Scars Above is a challenging sci-fi third-person action adventure shooter combining the rewarding feel of overcoming difficulty with a compelling and intricate story, set in a mysterious alien world to explore.
Some things were not meant to be discovered…
A colossal and enigmatic alien struc...
Scars Above is a challenging sci-fi third-person action adventure shooter combining the rewarding feel of overcoming difficulty with a compelling and intricate story, set in a mysterious alien world to explore.
Some things were not meant to be discovered…
A colossal and enigmatic alien structure appears in Earth's orbit and stuns the entire world; humanity names it ‘The Metahedron’. The Sentient Contact Assessment and Response team (SCAR) - consisting of scientists and engineers - is sent to investigate.
Things don’t go as planned and the Metahedron hauls the team across space onto a mysterious extrasolar planet. Playing the role of Dr Kate Ward - a SCAR member - who wakes up dazed, alone in a strange, hostile environment. Determined to survive, you set out to find your crew and unravel the mystery behind what’s happened.
SURVIVE AGAINST ALL ODDS
Kate is an astronaut and a scientist – not a soldier - but she's resourceful and determined to do anything to survive.
Use a combination of ranged weapons, devices, consumables and melee attacks, you need to manage stamina as you run, dodge, exploit weak points and discover effective tactics to defeat your foes
Combine different elemental attacks to beat the odds and break through otherwise impassable obstacles.
Craft different items and gadgets to aid you against the countless threats in this exoplanet.
EXPLORE A MYSTERIOUS EXOPLANET
Immerse yourself in a carefully crafted adventure, inspired by the sci-fi classics.
Explore an alien world filled with countless threats, gorgeous landscapes and ruins hinting of an ancient - yet advanced - civilisation that somehow disappeared.
Journey through different biomes, such as marshlands, freezing wastelands, underground caverns and alien facilities – all with their own set of challenges, enemies, secrets and environmental hazards.
EMBARK ON A RESEARCH JOURNEY
Kate is a scientist to her core and you'll use that scientific expertise to extract information from your surroundings by scanning artifacts, materials and creatures in order to learn about their features, properties and weaknesses.
As you explore your surroundings, you will conduct analysis and gain knowledge which will allow you to craft new gadgets, weapons and unlock abilities in Xenobiology and Engineering trees.
THRILLING BOSS FIGHTS
Ghastly enemy designs - with diverse strategies and tactics - will keep encounters fresh, forcing you to find creative ways to defeat them.
The Scars Above Experience:
Immerse yourself in an exciting sci-fi adventure inspired by the classics of the genre
Explore an enigmatic and intricate alien world - with plenty of mysteries to uncover
Fight tactically, using a combination of elemental attacks, gadgets and items, exploit the environment and enemy weaknesses
Engage exciting and challenging enemies and bosses, from hulking rock-covered monstrosities to nightmarish creatures lurking in the dark
Gain knowledge and acquire new skills
Scan enemies to learn about their weaknesses and behaviours
Use your scientific skills to conduct research and extrapolate information
Mature Content Description
The developers describe the content like this:
Violence, Depictions mutated human bodies, Depictions of dead and mutilated aliens.
(C)2022, Published by Prime Matter, a Division of PLAION GmbH, Austira. Developed by Mad Head Games. All rights reserved. "Scars Above" is a registered trademark of PLAION gmbH. "Prime Matter" and the PLAION labelname logos are registered trademarks of PLAION GmbH.
Goodies
Contents
Standard Edition
Complete Edition
Soundtrack (MP3)
Soundtrack (WAV)
Artbook (EN)
Artbook (FR)
Artbook (DE)
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
This is a demo their "weapons by elemental type" and mods system.
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The Sci-Fi / Horror aspect is a gimmick. There is no story.
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The weapons all have a 'must charge up before firing' attribute.
You also have to init the 'Aim State' before firing. No snap shots.
There is a manual save, but every hostile in the game re-spawns if you use it.
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A "Once And Done" game.
Your 'only' save is automatically deleted by the game if you finish it.
