Scars Above Review – The Definition of ‘One and Done’

Scars Above is one of those games that intrigued me as I read about them over the course of our coverage in Wccftech. After all, the idea of a survival horror game in which your resources matter more than anything is just something that I couldn’t let go of. I think even one of my peers expressed this sentiment while doing the preview of the game back in September, as the full vision can be very different from a small preview at Gamescom.

You may have noticed that I have a knack for games that are “Hard”. To mention a few examples, games such as Wanted: Dead and Hi-Fi Rush were played at the highest possible difficulty. As a journalist, I think stressing the game to its limits should be an excellent way to show the flaws in its design choices. It’s a way that displays the issues with its structure without having to call foul or bring limitations on a player’s skill.

As I continued going through Scars Above, I wondered what I could face next regarding the game’s challenge. I was met with an overwhelmingly mixed experience in which the game had its set of highs and lows that couldn’t be ignored for the sake of its interesting narrative choices. Without spoiling much, I have to say that I believe this game is fine as is and should be an experience worth having for players.

Let’s start with the game’s story. At some point in the future, humanity is baffled by the discovery of a Metahedron that seemingly appears out of nowhere in the Earth’s atmosphere. In response to this abnormal phenomenon, we see a group of scientists from the Sentient Contact Assessment and Response (SCAR) team being sent to investigate what this massive alien structure is on the edge of Earth. After a slow introduction to the game’s mechanics through a simple tutorial, the mission goes awry just a few moments in, but we don’t get to see how that happens.

Instead, we wake up in a desolate world filled with wilderness as the game’s protagonist Kate Ward. She’s one of the scientists in the SCARs team who doesn’t remember what happened during the moment the mission went belly up. Armed with nothing but a backpack and a blade, she sets off on the unknown to face whatever lies ahead in her perilous journey. Along the way, she finds out what happened to the SCARs crew after the incident happened alongside the fate of the previous inhabitants of this structure.

While Scars Above does start with your usual “stranded on a lost planet” vibe, the game will not hesitate to break away from its tropes to deliver a mind-bending experience, especially when it comes to the twist that’s delivered to you in the ending. More often than not, you’re left wondering what’s real or not and whether or not the fate of the crew is real. The game also pulls no punches in its presentation, giving us plenty of surreal visuals that leave you wondering what could happen and delivering horror through its atmosphere.

Scars Above’s presentation is also complimented by its beautiful graphics. The game by no means looks ugly or desolate. Whenever it’s needed, it showers us with beautiful visuals and wonderful vistas to gawk at. The soundtrack also does a good job at being tense and appropriately somber whenever it needs to be, delivering an overall experience worth running through at least once on its presentation alone as the story is well written and the other aspects of the presentation are nicely delivered.

This isn’t exempt from criticism, however, as despite the game’s beautiful nature, it also can become subject to repetition or have environments that are less visually appealing and more drab and boring. Some places you explore have a very noticeable visual theme, and you quickly begin to grow tired of its repetition. Probably not helping things is the fact that, despite the initial impression it gave off, this game has a very linear structure, and any areas that look worth backtracking into are only revisited near the end of the game.

This extends to the enemy variety, which is definitely one of the worst aspects of Scars Above. In terms of the presentation, at least, we see enemies being essentially the same giant alien you fought a few minutes ago, only being ice instead of fire. It’s made even more hilarious once you realize that the same gigantic enemy you fight in this game by the droves is copypasted as the game’s final boss. When you reach this enemy, you already know how to deal with it in so many ways, and the fight becomes completely irrelevant.

Of course, to talk about the enemies in greater detail, I’ll have to switch to the gameplay aspects of Scars Above.

Being a game that focuses on resource management and upgrade systems, Scars Above is mostly about using what’s given to you effectively and optimizing your performance in combat so that you come relatively unscathed after using as little ammo as possible. How is this done, you may ask? By taking advantage of the environment around you, of course! Scars Above does a very unique thing with its setting in which taking advantage of the elements is paramount to your survival.

For example, let’s say that you’re currently fighting off several alien creatures as you’re out in the open while it’s raining. While the enemies may have a weak spot to Fire, it can be a better idea to whip out the VERA’s electric ammo so that you harm multiple enemies thanks to them being soaking wet. Or, you could also use the ice rounds to freeze the enemies quickly and then deliver lethal strikes with the electric ammo.

Elemental combinations play a massive role in the game’s mechanics, giving Scars Above players the opportunity to change their approach to usual encounters. This makes the repeated enemy variety at least more bearable as the environments in which you fight these enemies will change, leaving you with different ways to deal with them. Kate will have to fend off monsters in various open or closed areas in various ways, and, while you can stick to the standard “hit the weakpoint” thing, you may gain the same advantage with less ammo by using the weather to your favor.

