Scars Above Review

"Scars Within"

Campaign

January 18, 2024 at 8:45pm
By Jason Stettner

This was one of those fairly generic sci-fi adventures where you take on the role of an individual that’s sort of lost on an alien planet as to say. You play as Kate, a fairly generic Lara Croft type character that’s on a shuttle out to greet this weird structure in space.

Things go awry and you’re on this alien planet not sure what really happened for you to end up here. You’ll figure that out of course as you continue to progress along. It’s a fairly linear game where you move across environments occasionally scanning and also coming across narrative moments.

It’s very jarring as these pre-rendered cinematics look starkly different from gameplay and I’m perplexed as to why they’re so compressed as a few extra gigabytes of space probably would have been worth it here.

The story structuring here is interesting enough, it’s a mystery with some light puzzles that pop up across your journey. I did find some of the movement structuring odd but alas you progress across unique biomes eventually tackling a boss.

It’s a straight forward story as you finish the game and then start from the beginning, some sort of chapter select would have been nice but yeah essentially it’s a story go and you’re done which is totally fine to me.

Gameplay

It’s a third person shooter with elemental effects that impact how much damage your weapons do. You fight select creatures over and over again with the environmental locale slightly altering how they look. There were some neat bosses but the ultimate foe was quite a letdown.

The game does have a weird semi Dark Souls and or Remnant design where you move through a linear space to then open a spot to find a checkpoint pillar. They should have honestly made this straight up story linear as there was no need for this checkpoint system. The game wasn’t open enough for this to make sense and it was distracting or well confusing even at times.

You do gain better tools over the course of the story as you gather extra abilities or veer slightly off the path for an upgrade. There are kind of collectibles to get, mostly XP boosts to get more skill points which make a huge difference on the character. For the most part you get a sense of direction, at times and particularly during boss fights I was slightly confused as to what my goal was in tackling the situation.

As mentioned you’ll be venturing across a number of unique biomes. I actually found the visuals to be generally solid outside of the cinematic changes and the voice performances to be alright. I would have liked more of a dive into the individual character personalities and what not here. On Xbox Series X you’re getting a dynamic 4k resolution at 60fps.

The Conclusion

Scars Above can at times come across as fairly generic, it’s still however a decent enough sci-fi mystery and I think at the right value point you can have an enjoyable time working through it. It’s definitely slightly above an indie type effort and I think with more of a push behind this sort of design, a follow-up could actually really elevate this concept.

I would have liked to learn more about the crew, as they felt somewhat hollow in development. The enemies were also rather repetitive, but I appreciate that there was an attempt to create some level of variation across biomes. It’s an alright time, I had enough fun playing it. Like I said, the right value point and I think there’s something here many could enjoy. Just don’t expect anything too wildly fresh out of the existing box.

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Scars Above Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Tinsley PR

Rating Overall: 6.4