle sounds awesome, and The Last Of Us looks to tickle all the 28 Days Later funnybones you mention above:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWzcYbtZQrk

[radiator]

Yes, I had noticed The Last of Us, but it's being made by the developers of Uncharted - a game that is the very definition of the empty spectacle I'm talking about. Seems you spend most of your time watching your character do something cool than doing cool stuff yourself, and if that's the case I'd rather watch a proper film than a straight to DVD cgi Indiana Jones knock-off. To give you an example - I loaded that video, watched a few seconds of it, then skipped the rest when I realised it wasn't game footage. The only thing I took from it was that Ellen Page should sue.

I just feel that mainstream games are heading in completely the opposite direction of what interests me about the medium. With very few exceptions I simply don't care about narrative in games and almost always skip cutscenes - the narrative could be a single line of text for all I care - "Rescue the princess" - to me, the gameplay is the narrative, and everything interesting and memorable about the game happens organically during gameplay (not in manufactured, binary set-pieces). When I play Mario, I'm not thinking "I really need to get to the castle to rescue the princess!". The very experience of the game - the physics, the tension, the risk/reward - is enough.

Agree completely on QTEs, I've never met anyone who thinks they're a good idea. All they do is highlight the massive shortcomings of traditional joypads (which have barely changed in the last 15 years) as the input method for most games.

Genuinely struggling to think of many upcoming games that I'm excited about. The only thing that pops into my head is Journey on the PS3 and maybe GTA5 and the new Trials game. Other than that I only ever seem to get excited about rereleases or HD remasters of old games! Frustrating that I've reached a stage in my life where I can now afford all the games and consoles I want, but barely have the time or inclination to play them anymore.

[Professor Bear]

You know nothing about skipping cutscenes to get to the gameplay until you've got to where I am, Radiator: If a game doesn't give you the option to skip a cutscene, I don't buy it.  Never even played MGS4 - 2 hour cutscenes?  Thank you, but no.
And yet, it is the characters - the result of the scripting and the cutscenes - that make games like Uncharted and Mirror's Edge such a joy for me to play.  "Empty spectacle" is a little harsh in Uncharted's case*, as while I agree that Uncharted has too much QTE for my liking - especially 3's unnecessary retooling of random close-combat encounters to button-mashing - your playing experience and mine seem to be vastly different ones.  If anything, Uncharted has the only genuinely interesting characters I've seen in the current generation of videogames, and the fact that they're flawed and near-boring normal people within the cut-scenes feeds back into the gaming experience, especially U3's lengthy desert sequence which - despite coming right after a large-scale stunt setpiece with a fistfight in a crashing plane - couldn't work with an invincible homoerotic superman like Marcus Fenix or Master Chief.  Another good example is the level in Uncharted 2 where you have to carry a wounded cameraman to safety through a series of gun battles which your companions pretty much fight for you, yet it feels like there's more at stake with this poor, doomed bastard dragging you down to a crawl through the scenery than there is mere minutes later when you're running for your own life from a pursuing tank.  A good script and interesting characters can enhance a game rather than detract from it.

And you might want to give Journey a miss - lots of silent cutscenes and reliance on sweeping setpiece visuals, though I did enjoy what I played of it.



* Although something like Battlefield 3 would fit this bill.  The plane sequences feel like you don't affect the outcome of events in any way and don't even need to be there, as do the big gun battles that made me turn it off and never go back to it.

[radiator]

I should add that just because I loathe cutscenes doesn't mean that I think a game can't be well written - for instance I loved the troop's chatter in Halo - it was genuinely funny (written by David Cross iirc) and never seemed to repeat itself. I liked the story of that game too - generic, derivative space opera fare sure, but crucially it didn't intefere with the flow of the gameplay besides the occasional (skippable) cut scene, something that can't be said of the sequels. I also really admire the unobtrusive, sophisticated storytelling and well-judged pacing in Half Life 2. By contrast, In I Am Alive, you can pull a gun on enemies, then order them to back off, but the player character just repeats the same two lines over and over. That's the sort of issue they should be focusing on instead of the tedious, poorly written cutscenes that bookend every stage of the game.

A writer should be there to add to the overall atmosphere and polish the dialogue, and a good game story should be invisible - just a means to an end, something to hang the game on. There if you like that sort of thing, but unobtrusive if you don't. Imo too many game developers these days are putting the cart before the horse when it comes to story and narrative - when a story starts to impede or impact too heavily on the actual gameplay, then that's a fail as far as I'm concerned.

Metal Gear Solid can kiss my arse - I thought the first one had some impressive qualities and lovely art direction, but even back then the endless navel-gazing cutscenes and preposterous, pompous story put me off enough that I never played any of the subsequent games in the series.

The plane sequences feel like you don't affect the outcome of events in any way and don't even need to be there, as do the big gun battles that made me turn it off and never go back to it.

That's exactly how I feel about most 'AAA' games these day - I may as well not be there. Take LA Noire - there was no sense of challenge, no stakes, and it all just felt so clockwork. I played it twice then never again. I feel much the same about modern shooters singleplayer modes - they just feel very hollow to me, more like shooting galleries with pop-out targets than real environments.

I'm a big fan of XBLA and PSN downloadable titles these days - they just seem to represent a purer form of gaming. I've had a blast with the likes of Trials HD, Limbo, Joe Danger and Shadow Complex.

[ThryllSeekyr]

I couldn't buy the full game on X-Box 360, (Is that because I don't have X-box Live or the Gold Pass! so I just played the demo. It sort of seems serious and the way you have to watch your stamina carefully...........I nevr made it back across the bridge before I stopped playing. That isn't to say I don't like the game. I'm impressed with it's uniqueness. It is different. I never played any of the Uncharted]/b] games.

Perhaps, I will finish the demo some other time.