Scars Above - PS5 Review

Scars Above by developer Mad Head Games and publishers DeepSilver and Prime Matter—SonyPlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes.

Scars Above is a challenging game with solid if unspectacular presentation values and an interesting enough story that kept me engaged until the end. This is not a AAA title, but despite some rough edges, Scars Above is worth a play for someone looking for a somewhat Souls-like science fiction game.

The narrative follows our protagonist named Kate – a member of The Sentient Contact Assessment and Response Team (or SCAR) - who is a resourceful person pressed into a dangerous situation. While she is not a soldier, she will have to fight her way out of a very hostile environment that is constantly trying to kill her Kate’s resourcefulness has her using the element and crafted items to help even the odds in this third-person action-RPG.

Souls-like might feel like an odd comparison, given the overall style (much of which is ranged combat) and setting, but it feels like everything is trying to kill you. It’s not just the enemies, but the environment too. It lacks some of the subtle balance found in Souls titles though, that often punish but teach in a way that feels fair if often frustrating. Scars Above has a higher percentage of ‘what the hell’ moments for me, where things didn’t necessarily feel entirely fair or balanced. You really will need to learn how to leverage the environment to your benefit during combat to get the most out of the game.

Scars Above has a solid foundation, but most of the gameplay is pretty basic. You can dodge out of the way of enemies, but there’s no cover / shooting, which feels at odds with more modern shooters. It doesn’t help that I felt like I was wrestling with the third-person camera at times. In larger, more open environments it worked great. However, Scars Above encourages you to explore nooks and crannies now and again, taking you off of the otherwise somewhat linear primary path. In these instances, the camera just feels cramped and awkward.

That being said, I enjoyed the overall feel of the gameplay once I figured out how to approach things. It is not the longest of games, ringing in about a dozen hours to fully unlock all of Kate’s skills and find the various items scattered about. One of the primarily characteristics of most Souls-like games is the sense of satisfaction that comes with a hard-fought victory against really stacked odds. The typical enemy is seldom all that interesting, but several of the boss encounters stand out enough to help provide that rush with a hard-fought victory. It’s during these fights (and some of the bigger but not-quite-boss types) that you’ll find yourself making greater use of Kate’s arsenal and skills. It’s pretty easy to max out Kate’s abilities long before the game’s end if you are keeping an eye out for the knowledge / experience orbs.

Now, this is not a AAA title, but I’d go so far as to say it’s at least AA quality. The presentation is solid overall, with excellent environmental visuals and sound effects. This is important, given how much the environment factors into the gameplay. There’s a sort of inherent creepiness to the setting, especially some of the darker ones. Unfortunately that’s something as much due to the inconsistent / peculiar lighting as the tension of the gameplay. There are times that there is light and shadow in places that feel kind of off. Also, for as good as the environments look, the character models are stiff and lifeless most of the time. In particular, faces struck me as rather lifeless, which was unfortunate given the fairly game effort provided by the voice actors here.

In terms of the story itself? It’s alright. I liked the idea that Kate’s not a hardened soldier, but I have to wonder how anyone but a battle-trained soldier would survive all of this. Still, the story has some nice moments where you get solid backstory, while still progressing towards the ending. I seldom felt like I was making important narrative discoveries along the way, but I was invested enough to see things through. There’s really no replay value to be had here, which when combined with the fairly short playtime, could raise the question of overall value. While this doesn’t ring in at a AAA price point, I couldn’t blame someone who felt the value here was a bit better in waiting for a sale either.

Summary

Scars Above scratches an interesting itch, with it’s take on Souls-like boss battles and clever use of environments, but mixing things up with a science fiction setting. That being said, this is not a AAA title and has some rough edges that detract from the experience once in a while. Still, if you’re willing to look past those blemishes and the somewhat short duration of the game, I had fun far more often than not as I took Kate on this adventure of hers.

