So I just played through this game in one sitting. My playtime clocked in at 5:53. I really enjoyed the atmosphere, visuals, sound, and even the gameplay, to a certain extent. The story, though... God, it's so lame.

Spoiler time ahead! I'm not going to bother marking them, as most of you won't play this game anyways, and, plus, it's basically the rest of this post.

Also, while we're listing disclaimers: I've slept like two hours in the past thirty-six. So... yeah.

So the game starts off with your character looking for his wife and daughter. About ten minutes in, he finds a little girl who he thinks is his daughter, but isn't. Then he spends the rest of the game reuniting her with her mother, and saving the two of them.

Meanwhile, periodically, the game keeps cutting back to someone watching the main character taping bits of the story on his camcorder. You know from the start that it's going to be a Silent Hill: Shattered Memories-style "twist," where, uh, it isn't the main character watching it, but his wife and/or daughter, because he's dead by the end of it.

After finding his house, the main character (I keep referring to him as such because I can't for the life of me remember his name) immediately forgets about finding his family in favor of helping out this other little girl and her mom. That's fine, as maybe the first and maybe second act of the story, but at some point you want to get back to the main character's story.

This never happens. The final scene of the game is on the camcorder, of main character-man saying goodbye to the little girl and her mother as they board the U.S.S. Deus Ex Machina to what's apparently a safe haven somewhere. He mentions how he still has to go find his wife and daughter, and also help out the wheelchair-bound ex-fireman who knows where they are but got kidnapped by bad guys at the last minute for no explained reason by an opposing force whose motives aren't really clear. Then, the camera pulls back, and it's a woman (presumably the main character's wife or [grown-up] daughter) watching the video on the camcorder. The camera (that you, the player is viewing, not the camcorder) pulls back, and you see all your guy's gear on a table, implying he died.

That's fucking it. Roll credits, score screen, bam, back to title screen.

What. The. Fucking. Shit.

I about had twelve heart attacks for how half-assed of an ending it was. I wasn't expecting, y'know, cinematic amazingness or anything, but man, for a game with such interesting mechanics and amazing atmosphere, it really deserved better.

Oh, and also, when you're in the kind of recurring hub-area-thing, you see a hunched-over zombie-like creature on an inaccessible(?) piece of land. When I first saw the thing, I was terrified, and kind of excited that it was going to turn out that the Event was some weird radioactive mutantmakery after all. But nope, as far as I could see, there was no way to get over there, and there were no other creatures like it anywhere else in the game. What. The. Fuck.

But yeah! The sound design is pretty good, if slightly repetitive, in terms of musical cues, the gameplay is interesting, if slightly clunky, and the graphics are atmospheric, if slightly... bad, upon close examination. The level design, visually, though, is amazing; whoever made all these levels really knows how to make torn-up-by-earthquakes-and-shit city buildings, because damn, they look great.

And now this is turning into a review or something, because I'm tired, angry at how the game ended, slightly hungry, and I have to use the restroom after sitting still for six consecutive hours. Did I mention I'm tired?

3/5

So I just played through this game in one sitting. My playtime clocked in at 5:53. I really enjoyed the atmosphere, visuals, sound, and even the gameplay, to a certain extent. The story, though... God, it's so lame.

Spoiler time ahead! I'm not going to bother marking them, as most of you won't play this game anyways, and, plus, it's basically the rest of this post.

Also, while we're listing disclaimers: I've slept like two hours in the past thirty-six. So... yeah.

So the game starts off with your character looking for his wife and daughter. About ten minutes in, he finds a little girl who he thinks is his daughter, but isn't. Then he spends the rest of the game reuniting her with her mother, and saving the two of them.

Meanwhile, periodically, the game keeps cutting back to someone watching the main character taping bits of the story on his camcorder. You know from the start that it's going to be a Silent Hill: Shattered Memories-style "twist," where, uh, it isn't the main character watching it, but his wife and/or daughter, because he's dead by the end of it.

After finding his house, the main character (I keep referring to him as such because I can't for the life of me remember his name) immediately forgets about finding his family in favor of helping out this other little girl and her mom. That's fine, as maybe the first and maybe second act of the story, but at some point you want to get back to the main character's story.

This never happens. The final scene of the game is on the camcorder, of main character-man saying goodbye to the little girl and her mother as they board the U.S.S. Deus Ex Machina to what's apparently a safe haven somewhere. He mentions how he still has to go find his wife and daughter, and also help out the wheelchair-bound ex-fireman who knows where they are but got kidnapped by bad guys at the last minute for no explained reason by an opposing force whose motives aren't really clear. Then, the camera pulls back, and it's a woman (presumably the main character's wife or [grown-up] daughter) watching the video on the camcorder. The camera (that you, the player is viewing, not the camcorder) pulls back, and you see all your guy's gear on a table, implying he died.

That's fucking it. Roll credits, score screen, bam, back to title screen.

What. The. Fucking. Shit.

I about had twelve heart attacks for how half-assed of an ending it was. I wasn't expecting, y'know, cinematic amazingness or anything, but man, for a game with such interesting mechanics and amazing atmosphere, it really deserved better.

