Reaching for the stars but failing to fully deliver a tale of galactic proportions, Scars Above is a competent and often enthralling sci-fi journey offering a balanced mix of action and puzzles. The intricate mystery will keep you invested and exploring a strange new planet, but it never achieves the brilliance that it hints at, if given more attention to its intriguing idea of elemental weaponry.

The Power of the Elements

Kate Ward is at the center of Scars Above, an astronaut and scientist without any actual weapon training. She is a part of the SCAR, the Sentient Contact Assessment and Response team, which is sent to investigate this gigantic structure that suddenly appeared in the orbit of the Earth. Naturally, things don’t go as expected, and the ship is drawn to this Metahedron shape, with Kate waking up alone on an unknown and hostile planet. Her task is to survive, find the three missing crew members, discover what is going on in this alien place, and perhaps – just perhaps – attempt to return to her home planet. Easier said than done, but Kate will prove to be a surprisingly resourceful army of one.

Scars Above is a third-person action-adventure game with a knack for elemental weaponry and gadget use. Most of the time you will find yourself exploring the planet in a very linear fashion and unlocking new types of weapons, learning how to effectively use them against each foe, and combining arsenal attacks with gadgetry. You can get some fun and ingenious combinations out of these, such as slowing down enemies in a gravity bubble, freezing time as you displace your character to a better location, and lighting them on fire to round it up. It’s an entertaining little playground of chemistry and devastation.

The downside is that you’ll spend quite a few hours limited to a few basic options before the game decides that it’s finally time to go wild and unleash the best options – when that happens, the adventure is nearing its end, so you can expect some glaring pacing issues that could lead to unnecessary early struggles.

The elemental weapons cover the basics: electrical, fire, ice, and toxic, with a couple of them having alternate fire modes available to unlock much later. Kate scans every new enemy and stores the information in a detailed log, analyzing its weak points and how to tackle them. This isn’t entirely obvious at first, but the joy of discovery and elemental combinations is part of the process.

Freezing an enemy to stop it in its tracks and then using the ray gun to hit its weak points is one example of many, but you must learn to play with the environment as well – water is a great electricity conductor, and you can use it to create the so-called wet combos. A chemical combo is another option, as you use your fire and chemical weapons to create a massive enemy combustion. Thin ice is ripe for shattering with your thermic weapon, freezing your opponents as they fall into the icy water and offering you enough time to eliminate them.

Despite the interesting tactical scope, Scars Above lacks the ambition to fully explore all the potential of this system. The elemental chains aren’t entirely organic; they are heavily scripted, mostly ignoring the environment apart from the examples above. It’s a shame that you can’t set the tall grass on fire to create blazing ambuscades, or that your cryo weapon has no effect whatsoever on the flammable bushes that Kate needs to set on fire to prevent hypothermia – this is a nice mechanic to the coldest sections of the snow-based levels, as it adds an additional layer of stress and urgency.

A little imagination could go a long way to create memorable plays to show your friends, but unfortunately you can forget about any sort of free-form elemental combos apart from the ones evidently scripted for the enemies.

The Illusive Planet

Despite an assumed perception of freedom in such a vast planet, most levels in Scars Above are linear and only divert you from the main path for a short span, as the branching paths and sudden dead ends mean that you won’t get sidetracked in this mysterious new world. Nonetheless, sometimes you will be hard-pressed to find the right way to go, as you look for these small gaps between rock formations, or a rare environmental puzzle that you somehow missed; don’t expect anything remotely close to open world – these biomes are linear and favor combat setpieces and puzzles over exploration.

Speaking of puzzles, sometimes you have these examination sections that nicely break up the game. In first-person mode, you must scan a small area or room to discover investigation clues that give you more insight on what is going on. A late area will require some reasoning and backtracking involving limited power sources and elevators, without being too taxing.

There’s an ability tree to unlock with the discovery of knowledge cubes throughout the maps, but scanning new enemies and learning information from other sources also raises your knowledge level. The balancing of these items felt a little off, as the cubes are few and far between during the first couple of hours, but around halfway you’ll begin stumbling upon one every 30 seconds, as if a late realization that it would be interesting to have more of these abilities before the adventure is over.

As Kate moves on, you may be annoyed by the overuse of invisible walls in places where you would be expected to go through, or a noticeable disregard for proper collision detection. The way your character reacts to its surroundings can be rough at times, as if you are enveloped in this area without any concern for the size or height of obstacles preventing your passage. This is more visible when we are trying to outrun a boss within a limited arena and Kate awkwardly glues herself and slides along these invisible walls.

Occasionally, you’ll spot clipping issues where the camera shows the interior of rocks as Kate slides through narrow paths. It’s a minor detail in a planet that looks good, sometimes superb, especially the areas that feel more suffocating, without going into much detail. It’s not difficult to guess where the adventure will take you, but you can enjoy the sights as they are often very enjoyable. The snow biome is extremely appealing, often with a great balance of nature and alien structures to give it a distinct beauty, featuring some stunning snowstorm effects.

Dodge and Roll

Kate is a capable protagonist and a clear adept of the popular dodge roll, her main way of steering clear from danger. Enjoyable to observe and control, a few animations still could do with some finetuning, especially the stiff way of dropping from a ledge, barely bending her legs to soften the fall. It looks weird, a shame considering that while not brilliant, the overall animation is above average.

This dodge roll action by itself won’t slap a Souls-like label on Scars Above, but the ten-hour campaign can be very challenging at times, especially the boss battles. More than blindly charging at each boss, it’s a matter of scanning for weak points, discovering their elemental weaknesses, and learn how to use some of the arena’s designs in our favor. Some encounters are quite memorable, but it’s disappointing to find a certain recycling of bosses throughout the campaign, diminishing the impact they had when we first met them.

Speaking of recycling, the late game also falls prey to this issue. Familiar settings are reused in a bid to extend the longevity of the campaign, linked to a few smaller areas that are vital to the story. This could have been designed in a way that saved us from threading familiar ground, often with the same enemies spawning in the exact same areas as before, giving it an unnecessarily lazy feel.

An epic galactic chronicle that sadly skimps on the epic part, Scars Above is an entertaining but flawed sci-fi romp that could do with expanded design over aspects such as elemental combos and world exploration. There is some challenging combat to enjoy and enticing places to discover, but this ends up feeling like it could have been so much more.

Far from being a wasted opportunity, Scars Above remains a journey worth taking if you’re not the overly demanding type – just turn off your brain, let yourself go, and appreciate the ride for what it is.

Score: 7/10

Pros:

• Elemental combos are fun to use
• Gadgets add another tactical layer to combat
• Challenging boss fights
• Occasional puzzles positively break the action flow

Cons:

• Elemental combos could do with expanded environmental possibilities
• Exploration is mostly linear
• Tired recycling of bosses and later levels

Scars Above review code provided by publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.