Developer: Ubisoft Shanghai
Publisher: Ubisoft
Rrp: £12.99
Released: 8th September 2012
Available on Steam, and Uplay
A man searches for his wife and child one year after an a catastrophe known only as The Event. Sadly your not given the name of this man at any point so I can’t name him, either way you play as this man.
Before i continue with the review I want to mention that I played through this game using a control pad as I found it a more smooth experience, so I will be referring to the controls with that in mind.
Throughout this game you will be climbing and clambering over and around environmental obstacles. But in doing so your stamina bar begins to decrease, if it depletes you can perform what is called a extreme action. Put his requires you to mash the trigger on the control pad repeatedly. Your stamina quickly regenerates once you have found a point to rest if however you have performed a extreme action your overall stamina will be depleted until you use an item to replenish it, such as water or food. Items like this can be found in the inventory screen, this inventory system allows you to hold up to sixteen items. Each item can be selected to see what it’s best for. You also can hold four weapons and four pieces of equipment. Its also one of two ways you can access your map screen (the other is by pressing the button for it on the control pad) and your scores.
Combat is mainly melee centric, the pistol you have is generally used for intimidation purposes. If a enemy approaches you can whip out the pistol (switching you into first person view) and get them to step away from you so you can knock them out, or possibly kick them into a hole.
Inbetween the main quest you’ll be traversing the remains of the city, giving it a slightly open world feel albeit a very small world. While in this open world you’ll occasionally come across a victim, who will ask you for something or help with something. These are side quests that once completed give the player a extra retry (read extra life). As well as the extra retry they’ll also give you some small piece of information either on your family or on the world around you.
Sadly if you play through on the easiest setting the retry means nothing as you get infinite retries anyway, on harder settings though they come in handy.
This game is good looking graphically speaking although very grey, while there are colours, their all muted by the dust that hangs in the air. The dust also adds to the atmosphere and suspense in the game much like Silent Hill. Although instead of confronting the twisted and tormented forms of the human psyche, you’ll tackling somewhat less disturbing survivors.
I like this game, it’s got a good atmosphere and I like the general premise, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hollywood steals a few ideas from it. But it’s a short and very linear game. And while I won’t spoil the ending… It somewhat soured the experience for me. There is a Survivor mode setting that replaces the games usual checkpoint system with just restarting the whole level and lessens the amount of supplies scattered around.
I think the Rrp is too high for this game, it can be beaten in a little over six hours and hasn’t really got any replay value. If you can find it at half price or less though I recommend you grab it.
