Scars Above Hands-on Preview Impressions – Putting the Science in Sci-Fi

Action adventure protagonists — even in Sci-Fi games — have a long-standing tradition of being gravelly-voiced dudes with five o’ clock shadows who are too busy mowing down enemies to worry about the science behind the bugs they’re blasting. Not so in Scars Above, which just had its trailer shown on at The Game Awards last week. In the upcoming Sci-Fi action adventure from developer Mad Head games, you play as Dr. Kate Ward, emphasis on the “doctor”.

While you’ll still spend most of your time in Scars Above shooting alien creatures, you’ll also spend quite a bit of time scanning and analyzing them. It’s a wonderful take on the genre, and frankly it’s refreshing to be playing as someone who isn’t a standard killing-machine type. Throughout the game, you’ll encounter new creatures, and each time you can scan them to gain insights. Sometimes you’ll have to do a detailed scan, inspecting organs to learn how the creature produces certain chemicals, for example.

Kate’s discoveries are what leads to new weapon types: over the course of the preview, I got my hands on weapons that inflicted electricity, fire, ice, and poison acid (the four classic elements of game damage). These weapons can be used to target weak points that are only vulnerable to a specific damage type; stock-standard stuff, but you can also use your weapons to interact with the environment by lighting bushes for warmth, or breaking holes in the ice to freeze enemies. The environment also affects combat — when it’s raining, your electrical attacks will do more damage, but it’s harder to light foes on fire.

This leads to exciting weapon-swapping: in one boss fight, I had to swap to the ice gun to freeze the water I was standing in, so as to not take damage from the flesh-eating worms the boss was barfing into said water. It’s quick and easy to switch between weapons, and when you do it right, you feel clever and powerful — essential vibes in an action-adventure game. You’ve got a melee weapon too, but it’s generally only for if you run out of ammo.

You can also gain new abilities throughout the game, again often by scanning new life forms. These include devices like shields, time-slowing fields, and special grenades that splash flammable liquid upon landing. Separately, there are two skill trees (focusing broadly offense and defense) that let you unlock various beneficial passive effects, such as increased healing or better resistance to enemy attacks. The upgrades felt impactful, and the ability points are given at a nice pace.

The game has pillars that act like Dark Souls bonfires — refreshing healing items and ammo but respawning enemies — but you don’t drop anything upon death, and the game isn’t that hard, so I hesitate to call Scars Above a soulslike. It does have a similar overall approach to combat, with the game calling for a somewhat thoughtful and methodical approach. You’ll mostly fight small groups of enemies, or one tough enemy with maybe an add or two. There’s also a dodge roll — I’ve seen other writers who previewed the game call it clunky, but I thought it was very responsive; it just has a fairly long cooldown upon landing before you can dodge again, so you can’t spam it willy-nilly like you’re playing Dark Souls 3 or something.

The story doesn’t offer anything you haven’t seen before, but it’s well-presented and the pacing is excellent. It also manages to tell its story mainly in-game, with cutscenes being thankfully short once the intro sequence is out of the way. The focus on science helps as well, giving Kate a natural way to figure out what’s going on with all these weird creatures and huge alien artifacts.

However, despite all the game’s strengths, it definitely has a rough-around-the-edges feel — the developers are primarily known for their HOPA games, and their first foray into over the shoulder shooters is not without hiccups. Some of the animations and models — and especially environmental textures — look cheap, for lack of a better word. Lots of the game looks great… but you don’t want to spend too long looking at Kate’s dead-eyed stare when she isn’t in cutscenes. Invisible walls also abound, with the actual wall often sitting a few in-game feet in front of the rubble or rocks that block your way.

Still, I’m rooting for Scars Above, and I think players who enjoy games like Remnant: From the Ashes or other third-person shooting and rolling action adventures will find a lot to like here. At a minimum, it should tide you over until Returnal comes to PC early next year. There’s currently a playable demo for Scars Above on Steam, and it’s definitely worth trying if you like this style of game at all.

Scars above releases February 27th on XBox, PlayStation, and PC via Steam.