The game also gives you access to a skill tree that improves several aspects of Kate’s gameplay. From taking less damage to replenishing 25% of your ammo after the clip’s empty, several of these upgrades are downright vital to guarantee your survival. As you’re going to juggle against various threats, you will have to respec your upgrades every now and then as the current situation you’re facing may not be suited to the set of upgrades you’ve got.

The linear game structure also helps in this regard, as the game essentially provides you with upgrades to both Kate herself and her arsenal if you go off the beaten path. It’s not like you need to go too far anyway, as the divergent paths tend to be very short, and you can basically just go back to the main path in a matter of seconds after discovering your upgrades. This, of course, can act as a double-edged sword as by the time you reach the end of the game, you’ll be a walking arsenal with Tesla Cannons, Fire Beams, and Poison Grenades without much effort.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the last part of my criticisms of the game. Scars Above tends to introduce what look like future gameplay aspects only to delegate them to glorified plot devices. There’s this whole aspect about how you have to build the VERA yourself and how you have to implement its accessories through a printer, leading you to think that in order to upgrade your stuff, you have to take a risk to reach it.

In reality, the printer goes along with you, and upgrading your weapons is as basic as pressing a button. The same could be said about the “scanning” system in which you deeply analyze several subjects to gain knowledge on them or recreate scenes in the past using context clues. Once again, this is only relegated to a few instances in the game’s plot, and they just don’t come back after a certain point.

Oh, and how about those monoliths that act as your pseudo-checkpoints? The game makes it abundantly clear that if you use the monolith, you’ll be able to regain your health and ammo, but at the cost of having every enemy be revived as well. While this is cool and all, bringing an element of the Souls series to life, the reality is that, more often than not, you don’t really have a reason to revisit the area you just went through. Hence, it’s unlikely that you will return unless you missed one of the obvious divergent paths and an upgrade to your arsenal.

I will not stop praising the way the game introduces elemental combinations, but on some occasions, it can be a bit too much to deal with. Take the fight against The Construct, for example, in which you have to use your freeze grenades to make it expose the weak spot. Still, you also have to make sure that you don’t run out of ammo (or have the replenishing ammo upgrade I mentioned), or else you’ll be without the only way to fight the boss. Additionally, due to the harsh weather conditions, you have to also be near hot spots or else suffer death at the hands of hypothermia.

The way that the devs intend you to fight it is to use the incendiary ammo on the floor so that one of its appendages falls into the freezing lake, therefore making it wet and enabling you to freeze it faster. While that’s neat, I found that this approach barely made a difference when trying to freeze the enemy. Not only that, but after a short time, The Construct also just freed itself from its icy trap, undoing all the progress I had toward freezing it and essentially rendering my ammo a waste. After a series of frustrating attempts, I ended up just bruteforcing the fight instead and got better results off that than by playing by the game’s own rules.

What’s even worse is that after all of your journey’s exploits and defeat of adversity, the game just… Ends. No fanfare, no New Game+, not even the capability of loading from a previous save. It just ends. And yes, that’s why the reference in the title is a thing, folks. The game is truly one and done, as it kicks you out once you’re finished, and that’s all she wrote.

Overall, Scars Above feels like a game that fails to reach its vision. In a way, the game does a lot for its audience when it comes to impressive visuals, great presentation, and soundtrack. Still, it also fails to deliver on what it truly wants to be, and that’s a shame because you can see what it attempts to do and is clearly set back by the fact that this is, first and foremost, an indie project.

Sure, I can be frustrated at this game’s linear structure, but I choose not to be because, at least in this instance, I can uncharacteristically cut the game a break due to the fact that it works well with what’s given to the developers themselves. Mad Head Games definitely went out of their way to make this game shine above every other project they have handled, and it honestly doesn’t feel fair to not give them credit for what they’ve accomplished.

Scars Above definitely is commendable when it comes to the background of the developers. One of the aspects I didn’t mention is that this game studio is essentially known for making Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure (HOPA) games, and they all have been praised for looking fantastic. You could fool me if you told me that this was a game made by a AAA studio with some of the beautiful visuals at display. So, I can see the larger vision that just couldn’t be fully delivered on.

The game will give you a good 8-9 hours of entertainment. So if you don’t mind a shooting game that pushes your gunning skills to the limits while challenging you to use the environment in your favor that’s a bit rough around the edges, I definitely think that you should give this game a shot. Who knows? Maybe the developers will support the game post-launch and eventually provide a more refined experience.

For now, here’s where I drop off this ship and move on to other avenues in gaming. The SCARs team expedition is over, and we have to prepare for what the future holds for Mad Head Games. I certainly hope that upcoming projects use this unique structure and maybe realize a project that lives up to its potential.

Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).

Scars Above

Scars Above offers a great shooter experience that’s a bit rough around the edges in some areas when it comes to realizing its vision and potential. While these problems are noticeable, I don’t feel like it takes too much from the full product while offering a haunting survival horror experience with a unique gimmick that makes players think about the best approach to the way they face the environment around the enemies.