Score: 6.5 / 10

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The Last Oricru Review

The Last Oricru by developer GoldKnights and publisher Prime Matter—Microsoft Xbox Series X|S review written by David with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

The Last Oricru starts off with you trapped in a coffin-like pod, from inside which you watch another one of these things get cracked open by some lumbering, zombie-like creature. This is followed by your own coffin getting cracked open, and you’re promptly stabbed through the gut by one of these things. Yay! It’s a soulslike and you start the game by dying. Plot twist here though, instead of being dead the whole game, you’re actually immortal! When you die, you’re reborn through the weird glowing belt that exists outside of your clothing regardless of improbability or function. I was actually pretty disappointed that this wasn’t used as an opportunity for a diegetic health bar like Isaac got in Dead Space but alas, this is not the case.

Wake up to an insulting man that simultaneously goes out of his way to be a donk, and explains the basic function previously mentioned, and then follow a humanoid rat to the other guy who’ll train you. The whole vibe of these two seem like a weird cross between pseudo-viking fiction aesthetic and a thick dose of orientalism for the “monk” feeling you’re supposed to get from them. Meet a couple other humans on the way and confirm that no, these Naboru people are not humans. They both have very different opinions on the situation though, and following up with both of them will reveal a bit about the central conflict. Not anything you’ve missed this far, but just in case , you get two opinions on whether the Ratkin deserve the apparent slavery they’re in or not.

Two sides to pick from, and one is justifying slavery with lines pulled straight out of Race Science nonsense. Okay then. Your first bit of training involves going to get weapons from a ratkin in the armory named Gok. I actually really enjoy Gok’s lines here, he’s good at playing into the “stupid rat” stereotype he gets treated with, and has a lot of jokes about “lots of rat iron-y” to come. You follow this up by being told to execute a ratkin for stealing from the kitchen. Hold up here. Argue against that and suddenly Tobias, your trainer, has a story about how his poor niece got taken in the night to their hole and eaten, sacrificed for their religion’s rituals. Blood Libel just casually wrapped into the way this whole racial conflict is cast.

I wanna take a moment out of this to just wonder why this story needed to be told this way. Before we go any further and learn any more details about this setup. Why do we need to tell stories of realistic racism using real world racism as just set dressing. Set dressing for a conflict between shiny armored, city-dwelling, alabaster nobility and their barbaric rat slaves. Maybe they’re being heavy handed, but they’re doing it wrong. For centuries Europeans used claims of children being taken, eaten, sacrificed as an excuse to evict, harass, abuse, and murder my people. Someone I grew up with commented about how they always thought I’d looked like a rat when I started being more open about my embracing of my roots in a Jewish American immigrant family.

American imagery frequently casts traditional African and Indigenous American cultural and religious practices as barbaric. They're using the same claims and the same nonsense racial science to justify real world slavery, and abuse of black and indigenous peoples across both American continents and everywhere they got dragged to serve. Rodents are a favorite depiction by racists of their targets. The whole setup of this story is just itchy to me. Tell stories about racism. Reject it heavy-handedly if that’s the aim here, but don’t pull real examples and slap them ham-fistedly across your “partially terraformed planet” science-fantasy setting. It’s gross, and made the game harder to play than the utter lack of direction it’s levels often have. This all continues to this day in real life.

Moving onto the next bit then. You get your first real option after killing Durg, you can’t get out of it that I found, and Gok is upset about it. Before you go to the next portion of the training though, and the game doesn’t mention that part, Gok wants a medical kit, so you get to explore a bit and learn just how much padding the game has in play-time by its unnecessarily labyrinthine level design and no suggestion of a map or compass. Maybe I’m just bad at navigating. Do the training, win or lose the next fight it doesn’t matter, the queen arrives!

And now we have a stealth portion to a game with zero stealth mechanics other than “Lol he looked at you” and then you die. (You don’t die here but later you do). The queen is looking for artifacts like the one you either succeeded at hiding or didn’t, and you get the chance to pick a side. Respect the Ratvolution. There are some fun dialogue bits throughout this, the giant spider fight is harder than the next three “boss” fights combined just because of animation nonsense par for the subgenre.

