Left Alive was not a fun game to play. It lacked personality, even though it wanted to be an MGS clone so bad. It lacked complication for a stealth game, as well as comfortable character movement and slow ramp-up of difficulty. I think if the devs could have had more time to smooth out these rough areas, then the game would have been decent, if not good.
Left Alive mimics the stealthy world of Metal Gear Solid to the point of frustration. It’s a slow, clunky, stealth action game that is built on the survival groundwork in a war torn futurescape. While the concept is fantastic on paper, and it has been done many times before, the execution lacks that MGS polish, shine, and soul. If anything, some simple tweaking of gameplay design might have made this game somewhat entertaining and enjoyable, and these simple suggestions truly are simple.
Left Alive’s story puts you in the shoes, at least starting off, of a young mech pilot named Mikhail. He is one of the lone survivors of an ongoing violent war between two factions. From the start, Mikhail is forced to make his way through a destroyed cityscape, where he must avoid enemy soldiers and mechs. In addition, he has to find survivors before it’s too late. Ultimately, he needs to survive by any means possible. Coordinating with other soldiers, making your way through the story of survival is the goal for Left Behind, as well as the motivation to keep playing the game.
While the game has a challenge to it with a Metal Gear twist of stealth, and, again, on paper that sounds like it would be a fun game to play for a long period of time, the actual gameplay simply isn’t fun. And it’s just not one thing, it’s several things that, as mentioned prior, that could have been improved dramatically with a bit more thought to the overall design process.
Starting with the most obvious problem, let’s talk controls. The controls in Left Alive are stiff at best. While the actual physical control is manageable, the execution of said controls is not. The movements are basic — you can lightly jog, climb on things, shoot things, and even hide around corners and literally in bins (MGS approved). It’s very easy stuff to perform and do. The stumbling block here is how the controls aren’t really conducive to the gameplay. The gameplay should be intense, meaning that you feel a sense of urgency in your movements. Sure you stealth around, but ultimately your goal is to get from play to another as quickly and quietly as possible. There is simply isn’t urgency to the controls or movement in the game. They feel slow for a stealth game, as they give no option for racing from place to place or barrier to barrier — you simply slow crawl it around. It’s odd, it feels like your player is moving in slow-motion, and it just feels sluggish. I can’t tell you how many times I died in the process of trying to hide because my guy wouldn’t go fast enough to a particular point on the map. I’m sure if this was real life and a soldier was in this particular position, their adrenaline would kick in and they would move faster than a trot. Left Alive’s controls are frustrating to see in motion, and even worse when you’re trying not to die.
All of this could have been rectified with a simple tweak of movement. Having played The Division 2 for the better part of two weeks, having the ability to point at a barrier or hiding spot, then execute movement to that ‘thing’ automatically through a simple holding down of a button makes for an easy way to make a stealth combat game enjoyable. It’s not cheating, rather it’s strategy, and that honestly is part of the experience when you’re playing a stealth action game. You shouldn’t have to feel like you’re fighting the controls. Left Alive goes against this and just gives you something that can only be described as not well thought through. And I hate being mean about it, but it feels like it should be obvious that the game’s movement just isn’t good. There isn’t any particular strategy to their existence as they stand.
Now, while the controls are my biggest complaint, a close second would be how to dispose of enemies. The game has a weird thing about being able to kill enemies, where it prefers not giving you the best methods. You’ll find this out in the first 10-minutes of a battle when the gun you equipped (and you can equip three weapons at a time initially) will essentially do you no good against enemies. I must have unloaded eight shots into the gut of a soldier, and for some medically freaky reason, it didn’t kill them. While I can see maybe the exoskeleton the soldier was wearing potentially caused the interference with delivering death, the blood spurts coming from each shot simply said I was hitting the target perfectly — thus this guy was bleeding out. You shouldn’t have that type of resistance thrown at you at the beginning of a game like this. It should build to that frustration and not start at it. If you want people turned off from your game, then you do this, as frustration will quickly replace motivation to keep playing.
With all the above negativity of the experience taking over a bit, let me shift just a bit to the positive. The game does try to give you options to fight off these invincible soldiers, as it includes crafting other weapons of destruction, and/or distractions to help you maintain your stealthy behavior. You can equip yourself with grenades and with cans at the get-go (and a whole bunch of other items later). The grenades I’m sure you can figure out, but you can use cans to distract soldiers. It’s almost amusing how cans can be a formidable weapon of distraction. The ability to craft isn’t too bad, but the need to craft at the beginning is just essentially too soon. Regardless of time, the system is easy to pick up on, and it helps in taming some of that frustration.
On the level design side of things, it’s not too bad. The levels offer up some difficulty in trying to figure out direction. You can scope your way through things here and there, but the game makes you take some real chances that could lead to death quickly (ain’t nothing like being murdered by a huge mech). I think this design was done on purpose, and much like most stealth games, the maps are designed for trial/error. For example, early on the game will send you into a snowy streetscape that has barriers, blown out walls, and just massive amounts of destroyed items to move around. There are enough places to hide and options to approach the next part of the stage. It’s all typical of a decent stealth game. That sort of design continues throughout the entire experience, which is a positive for the title.
On the visuals side of the tracks, the game is teetering on last generation and early current generation. It’s not quite up to snuff of a Hellblade or even a MGS V. It seems to visually have a lack of good personality to it, though that’s not needed to make a game great. The textures are a bit bland on the details, and there’s just not a lot visual pretty to the whole experience. Again, some great games aren’t visually pretty, but it does hurt the experience a little bit when you’re trying to put the gamer in the middle of a war and to experience some isolation. There should be a sense of chaos in both the environment and enemies visually to bring the gamer to that feeling.
Overall, Left Alive was not a fun game to play. It lacked personality, even though it wanted to be an MGS clone so bad. It lacked complication for a stealth game, as well as comfortable character movement and slow ramp-up of difficulty. I think if the devs could have had more time to smooth out these rough areas, then the game would have been decent, if not good.
