The feeling of danger and unease is constant, making even safe areas unnerving and threatening locations downright frightening. If not from climbing or the roving gangs of ruthless survivors, from the poisonous fog that eventually covers the city's street level, draining your stamina simply by walking through it before needing to scamper up a building for fresh air. And though level ground offers respite, your stamina will only recover as far as your new maximum, leaving you with less stamina to overcome the next obstacle.Д¬areful movement and meticulous planning of routes can reduce the damage taken but it is impossible to prevent entirely, making some amount of damage frequent and inevitable. Mashing the right trigger allows you to make a last effort to reach level ground, where your stamina will refill, but the stamina depletion only quickens. Should you let it fall entirely the stamina bar's maximum capacity will begin to drop, as will your health. As you climb over and through the rusting ruins of the city, your stamina will slowly deplete. In true survival fashion, your greatest foe is actually Adam's own limitations. Comparisons to Cormac McCarthy's The Road are inevitable and justified, as I Am Alive takes a similarly chilling and mature approach to its post-apocalyptic landscape. The atmosphere is laid thick, with allusions to cannibalism, suicide and rape, among other dark themes that games seldom dare to explore. Away on business at the time of the event, Adam finds his way back to his home city in search of his wife and daughter, only to find the city in ruins. You play as Adam Collins, the survivor of a cataclysmic event that devastated the world. I Am Alive is the polar opposite of that evolution, stressing survival above all else. Over the years, the genre has evolved more towards its horror half, keeping the scares but offering abundant tools for a more action-oriented approach. The animations are stiff, and the dust cloud you get stuck in seems like a cheap way to do away with draw distances.The survival horror genre was first born from the combination of providing players with cheap scares and limited resources. The kicker to all of this is that I Am Alive looks bad. Also, it takes way too long to fire the damn bow. Some opponents require refined accuracy, and the iron sights on the pistol aren't very responsive. I had a hell of a time getting the protagonist to climb poles for a breath of fresh air, to slide down a pipe rather than keep shimmying to a side, and to engage in combat. It's+the+express+train+-+TO+HELL! In fact, the only times I did fall to my death or come close to it were when I was fighting with I Am Alive's controls. So, the chances of a climbing death, and the potential stress involved with the mechanic, aren't all that high. This creates an 'OMG - is he going to make it?!' vibe as the stamina bar is dropping, but items from the dated-looking inventory can re-up the meter on the spot. The protagonist has a stamina bar that drains as he runs and scales stuff. Climbing makes up a big portion of I Am Alive. Here you use your machete to take out the first and last enemies respectively, watching as your blade passes right through the character models. If that wasn't enough to create a rift between you and the experience, there are also Surprise Kills and Struggle Kills. However, these scenarios sometimes mean backing the foe up 20-some feet to the edge, which breaks the realism of the move. Shouting at enemies with a drawn gun makes them backup, and you can use this to kick them into crevices and off of buildings. They're scared of the gun, but not enough to make a mental note that you have it. Lower the weapon and they run at you, leaving you to repeat the process of lowering and raising. If you have no bullets, you can pull the gun on machete-wielding people and get them to raise their hands in surrender - they back off, but not for good. Again, this sounds like an interesting gameplay mechanic, but it ends up being lame. You start the game with a gun but ammunition is scarce.

The wife/daughter thing is answered in the first few minutes, and then the protagonist just does fetch quests. Sounds good in concept, but it falls apart quickly. For the next four to five hours, it's up to you to climb, shoot and survive. This midrange metropolis is his hometown and the last known whereabouts of his wife and daughter. A year after 'the event' took the country offline, tipped over buildings and created some dust cloud that'll kill you if you stay out in it, our protagonist - named revealed as you play the game - marches back to Haventon.

I am alive xbox 360