Leveling up is important, especially because your carry weight only goes up if you want it to, and gear weight affects your movement and attack speed. These terminals pop up every now and then, the first is in the dungeons of the monastery you start in, the game hands this to you directly, and you’ll recognize them from a mile away when you see them from here. They serve as reset points. Your health potions and resources refill when you come in or die, but so to do the enemies respawn. Killing things collects Currency, death removes Currency. If you make it back to your death spot you can pick up most of what you lost, if you die again it’s gone forever. Many of you know the drill I’m sure.

The combat isn’t overly punishing. It doesn’t feel like it has much weight to it, and what actually stops an animation or attack seems inconsistent, but that last bit might be a failing on my part. The terminals are how you access level-ups, gear upgrades, story updates, and activate the co-op function, which itself was pretty cool. There’s some synergy combat features they included just for co-op mode, which is both local split screen and online.

If these games aren’t your vibe because of that combat barrier that does exist, it’s got a switch to Story difficulty so you can just go through the adventure they wrote. And it is a pretty entertaining one. I like that I can’t tell how much I can actually trust Gok. I loved finding the pieces of Bufus’ armor and learning how he died before we got there, saving the surviving Brather responsible. The visuals are consistently great too. While there’s some Indie Jank, mostly in dialogues (necklaces like to vibrate pretty violently), it’s not disruptive in a way I noticed and the character models are solidly detailed.

The world too is absolutely beautiful. There’s a view you get early on of a seduction of the cover art that’s currently serving as my Xbox’s home screen. Problems with the type of story they’re trying to tell being told the way they’re trying to tell it aside, I do find myself enjoying that aspect of the game. Knowing I’ll come back to make other choices to see just how far the game changes, and finding myself wanting to see more. I’m a sucker for setting though, what can I say. Talking any further about the progression of the game is just spoilers for their own sake, maybe I'll make a deeper story analysis, but not in this article.

With a heavy handed and uncomfortable racial conflict at its center, every choice alters the way the game progresses. Fight this Soulslike fight alone, or with a friend, but maybe wait for the sale.

Score: 6 / 10

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Dolmen Review

Dolmen by developer Massive Work Studio and publisher Prime Matter—Microsoft Xbox Series X|S review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes 

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Having originally taken a look at Massive Work Studio and Prime Matter’s Dolmen on the PC during the holiday break, this was one Soulslike that I've had on my mind since. Leaving behind the more medieval settings that so many have worked within, this adventure is all about how to survive in a non-dystopian science fiction format.

By this point in time I am definitely no stranger to a Soulslike. Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, The Surge 1 / 2, Salt and Sanctuary / Sacrifice, Ender Lilies, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and several others. Each of these titles, whether from From Software or others, whether I’ve gone through and platinumed on the PSN or not, have continued to build what is now an incredible genre that has begun spanning multiple others for some pretty crazy adventures.

So it's within these titles that you can both see the influences and the innovations which is what drew me to Dolmen. After receiving a distress call, you are sent to investigate a planet where the material known as a Dolmen is mined. Not only has tragedy fallen to those that worked here, the walls of reality have blended making everything a surprise for both you, and your navigator.

So it's here that I once again find myself but with both prior knowledge of the first stage ahead of me and the thirst to know what comes next. Paving some new ground in order to find out, Dolmen has your protagonist equipped with a Health bar, a Stamina bar and an Energy bar. While health is the obvious one of how many hits you can take, stamina is also fairly self explanatory being how much you can swing your weapons, run around or dodge various enemy attacks.

Energy though is where things got interesting. Channeling the science fiction elements, Dolmen allows for you to equip a variety of futuristic long range weapons such as pistols and rifles over to shotguns for some serious up close, yet still ranged, action. Each of these not only take varying costs of energy, but can also switch between temporary or permanent energy depending on the firing mode. Temporary energy will be restored after a time of not being used like your physical stamina. Permanent usage tends to carry a much higher impact but at the cost of having less overall energy to work with.

Moving into a more melee build, it’s also possible to equip yourself with an element of your choice and channel it into your attacks. Fire, Ice, Acid, these can be swapped between whenever you need to and will act as your primary element when you really need a boost. This boost uses temporary energy so there’s no reason not to use it. It makes the implemented energy system just as useful for melee builds as it does for ranged builds. Finally in regards to elements, not only do these do what you would expect such as fire burning and ice slowing you or others down, but they also add percentage based status effects such as fire also decreasing an enemy’s defense making it a favorite of mine.

