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Scars Above Review: An unnecessary sci-fi Soulslike

Interesting design choices make for a frustrating experience.

To the newly established Soulslike lover in me, Scars Above had potential to be my game of the year. After all, it aims to mix punishing combat with a sci-fi vibe. Sadly, it misses the mark on a number of metrics and results in a shooter that’s more frustrating than enjoyable.

If you caught a first glimpse of Scars Above, you’d be forgiven if mistaking it for Mass Effect Andromeda. Protagonist Kate Ward not only looks like the default female Ryder, but wears a nearly identical ensemble; the interior of your space vessel also features the same, sterile look as in the ships featuring throughout BioWare’s epic franchise.

Andromeda this is not, however — you quickly learn that Ward is a team member of the titular SCARS, an elite team of explorers and scientists that are tasked with investigating a tetrahedron-shaped alien entity that’s parked itself above Earth. To say that the mysterious ship (?) isn’t peaceful is an understatement and Kate soon finds herself alone and stranded in an alien environment with hardly any resources.

While you initially take on foreign nasties using melee weaponry, Scars Above is without doubt a shooter. Kate quickly recovers an electrical weapon that’s featured in the tutorial and soon adds additional elements to her arsenal. You can freeze baddies, set them alight, and even construct tools that heal, add ammo, throw holo decoys or even disperse flammable liquids.

Dodging, shooting and occasionally meleeing your way through baddies, Kate’s main mission is to find her teammates and assess the threat that’s on Earth’s doorstep. Scanning the corpses of fallen attackers not only adds to your knowledge (in-world and otherwise) but feeds into a (somewhat shallow) upgrade system that allows for more health, efficient tool usage and more.

Scars Above borrows liberally from the Soulslike genre, offering up checkpoints in the form of alien totems that heal and replenish consumables at the cost of respawning all the baddies around you. Level design is perhaps Scars Above‘s crowning achievement, with developer Mad Head Games creating some clever, original Dark Souls-like environments that connect back upon one another in delicious ways. It also features puzzles as in Mass Effect or in Tomb Raider, coupled with Arkham City-like crime scenes that are similarly clever and enjoyable.

That said, Scars Above deviates from the likes of Elden Ring with a voiced protagonist throughout proceedings, with industry veteran Ashly Burch providing the dulcet tones of Ward (and more). Burch can’t be faulted for a spectactular performance, though her dialogue (and the general narrative of Scars Above) seems forced and usually, predictable.

While Burch is pretty chatty, the cadence of her dialogue is unpredictable. Aloy-like, she’ll bark out the answer to a simple puzzle you’ve already figured out but, seconds in, haven’t been able to actually follow on. At other times, when facing giant bosses who can’t be scanned to reveal all-important weak points, she’ll simply say, “ooh, this’ll require some creative thinking” whilst not giving any further hints on what to do. That particular sequence stumped me for longer than I’m caring to admit.

I was initially offered a review code for Scars Above on PC, and after hours of it on both Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, I now understand why. While it’s mostly presentable on console, there are periods of framerate slowdown and stutter on Series S, and in a Soulslike that’s make or break. More importantly, this is a shooter through and through — on medium or hard difficulities, pixel-perfect precision is required to hit enemies in their weakspots. To say that’s challenging is an understatement, though I’m absolutely certain things would be far easier using a keyboard and mouse.

While aiming is most of the challenge on console, it’s more the management of tools and weapons that can prove problematic. As an example, one enemy needs a gravity well to slow down (admittedly optional), followed by a fuel grenade, followed by a flame shot and then, finally, an electricity shot to its heart-positioned weak point. The time allowed to manage all those elements is tight as the baddie regenerates armour. Switching between weapons in the wrong order — or having one weapon needing to be reloaded in that sequence — means you’ll likely fail and will have to try again. That’s including on Scars Above‘s lowest difficulty.

On that, I’d recommend most attempt Scars Above on medium difficulty before dropping down to Rookie, its lowest setting, just to see the difference. As Kate jumps into a new alien world, she’s absolutely outgunned and overwhelmed; it’s simply not fun. Without a shield, tools and packing one single gun, she’s far too vulnerable to groups of enemies that bum rush you at the same time ranged troops lob projectiles at you. As you progress some of this lessens, though you’ll start taking damage from your environment if you’re not managing things like Kate’s temperature properly (on top of her stamina, of course). Simply put, if Scars Above abandoned some of this core Soulslike stuff as part of what it’s doing, there’d be a fun challenge presented instead of mostly frustration.

A Soulslike this is though, so I have to point out flaws that simply should not exist. That aforementioned frustrating period where I wasn’t putting even a scratch on a baddie? Unlike Elden Ring or Dark Souls, I couldn’t go backtrack and kill baddies to amass points and increase my stats; apart from scanning lore drops or newly discovered opponents, you’re locked into what you have. While dying causes you to restart from your nearest checkpoint, there’s no real risk-reward system to be found as is within other entries in the genre.

Framerate drops aside, I continually found myself getting stuck in the environment while I was trying to dodge attacks. That’s not excusable in a game that demands perfection — combined with the requirement for your aforementioned perfect aim — when playing. Ultimately, the balancing of Scars Above is off, and it leads to an experience that’s, ultimately, hindering.

While Scars Above has a predictable story, it’s nevertheless an engaging, interesting sci-fi title that would have benefited as a shooter/exploration hybrid rather than the Soulslike it wants to be. Your expierience will definitely vary, though if you’re intrigued by its premise at all, don’t be afraid to drop down to its lowest difficulty in order to try to experience it.

6 out of 10

Scars Above was reviewed using a promotional code on Xbox Series S & X, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.

Scars Above

28 February 2023
PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
 

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About the author

Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.