One of the best characters is a little girl called Mei, a toddler who is brought to life on screen by superb animation and voice acting. I won't explain what happens, but not everyone you meet is an adversary or a bonus objective. It's often chilling, but never gratuitous, even when things get really serious.Īt least you're not always alone. One of them is being used as bait to lure you in, another wants a last cigarette before dying and one of them - a young girl - is bound up and about to be raped when you intervene. The developers aren't shy about how horrible things will probably be when everything turns to rust and ash, and they usually express their thoughts using the 20 other survivors you can optionally locate and save throughout the adventure. What I Am Alive lacks in originality, though, it makes up for in execution, because it really nails the tone.

Release date: 7th March (XBLA), Q1 2012 (PSN).

Platforms: Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network.

Faced with a group of three enemies early on, you wait for one to approach before slicing his throat without warning, then force another to his knees at gunpoint and pistol-whip him into unconsciousness, before shepherding the remaining bad guy towards a precipice and booting him off. You also get a gun, and a machete for close encounters, but you rarely have much ammo at all, so you have to be quite wily when confronted by desperate scavengers. You do have the classic video game hero's prodigious climbing skills, allowing you to scale twisted skyscrapers and collapsing suspension bridges like there's no tomorrow (which I suppose there isn't), but you have to take a breather quite often or else you will do yourself serious damage and potentially collapse and die.

Right from the start, resources are scarce - even your own health and stamina. Unfortunately, the city is in poor shape and your family home is deserted, so you set out through the streets looking for signs of life, recording a series of video messages on your camcorder which allow developer Ubisoft Shanghai to advance the plot. It's a shroud under which I Am Alive runs around doing interesting things for the five or six hours it takes to finish.Īs one of only a few scattered survivors of an apocalyptic event referred to by everyone as The Event, you start the game by arriving at the fictional American city of Haventon where you used to live with your wife and daughter, following a long trek from coast to coast to reach them.

Years of popular fiction - games, novels and films - have rammed this home to such an extent that it blankets the world of pop culture like its own sort of nuclear winter.

When the world ends, resources will be scarce, plants and animals will die out, human beings will eat each other and everyone will dress like a tramp.

I am alive xbox 360