Scars Above Reviews
Scars Above is a journey into a mysterious planet that lacks polish, depth, and balance, preventing it from being a memorable third-person shooter.
A good example of a game that would have needed a thorough review to go out and reduce its true quality. Some ingredients are fine, but the set is below what you would expect from a "space" adventure like this. It's not terrible, but it's forgettable, unfortunately.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Scars Above is a great addition to the library of single player adventures and it tells an engaging sci-fi story that interrogates ideas of genetic manipulation, free will, and sacrifice. While it loses momentum a little towards the end, it serves as a fantastic advertisement for smaller budget games and is well worth picking up.
As a TPS with soulsike elements and a sci-fi setting, Scars Above fails to be a worthy heir to Returnal due to several limitations that make the game very different to shine, especially from a technical point of view.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Scars Above offers a space adventure that mixes several genres with an asymmetric result that does not work as well as it should.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Scars Above tried to make its place by adding twists onto well know mechanics, but tragically falls just short. While it does bring many new and interesting ideas to the table, it is hard to notice them when none of the other mechanics seem to work well together.
Scars Above is a well-crafted third-person shooter with plenty of options to take on the punishing alien world you find yourself in.
Scars Above is unfortunately bland, with dull combat and very few puzzles. It has hints at interesting ideas and ambitions, but couldn't execute on those.
Unless one is really desperate to unlock a bunch of easy achievements, there is no real reason to play Scars Above. It's like a video game rough draft. Some games have been accused of being half-baked, but Scars Above is like raw dough. It has some interesting concepts and weapons, but it never grows into anything resembling a full-fledged gaming experience. Its budget price of $40 is still asking way too much, even for the most diehard third-person shooter enthusiasts. Scars Above may mimic games like Returnal and Dark Souls, but it is highly unlikely to please fans of either game.
It's just a shame really that, in its efforts to be a solid action-adventure, none of its ideas were explored any deeper as we'd have loved to have seen the team swing for the fences in one area or another to produce something truly standout.
I hope Mad Head Games gets another chance to build upon these ideas in a future sequel. But for now, as it stands, Scars Above is still a perfectly serviceable and surprisingly challenging shooter primed to indulge Sci-Fi fans.
Overall, Scars Above just can’t rise above its AA roots. This translates to some cut-rate animations, character models, and environments. The game’s primary weapon is good enough, as is the story and combat. But just being adequate is a tough sell. It’s hard to imagine Scars Above moving to the front of the Soulslike line.
Scars Above is a solid sci-fi romp with an identity complex. It wants so badly to be a Soulslike and instead feels more like a game that just borrows ideas without understanding what makes them work. I enjoyed my playthrough, but I wish it would have leaned into its own ideas instead of trying to mimic something else. The story is interesting, the game play is fun, but I wish it wouldn’t have taken so much inspiration from other titles.
Scars Above offers a great shooter experience that's a bit rough around the edges in some areas when it comes to realizing its vision and potential. While these problems are noticeable, I don't feel like it takes too much from the full product while offering a haunting survival horror experience with a unique gimmick that makes players think about the best approach to the way they face the environment around the enemies.
Scars Above is an excellent TPS with a plot that plays a leading role without stealing the show to the action. Due to a wave of alien monsters or some environmental trap and the above-average difficult, Kate Ward's every step is likely to be her last. Character growth is not as important, but anyway it remains a game that entices us to progress just to find out what new surprises are awaiting.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Scars Above is a more appealing prospect than it is a final product - an interesting premise that's ultimately lost amidst repetitive gameplay and mundane design. Some aspects of it are genuinely intriguing, if underexplored, but simply reaching for the stars alone is no guarantee of ever actually leaving orbit, let alone getting off the ground - and recommending this experience over any other is a bit rich, even for the lower asking price.
There's not a lot of negative things I have to say about Mad Head Games' Scars Above, but I don't have a lot of positive things to say either. It's an aggressively average experience brought down by performance issues and lack of important accessibility features. Even where color is present, this game drowns in dullness.
An interesting concoction of genre traits and structures makes Scars Above one of the more engaging action-adventure game attempts even if it does suffer from some combat woes.