Also keeping things interesting is that energy is also used to heal yourself by taking a portion of your permanent reserve. This can be done in quick succession if needed, but once it’s done, like your range weapons, that gauge will wind up pretty empty. So it’s a good thing that like other Soulslikes, you have a specific item that exists for this very situation. The only catch that comes with using this consumable is that it won’t restore your energy completely and it takes time in order to use it. So if you are planning on using it? Make sure you have the time as you often won’t in a boss fight!

Now here’s where I found myself at odds. On one hand, all of these ideas still felt as well thought out as they had back over the holidays when I first took a look. On the other hand, I found myself thinking back to Hellpoint where while the ideas were all there, the execution of these ideas at times had me wondering, is it just me or is it the system? Dolmen for lack of a better term “isn’t easy”. Enemies hit hard, the environment isn’t forgiving and the boss even more so. This is generally what we look for in a Soulslike, but, there is a difference between being hard and fair versus hard and what the hell just happened.

A lot of your enemies won’t flinch and be able to hit you as you hit them. Bosses will oftentime have completely unblockable attacks meaning that if you want to survive, you’ll need to get good at long range attacks or learn to dodge like a pro. Spoiler alert… I did the first one. It’s not that dodging isn’t feasible but if you keep dodging all of these attacks, there’s no stamina left to work with, so I opted for a more ranged build. This build is perfectly within the cards but there are a lot of times that it felt ineffective versus a good old fashioned stick.

So it’s really here that I started to have both a love and a hate relationship as there’s one other element that comes into play. Character gear. For character gear, the first set of these is going to be your armor sets that can be mixed and matched if you want to, or, can all be the same vein of technology in order to get better synergy. The better the synergy, the more bonuses you can expect from the pairings. Also great is that as new gear gets unlocked, or old gear improved, the new pieces may blend technologies allowing even better synergy.

Still on the love side, as you create or modify your gear, you can put in components to increase various statuses and gain bonuses to its physical or elemental resistances. Where I started to form a hate relationship is also here as to create any new gear, not only do you need new materials, you also need to make sure that you have the stats for it. While this sounds par for the course, if you level a chest armor from level 2 over to level 3, you NEED to check the required stats as it will change if you aren’t paying attention the first time. You can’t wear it and will be a lot squishier for the foreseeable future until you can.

Also, only requiring the materials to create or level up gear can be a chore as it’s luck based if you can even find it. Weapons are not as bad, however, they don’t unlock as frequently as gear often making me wonder when I can get something new because what I have just isn’t cutting it. There are certain better weapons that in a sense are more readily available but you’ll have to fight for them which is perhaps where Dolmen re-won me over. You can respawn bosses to basically farm them for materials to create special weapons.

This is a feature often not found in a Soulslike. Generally, once a boss has been defeated the next time you see them will be in a new game plus (NG+) and if you got material for a weapon? You need to choose wisely as it’ll be a while before you can again. Being able to respawn bosses was a neat addition but it doesn’t come without a cost. To respawn a boss, you’ll need two things. The first are nanites which is what you need in order to level yourself up. The second are Dolmen shards that you can randomly pickup from enemies. They drop often enough but I would highly advise NOT to go into a new boss fight while carrying double digits. Go spend them first unless you are really sure that you can win.

Summary

So overall, Dolmen is sitting somewhere in the middle for me. On one hand, you have some really great ideas, but on the other, there’s still some refinement to be made to the overall experience. A lot of these issues I could see being fixed down the line through a few balancing and adjustment patches, but I think Massive Work Studio and Prime Matter have done a good job. I hope to both see some refinement as well as a potential sequel down the line.

Score: 6.75 / 10

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Dolmen - PC Preview

Dolmen by developer Massive Work Studio and publisher Prime Matter—PC (Steam) preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes 

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Right before the holidays I was treated to a first look at Massive Work Studio and Prime Matter’s Soulslike action adventure RPG Dolmen. Traveling to Revion Prime which happens to be the only planet in the Reviam system, you’re basically walking into a mess to discover what happened to the mining operation of Dolmen crystals as you fight off a variety of hostile alien species.

