Scars Above review: A short-but-challenging sci-fi adventure
If we've learnt anything in recent years, it's that a bit of science can come in very handy in life-threatening situations, and in a way, that is the premise behind Scars Above. It's very much a survival game, mixing third-person shooting with puzzle-solving, and brings with it a proper sci-fi vibe that at times feels a bit like being on the mother of all Star Trek away missions.
It's not the longest of games, nor perhaps the most original in theme, but does its mid-tier pricing make it a compelling offering for short-on-time sci-fi fans? Here's our review.
4/5
Whether you see it as a survival game, shooter, puzzler or roguelike, Scars Above is clever, polished, challenging and fun.
Set in an indeterminate time in the nearish future, the action starts on a spaceship which is trying to engineer mankind's first contact with aliens. You play Kate Ward, an astronaut who is primarily a scientist — so, although she moves and shoots pretty well, she isn't in any way superhuman. She does, however, have access to some pretty natty technology at least. So far, so Dead Space.
Kate's spaceship has encountered a mysterious alien tetrahedron, and in an initial on-ship preamble, she crafts an energy-gun that will provide the oomph required to scan the alien artefact. Naturally, things don't go according to plan and she wakes up on an alien planet, with the aforementioned gun still in hand. Thanks to useful kit salvaged from her crashed ship, such as a 3D printer, she soon augments with an incendiary gun and a cryogenic gun, which freezes liquid.
These all prove vital, since she soon encounters exotic and dangerous local alien wildlife, as well as some cleverly conceived, mainly physics-based puzzling for which her scientific background
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