I Am Alive makes life too predictable

Here’s the key to creating a survival-genre game: deprivation. Just take stuff away. That’s it. I’ll rip through an entire mag to nail one Modern Warfare terrorist, but if I’ve got one shotgun shell to last me through half a level, I don’t pull the trigger without a very compelling reason.

That brand of resource management figures heavily in developer Ubisoft (Splinter Cell) Shanghai's I Am Alive. Food. Water. Ammunition. Stamina. You don’t spend anything unless it’s mission critical…or unless you want the Achievements associated with giving stuff away.

…and then Mirror's Edge 2 went horribly wrong.

I’ve looked forward to I Am Alive ever since Ubisoft announced it way back in 2008. Finally, a survival game sans cartoon elements; no zombies, aliens, monsters, or mutants. Just you, a hostile, post-apocalyptic environment, and other survivors who want your stuff…or your help. That’s what I wanted, and despite a torturous path to release — including a change of developer and a complete redesign — that’s what I got.

Only the deprivation’s way, way off. Ubisoft Shanghai injected much-needed tension into Uncharted-style platforming (a pet peeve of mine), but the gunplay? That feels more like a first-person puzzle that gets old fast.

For example, any time you’re not on solid ground, you use up stamina. Run out, and you fall. You can button-mash a last-gasp effort from your worn-out body, but even if that gets you to safety, it drains health and chops your stamina capacity. Neither regenerates. You must consume resources to get them back.

That leads to some hyper-tense climbs. A good chunk of Alive has you traversing a vertical world where low-lying areas are dust-choked deathtraps. You’re constantly watching that stamina bar shrink, angling to reach any kind of refuge you can recover in. And sometimes, you’ve just got to go all in, pushing to reach safety, gulping down whatever scraps of rat meat and water you’ve got to make it through those last agonizing meters.

It gets even crueler when you’re forced down into the dust, which drains stamina and health until you climb above it or die. So do you run — and eat up stamina — to find a climbable pipe faster, or spend longer breathing poison? Either risks not having the strength to pull yourself out of the cloud when you finally find a way out.

That’s where I Am Alive really comes alive. Even the introduction of pitons, which give you an instant breather wherever you are, just add another tactical element to a nicely gritty, occasionally unforgiving game.

I can see the ruins of my house from here!

Unfortunately, you start running into people with machetes and an attitude. But worry not, because the game always gives you exactly what you need to kill them.

Here’s how it goes down, and I mean every single time.

You enter a new area where some tough guys make challenge. One comes over to shove you, and you surprise-kill him by slashing his throat. Then you draw your gun to hold off the others. Now we enter the realm of mathematics: You will always have one bullet less than the number of remaining assailants. If that’s one man, you threaten him with an empty gun until you’re close enough to machete-duel him (via button mashing). Take too long, and he’ll figure out you’re bluffing, run over, and kill you…period.

It’s impossible to take on two guys at once, so you shoot one (the surprise-kill guy drops ammo if you're empty), and go hand-to-hand with the last man standing. If you’re up against four or more people, some of them will have guns. You shoot those chumps first, pick up the one bullet they drop, and then work through the rest as normal.

The metrics change slightly when you add a bow and arrow (just one) to your survival kit, and precision aiming does factor in as armored foes arrive to sloooowly walk over as you line up your headshot, but the song largely remains the same. Get a quick headcount, find the biggest threats, done. You pick the target, but the game auto-aims for you. No challenge there. The maps funnel you straight into these encounters, so forget trying to stealth around them, either.

Ninja speed! ! Rahr!

And that’s the problem. The other half of giving me limited resources is that I should decide when, where, and how to spend them, and Alive often makes those choices instead. When I’m out climbing, it’s all up to me. I go where I want and dare what I want. When it comes to dealing with trouble, everything’s on rails. Too bad, because it stops being a survival game if I’m just going through the motions.

You have to wonder if the original concept for I Am Alive went in a different direction or if it leaned in a more open-world direction before Ubisoft demoted it from a $60 retail release to a $12.50 downloadable. Clearly, somebody on the team really understands the survival genre and how to build the fantastic tension it needs. Then a combat system you'd find dull, predictable, and monotonous in any game snuck in and undermined an otherwise interesting effort.

Seriously now. At one point, I somehow ended up with a stash of five bullets. Five whole bullets! In a game that didn't throw more than five opponents at me at any given time. I felt like a god…but I should’ve been dreading the next encounter.