If video games were any indication -- the apocalypse is going to be awesome. I'll be riding super charged dirt bikes through a world that's somehow made entirely for it, or have cool weapons that I can modify with parts that are somehow literally lying around everywhere. At the very least, there will always be a few people in need of tasks so I can get food and resources-- a fair payoff to me.

Ubisoft's I Am Alive approaches the end of the world from a different angle though -- placing players in the role of a survivor and placing them in realistic, dire circumstances. There are some bold design choices here, but none of them really work all that well and as a result, I Am Alive is a mess of a game that tries hard to be edgy but merely manages to feel boring and predictable. I Am Alive is yet another game long in development that comes nowhere near our expectations.

"...there are some real emotional moments to be found..."

I Am Alive casts players in the role of Adam, a survivor of "the event" a mega earthquake that's wiped out most of life on Earth. It's year after the events of...the...event, and Adam returns to his hometown of Haventon to find his wife and daughter; if they're still alive. Here's the kicker though -- that question is answered no more than 30 minutes into this four to five hour game, and thus you're left with a game that just seems to exist without any real sense of purpose. It's a shame too, because there are some real emotional moments to be found in I Am Alive, but with no real worthwhile thread to weave them together, it's very unsatisfying.

Throughout I Am Alive's campaign, you're going to be tasked with a lot of shimmying and climbing to survive. Here's what I don't get, you're supposed to be playing as this character who is doing all of this out of necessity, he has no other option right? Then why is he hopping around on these gigantic structures as if he's Nathan Drake? The game often places you in these supposedly epic and daring situations but you never really appreciate them simply because your character doesn't seem to either. Sure, there's a stamina meter that depletes with everything you do, but it's a flawed mechanic since literally everywhere you climb, you'll have plenty of time to reach a stable point or be able to find an item to replenish it before you even get close to it depleting.

"...It just feels plain lazy..."

You'll start off I Am Alive with a gun, but ammo will be scarce, so you'll have to rely on your machete and other items you find around the area for combat. None of the kills have any context or weight to them, and you're more often than not just going to see your weapon tearing through the character model. It just feels plain lazy. You can attempt to get a gun from hostile survivors you come across, as they'll drop it and put their hands up when you aim at them, but this mechanic feels broken too. Sure, they stop when you aim at them, but when you come closer to them and eventually stop aiming at them, they start heading towards you. Your only real option when going this route is to back them up enough so they'll be in prime position to kick them directly off a building. I'll admit -- it's a cool feature the first few times you do it, but when it happens over and over, and you have to back someone up almost the entire length of the building, it becomes very tiresome.

I Am Alive attempts to create tension by making the player truly feel desperate and stranded in an apocalyptic world. Though it takes quite a few bold chances, they rarely pay off and as a result, I Am Alive is little more than a mess. Sure, it tries really hard to be edgy, but it's still something you're not going to enjoy much at all.