Now, I already mentioned that I was “treated” to a first look at Dolmen as it was indeed a treat. A bit worried that the solid premise could potentially fall flat like that of Hellpoint which is still being worked on, the only thing I can really say above all else is that I need the final version of this as soon as possible. Channeling the spirit of a Soulslike perfectly, Dolmen is a science fiction adventure with swords, axes, laser rifles, pistols and energy shields as you try to stay alive while moving through each environment looking for the way forwards.

For this current version though, we were treated to a catered and more on rails experience. Split between two environments and two bosses, once we finished up the first area we were whisked off to the next with upgraded gear to get a look at what things looked like partway through the adventure. Other than maybe having wanted an upgrade to my “base” chosen classes as I went through a few times only to get my ass handed to me by the second boss… I will defeat him… the flexibility exists in order to go through Dolmen as you see fit.

While technically sporting two core play styles of melee or ranged, there are plenty of options in between with light and heavy weapons as well as dual wielding and guns. Heavy weapons which I started with pack a punch and your enemies won’t last long but they take up more stamina to swing and to use in general. Lighter weapons you’ll get more hits in but wonder why the hell some enemies are not dying. With both of these though, there’s a sub elemental system which allowed us to infuse Fire, Ice or Acid damage into our attacks as long as we had the energy to keep it up.

It’s in the start of these features that Dolmen stands as more than just a futuristic Dark Souls clone. On top of this augmented elemental system, you have three meters to keep an eye on. Health, obviously to keep you alive. Stamina, which is used to swing your weapons around and run fast. Energy which is used for the elemental augments as well as firing your ranged weapons AND healing. Yes, AND healing.

This is where some adaptation really had to be made especially as I restarted and tried the more ranged based classes. Instead of having one time use items or specific healing items, you heal using your stored energy. Taking up a good chunk of your meter, you may depending on your leveling up of stats get one or two heals in but, if you do, then you’ll have a lot less augmented elemental time to work with as well as a lot less energy in order to shoot your enemies from afar. Topping this off, while you do have restockable energy items, they take time to use and you generally don’t have much time to use them once the action gets going.

From here, there are several things that I really enjoyed. First, Dolmen is a single player experience “except” for boss fights. For these, you can not only summon in help but actually respawn the boss to do it all over again. Take that NG+. Second, your gear isn’t useless once you find or create better gear. Instead, you can take created gear and make it better over time with new items and then mixing and matching your sets. Go fashion souls! Lastly, while primarily a console player and the controller functions worked great, on the PC version I was able to play in ultrawide really giving me amazing looks at my environment in 3440x1440 on a RTX 3080. It was gorgeous to look at.

Finally, the last subject to cover and I wonder if more will be done with it is that of death. You’re going to die whether from falling off a ledge, getting spewed magma in the face, getting clawed to death by a super mob which takes a bit of visual squinting to know which one you're about to piss off and the list can go on. Once you die though, you respawn from the last transfer point and get to do it all again and like other Soulslike, only have one chance to make it back to your body to get the currency you picked up. What I’m curious about is that instead of saying you died, and thankfully not you suck, is that it says timeline erased in which it’s almost like it never actually happened and that’s what I’m wondering if anything else will be done with in the final version.

If I had any issues or concerns at this point though it would be that the cinematics would have to be adjusted for an ultrawide resolution either by revamping them or just putting black bars on the side in order to make them look more natural. The other item is that when locked onto a larger enemy like the first boss I couldn’t see its face and because of that couldn’t see what it was about to do from either spewing stuff at me or preparing to launch an unblockable attack. That would need to be fixed. Otherwise while I did hit a difficulty jump, it was expected as it was part of the catered experience but then again, regardless of the class I started with, I had a chainsaw sword that would only make Ash Williams proud.

Summary

Overall though, from just this catered experience, there’s going to be a lot to jump into and discover with Dolmen and I really can’t wait to see the final version once it’s finalized. Thank you again for the first look!

Score: N/A

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