I played the game on a gaming laptop AsusStrix Ryzen 6900HX, RTX 3070ti, 16GB ram. The game is very well optimized and the graphics are beautiful. Play it in 1080p with the graphics on ultra and a cap of 90 FPS to have better temperature to CPU/GPU. The game never crashed an maintained 90 FPS with everything at ultra without any problem. The game dosen't suport DLSS of FSR but like i said is very well optimized. This game is not a Souls-like it a 3rd person shooter. I played the game on the highest difficulty which i recommend and finish it in 10 hours. Probably on easy or normal it would be a much shorter experience. You have a melee weapon that you will use only for the first 3 minutes until you will get you universal gun so to speak.You will find upgrades for your ranged weapon which has 4 atacks: electricty, fire, ice and toxic (poison). Every element is good for something:fire burns flesh, electricity it's good against armour, ice for slowing enemies down, toxic in order to corde metal armour. You can combine elements:for exemple if one of the enemies is wet beacuse it is in water or it's raining outside and use electricty this will spread to other enemies; you can shoot with the fire element in the ice in order to create holes for enemies to fall and freeze. The gaming mechanics are very interesting.Every big monster has a weakness to certain element. Beside the weapons you have a skill tree that is very simple but you gain more health, amo, damage,armour etc. EXP is found in cubes that are spread all over the world.You will find pillars which restore your health,ammo,and respawn all enemies.Samina bar is consumed when doging or run just like in souls games.You have injections for insant healing, other consumables and gadgets barrier for protection,decoy traps,slow time gadgets,etc).There are 5 boss fights preaty enjoyable.Th story is ok,nothing special, and the game was enjoyable enough.I really recommend this game.Maybe we will have a sequel (open ending).
There is no real exploration but you are locked to specific path with invisible walls and the story is generic Hollywood without any mystery or reason. After introduction you are spawn into a hostail environment.
Combat is quite hard even with easiest difficulty. Weapons are complicated to use and it doesn't seem to be compensated in enemy design. Enemies respawn if you save and can not be skipped or ran away.
The game runs well with ultra graphics with older computers and graphics are ok.
After seeing the demo a couple of years ago, I knew I needed to play the whole thing. This is a solid game, well worth the money and an absolute steal on sale. It'll feel like a third-person shooter at times, but it plays more like a Tomb Raider-esque sci-fi survival game with a few puzzles here and there.
The game mechanics will literally force you to think like the protagonist and utilize the environment to your advantage in any situation. It has three difficulty modes that can be changed any time, a very simplistic level-up system, an array of weapons and gadgets to use on enemies, and a unique blend of survival elements with a research-minded protagonist. The game will occasionally auto-save, and there are save checkpoints all throughout the world. There's also no map, but there are objectives on-screen to follow.
I was really immersed in the story, and it ends on a cliffhanger which I hope means a sequel will be in the works. And the game ran smoothly on my system. The only downside is that not all voice lines are lip-synced, so there are times when someone (mostly Kate) is speaking and their lips are moving, and some where their lips aren't. But this only mildly killed the experience for me, I didn't encounter any bugs that made gameplay difficult/impossible. Beating the game after a little over 9 hours, I feel that I got my money's worth from the game.
Overall, this was a really fun game, and I can see myself picking this up again to try out the other difficulty levels. It works seamlessly with an Xbox 360 USB controller, but if you want to use a Playstation controller, there's a mod for it on the Nexus.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti
Intel Core i5-10300H (2.50GHz)
16 GB RAM
Mouse & Keyboard/Xbox 360 USB Controller
The game is very poorly balanced, looking at Steam achievements, only 24% of people completed the game, why? Well, the combat is ridiculously unbalanced. My first play through on easiest difficulty saw me die over 15 times against the first boss, but not die once against the last. If you can get past the first two bosses the game becomes easier. The same on medium difficulty, get past the first two bosses, and you can play the rest of the game without dying once.
Progression
As you progress you gain more skills and equipment, but the difficulty doesn't get much harder, so the effectively the difficulty drops as you progress. You will gain enough skill points to unlock all of the skills in the game. I was left with 11 unspent points on my last play through.
Changes
I would make the following changes to the game.
* Nerf the first boss.
* Once you have all of the skills, turn off the reminder that you have unspent points.
* Give an option to turn off damage floaters.
* Fix the quest "Scan the alien body", so that if you either do it, or optionally don't do it, the text is removed from the screen, it currently stays on the screen for the rest of the game unless you die.
* Add more save slots, so more than one person can play the game on the same machine.
* Stop taking control of the character outside of cut scenes, I would either like to skip a cut scene, or play the game, don't take away my control during play, because it throws me out of the game.
* The improved weapons are better than the original ones, why are we carrying the old weapons around?
* Change the fire based weapons, so that you can power up shots without lock on, if I miss, I miss.
As a final note: The tag Horror doesn't really apply. I don't know why the tag "Sexual Content" is there, as there is no sexual content in the game. Do people think the female characters are in a relationship, because there is no evidence of this?
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