There’s nothing I love more than a game to completely take me by surprise.

I track many games throughout the year, target ones I’d love to cover or play in my own time. But it’s often the ones you aren’t tracking that leave the biggest impression.

Scars Above is kinda, sorta one of those games. See, I absolutely adored Returnal and have been quite eager to play a similar experience ever since. Scars Above isn’t exactly the same – in fact, there’s quite a bit about it that’s different – but it is one of the closest since, despite lacking HouseMarque’s same attention to detail and polish.

In fact, this is a game that feels like its on the verge of a breakthrough of being quite brilliant with its exploration and combat, its focus on story and setting, but it doesn’t quite manage to fulfill its potential due to its light-feeling weapons and mechanics and ropey graphics and aesthetics.

It is, however, a good video game that doesn’t really do a whole lot wrong and does quite a few things well. Nothing especially groundbreaking or memorable, admittedly, but you will surely have an enjoyable time with Scars Above from the moment you boot it up.

Put it this way, we don’t do scores for anything beyond DLC here, but if we did, this would be a good old fashioned 7 out of 10.

There are some really great ideas here, like AR investigation areas to learn more about what happened to your team and understand the biology of planetary lifeforms, and surface changing weapons to make progress. They’re implemented well enough that they have direct impact on gameplay and provide some sense of satisfaction.

The other cool feature is the need to pick the right weapon to suit your situation. For example, if an enemy is coming at you through watery surfaces, you can use an electro gun to double the damage you deal and expose a vulnerability.

You also don’t earn experience from killing enemies, rather picking up data cubes found in the world or scanning defeated creatures to learn more about them so you can unlock your knowledge base.

The game’s approach to all these things certainly keeps it fresh, even the removal of a traditional map, instead forcing you to rely on a objective marker (which does, actually get a tad confusing to navigate at times)

That said, spending up and levelling up isn’t especially thorough or detailed, with a fairly basic and generic talent tree to fill up.

And the game definitely likes to put you through the ringer, repeating the same frustrating mobs and challenging environments time after time as you progress to the boss battle or the next phase of the game.

But this still remains a robust singleplayer experience that taxes, challenges, diversifies and engages enough to keep you going through. The achievement ratio is generous and pops off regularly, the combat and gameplay evolve over time and the enemy variety and discovering their weaknesses offers an intriguing challenge.

Even the premise will have you wanting to discover more and learn about this unusual world and its unconventional name. Scars Above gives you just enough to keep playing through to its conclusion and while mechanics and sections are scrappy and rough, they also come together well and remain solid enough to set an enjoyable tone.

Verdict

Scars Above doesn’t rewrite the rule book, nor does it break any new ground, but it plays mostly well and remains enjoyable through to its end through combat variety, environments, movement and storytelling. Ropey graphics, bugs, light-feeling weapons, as well as frustrating sections, environments and some unfulfilled mechanics mean this also lacks the polish and quality to match up to other diamonds in the genre. 

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Pros

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Scars Above is now available on PC, Xbox and PlayStation

Code Kindly Provided by Plaion

Played on Xbox Series X