Scars Above
Developer: Mad Head Games
Publisher: Prime Matter
Platforms: Xbox One, Playstation 4, PC, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X (Reviewed)
Release Date: February 28, 2023
Price: $39.99 USD – Available Here $59.95 AUD – Available Here
Overview
Basing a story in a sci-fi setting means that the sky is no longer the limit as developers can freely take their tale into the far reaches of space if it means telling an interesting narrative. Of course, when it comes to trying to create unique gameplay to go along with the storyline, things can become a bit more difficult and trying to find inspiration from other popular titles is a fairly safe bet. Scars Above is the type of game where it is easy to see where it draws inspiration but tries its best to put its own spin on things to try and create something new. The only problem is, sometimes trying something different ends up creating a lesser experience.
Story
One day a mysterious alien artifact humanity called the “Metahedron” appeared just outside of Earth’s atmosphere. With no knowledge of whether this alien object might be a threat, a group of scientists and engineers have been put together as members of the Sentient Contact Assessment and Response (SCAR) team to investigate.
After crafting a tool to help overcharge their scanners, Kate Ward and the rest of the crew find themselves in peril as their ship experiences systemwide failures and is pulled into a gravity well generated from the Metahedron. After blacking out during the crash, Kate awakens to find out that she has been stranded on a strange alien planet where hostile creatures are eager to tear her apart. With no idea of where she is or the location of the rest of her crew, Kate must do her best to investigate this strange land and uncover the secrets behind the alien visions she has begun experiencing since awakening.
Scars Above tells a fairly well-told sci-fi tale that will keep players engaged throughout the game’s fairly short run time of a little over six hours. The brief time players spend interacting with other crew members does a solid enough job establishing the cast that must be found and rescued as Kate serves as the driving force seeking to uncover the numerous mysteries that exist on the alien world with her analytical mind being able to reverse-engineer and even create new tools from alien tech and creatures and surprisingly nearly everything does have some type of revelation by the time the credits roll. Unfortunately, while a competent enough sci-fi tale, it does start to falter a bit towards the end especially with players needing to backtrack through three previous locations only to end on such a hard-stop conclusion that players cannot even access their old save once completed.
Gameplay
As Kate begins her adventure she must fight against different types of alien creatures, a few of which have different elemental variants, traverse through mostly straight-forward level design, and occasionally solve various environmental puzzles to clear an obstacle before facing off against a boss that, most of the time, will test the player’s mettle. Should they happen to die to an enemy in any way, Kate will respawn back at the latest pillar that she has activated. This can be used to also restore ammo and healing items but any time players choose to activate the pillars they will respawn any standard enemies that they may have defeated beforehand, though the possibility of skipping a long trek through an area is possible by opening up various shortcuts along the way.
Those who are familiar with the “soulslike” games will feel quite at home with Scars Above though it does change things up enough to try and make itself unique. One of the first weapons Kate obtains is a melee electric cutter that serves as the only actual melee weapon in the game with only a couple upgrades throughout the story, which is a good thing because outside of using it as a last resort, melee in Scars Above is best left to bypassing the rare cuttable obstacle. Instead, Kate’s primary weapon is a firearm that she has crafted and modified using remaining parts of her ship as well as biological parts from the alien flora and fauna that she encounters. This sounds a bit better than it really is however, as players will eventually find themselves with, what boils down to, an electric rifle, a charge-shot fire blast, ice lobbing freeze gun, and acid spewing shotgun with the electric and fire versions receiving alternate versions in the late game.
Interestingly enough, these elemental attacks play a role both in and outside of combat. As Kate travels through certain locations she will have to deal with certain obstacles such as ponds filled with flesh-eating worms that can be frozen over for safety or plants that burn just long enough to stave off frostbite while traveling through frozen terrain. Along these same lines, players can use a fire shot to melt the ice below an enemy, dropping them into the freezing waters below for a quick elimination. When it comes to fighting enemies, players can combine various elemental effects for powerful combos, such as a wet enemy taking massive damage from electricity or freezing faster, allowing players to stun them in place for some time. It is also worth noting that many enemies also have various weakpoints on their body that can be targeted with specific elemental blasts to bring them down much quicker than usual.
