Scars Above

I feel video games wouldn't need to be so bound to having artificial gravity on spaceships. They're not restricted by real life, no filming real of actors that need to be dropped down and up aboard a plane (or whatever technique they use) to float about. Of course, it might take some unusual work to animate characters (zero-g motion capture?), script scenes, and design ship interiors and movement for microgravity but it's been done before. I think it would add to immersion and you wouldn't need to increase the expected level of in-game technology to something so high. If humanity had the ability to create artificial gravity within ships, surely they would be able to send something bigger than a small, mere 4-person ship to greet a colossal alien object that has arrived to Earth's orbit like in Scars Above.

Uninspired, yet functional, sci-fi adventure

The ship segment prologue of Scars Above isn't that long so it would have been doable for the probably fairly modest-size team at the Serbia & Bosnia and Herzegovina based Mad Head Games, though they do seem to be one of the subsidiaries of the bigger company Saber Interactive, acquired while Saber was still under Embracer. Upon contact with the alien object, dubbed Metahedron, the protagonist, doctor Kate Ward wakes up on an alien planet with no clue where the rest of her SCAR team and their Hermes ship are.

The game's few human faces are not the prettiest. Kate's in particular bothered me; reminded me of Greta Thunberg. In some cutscenes with dialogue, I got real Mass Effect: Andromeda flashbacks with the goofy facial animations. Some gameplay animations, like running, seem a bit stiff, too, but are easier to ignore. Otherwise visuals are convincing enough.

Scars Above is a third person action-adventure shooter that borrows few features from the soulslike subgenre such as stamina-expending dodge rolling and bonfires (pillars) that are diegetic, how ever implausible that may seem. You don't drop resources upon death but resting at the pillars to restore your health kits and ammunition also respawns enemies.

I found the game fairly entertaining but it does start to get a bit monotonous eventually. Despite the variety of enemy types, fighting them doesn't vary as much. Abilities (gadgets) feel redundant with each other: the throwable gravity trap bubble is easily the best one; little reason to use any other. There's also but one button to use gadgets from: you first have to select a different one from the weapon wheel. That further discourages using anything but the gravity trap. Weapon modes do have hotkeys but that's just 4 used: plenty more on the keyboard.

By searching every corner, you end up 100%ing Scars Above without even looking anything up. The only achievement that you're likely to miss when being thorough is 'Final Destination' that is unlocked by using the shield gadget to deflect a lethal attack, simply because you're using the gravity trap all the time instead. The game is largely linear, although the path does branch constantly for short side trips. Exploration is rewarding thanks to the various weapon upgrades you can find as well as the knowledge cubes that give you perk points. There's more than enough cubes to max all your perks: I had 10 points to spare at the end.

Scars Above is not an overly long game, although it did take me 3 hours more than the 8.5-hour completionist average on How Long to Beat. It could be shorter, too, for the story doesn't really have that much meat to it. The game's soundtrack has few cool tracks fitting for an alien mystery atmosphere.