That being said, Scars Above does its best to try and throw a lot at the player, offering multiple enemies that will target Kate from blindspots, swarm her with smaller enemies mixed in with bigger foes, and while many of them can take plenty of damage, most of what Kate’s arsenal offers eventually begins to make nearly all combat encounters a rather simplistic endeavor. Initially when players are only capable of using one healing item, burning limited “Fiber” resources to craft minor heals, and only having one gun on them, things can be quite challenging especially before players learn enemy patterns. That quickly begins to change as Kate gains more firearms and it comes to light that most enemies in the game have the same exact attack patterns, even when upgraded to mid-boss size. Combine this with the numerous tools that Kate will quickly begin to unlock ranging from a shield that can take numerous hits allowing no damage, grenades that slow everything trapped in their radius to a crawl, and more. While tools may make use of battery power, not only can players upgrade battery power to last longer through a poor leveling system but also can make use of fiber to craft refills at minimal cost making everything from normal encounters to most boss battles a simple thing to deal with on Normal difficulty. It is nice to note that, should players find themselves struggling with a section somehow or want more of a challenge the game does offer an Easy as well as a Hard option to change things up at any time.
That being said, while not inherently difficult, Scars Above’s boss battles are rather interesting most of the time. Many of them feature mechanics that players have learned while traveling through the area or a unique element that may only appear for one fight and never again. This does make for some exciting encounters with at least a few of the game’s bosses but unfortunately for every unique boss, another is a simplistic affair with the final encounter being a real letdown. The same can be said for the game’s puzzle mechanics as most simply involve finding a symbol to match in the environment or on an object and matching it to make progress or moving power supplies around in what quickly becomes monotonous gameplay, especially when they appear close to a boss encounter not once but twice.
Scars Above makes use of a rather odd choice of leveling. Rather than dropping any sort of resource, players can only gain experience by scanning a creature or plant the first time they see it, translating limited alien writings, or simply finding many alien cubes scattered around each pathway. This limits upgrade potential to the game’s pace but this rarely feels like an issue since so many of the skills that Kate can learn by leveling up are largely useless with even the max upgrades offering only a minor increase in damage and defense. That being said, one of the early upgrades makes all cubes and resources visible through simply scanning the area making finding them a breeze and players will likely finish the title with tons of spare points. Of course, since there is barely any side exploration as the longest detour is often only just off to the side of the main objective, no side-quests of any kind, and minimal lore that can be found off the beaten path there is little reason to actually go through the game again, especially since there is no option for New Game+ nor even the ability to reload a save before the final boss.
Visuals & Audio
If there is one thing that Scars Above manages to pull off quite well it is level design. While players may not see much in the way of branching paths as they explore the alien world they will be traveling through a number of different alien biomes ranging from swamps, frozen tundra, and even a freakishly gorey location later on that turns out to be one of the best and most memorable areas in the game. The character designs are solid enough though a bit on the simplistic side and unfortunately enemy variety is a bit limited as well, especially since many foes simply receive a reskin of a different element when fought in a different location.
As far as the voice work is concerned, the cast has handled their jobs incredibly well here with Kate’s voice actress portraying the character perfectly and the alien languages that players will hear when traveling through and deciphering audio logs are interesting both in tone and how they are handled. Sound effects and background music in the game are a bit on the simpler side but they work well enough, especially when tied in with the aforementioned location.
Overall
Scars Above is the type of game that feels like it has a lot going for it, especially when it comes to certain level designs, but it never quite manages to deliver anything well-enough to feel like a good game even with its cheaper launch price. There is an enjoyable and mysterious sci-fi story to be had, including a couple “wow” moments but it begins to falter near the end due to padding issues, while its combat struggles to find the proper balance between challenging and becoming simplistic when players take advantage of the tools at their disposal.
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