Oh, and also, when you're in the kind of recurring hub-area-thing, you see a hunched-over zombie-like creature on an inaccessible(?) piece of land. When I first saw the thing, I was terrified, and kind of excited that it was going to turn out that the Event was some weird radioactive mutantmakery after all. But nope, as far as I could see, there was no way to get over there, and there were no other creatures like it anywhere else in the game. What. The. Fuck.

But yeah! The sound design is pretty good, if slightly repetitive, in terms of musical cues, the gameplay is interesting, if slightly clunky, and the graphics are atmospheric, if slightly... bad, upon close examination. The level design, visually, though, is amazing; whoever made all these levels really knows how to make torn-up-by-earthquakes-and-shit city buildings, because damn, they look great.

And now this is turning into a review or something, because I'm tired, angry at how the game ended, slightly hungry, and I have to use the restroom after sitting still for six consecutive hours. Did I mention I'm tired?

3/5

Lost ended worse.

bummer ending oh well 
It's good that some games actually don't have happy endings

@Dagbiker said:

Lost ended worse.

No way! Not even! Lost at least attempted to resolve everything, even if it pretty much failed in doing so. I AM Alive just goes "yeah... and then, your guy went on to do some stuff, maybe he succeeded in his goals, maybe not, I dunno, but anyways, at some point later on, he turned up dead, and his wife and/or daughter found his body, or at least all of his possessions, somehow, isn't that sad, THE END," in the space of like, sixty seconds.

It would be like if Mass Effect 3 never got made and instead Mass Effect 2 ended with "...and then Shepard went onto unite all the alien civilizations and they worked together to fend off the Reapers oh and by the way Shepard died THE END."

Sounds like a good ending to me...

I think that, TC, you're actually burned of the game. You said it yourself, you haven't slept enough, so you're over sensitive. You also said you loved everything about the game, which means that, even though the ending displeases you, it's far from being a bad game either.

Reconsider your 3 out of 5 in a couple of days when you'll be better rested.

@Shun_Akiyama said:

bummer ending oh well It's good that some games actually don't have happy endings

theres a way to do bummer endings without it being dumb though, which this does sound kind of dumb...

@takua108 said:

@Dagbiker said:

Lost ended worse.

No way! Not even! Lost at least attempted to resolve everything, even if it pretty much failed in doing so.

No it did not.

Why does a game have to end a specific way, or wrap up neatly or something to be considered good though?

Look at The Thing. That movie ends with a great big "who the fuck knows" and is an amazing end to the movie. I haven't played and beaten I Am Alive, so I can't comment specifically on the ending. It sounds though like you want everything to be wrapped up. You don't want any mysteries, any unanswered questions, any "fill in the blank on your own." But why does everything have to end so neatly and cleanly? Why do all of the questions have to be answered? Why is it half-assed for a writer to have an ending that doesn't put a neat little bow on everything? I'm not saying that the way they ended it is bad, I can't speak from experience if they pulled it off well or not, but that doesn't seem to be your main issue with the ending, but if I'm wrong and it is the way they executed it and not just that all of your questions weren't answered, I'd like to know that.

@Klei said:

I think that, TC, you're actually burned of the game. You said it yourself, you haven't slept enough, so you're over sensitive. You also said you loved everything about the game, which means that, even though the ending displeases you, it's far from being a bad game either.

Reconsider your 3 out of 5 in a couple of days when you'll be better rested.

Nope, not really; I was torn between two and three, and gave it the three because I liked it.

The gameplay is pretty clunky and, like, holy shit, the pacing is so bad. One minute you're sneaking around in sewers avoiding little gangs of thugs and looking for water and food to survive (this takes maybe 15 minutes) and the next minute you're doing a thirty-minute skyscraper climb just to light some fireworks on top of it and then slide all the way back down, encountering a randomly Bible-thumping family living within along the way. You can steal their somehow-grown-up-in-this-skyscraper-even-though-this-family-has-been-living-here-for-plural-months tomatoes, and if you take too many, they get irritated at you. Then after that you wander around the hub city thing for the sixth time to get to what turns out to be the final level, wherein you lose your gun and just have your bow (which is actually pretty cool), but instead of making good on this temporary stealth mechanic, the level is over in five minutes. Then the level floods, oh noes!, and you strap this little girl to your back and you're all ready to heroically save her by jumping across these building rooftops... but then you do, in literally twenty seconds. Then the holocaust they call an ending happens immediately afterwards in the space of maybe three minutes.

In terms of "do I think you should go out and get this game and play it right now," the answer is "probably not, unless you're weird like me and liked Silent Hill: Homecoming because of the atmosphere."

Well that sucks a huge one. I still think ME3s' is worse, but this one comes close. Guys it isn't about it being happy, it's about it being poorly written.

It should have ended when that girl got on the HMS Disease Control. and as hes shouting at her (im assuming, i havent played it) it cuts to black.

@FateOfNever said:

Why does a game have to end a specific way, or wrap up neatly or something to be considered good though?

Look at The Thing. That movie ends with a great big "who the fuck knows" and is an amazing end to the movie. I haven't played and beaten I Am Alive, so I can't comment specifically on the ending. It sounds though like you want everything to be wrapped up. You don't want any mysteries, any unanswered questions, any "fill in the blank on your own." But why does everything have to end so neatly and cleanly? Why do all of the questions have to be answered? Why is it half-assed for a writer to have an ending that doesn't put a neat little bow on everything? I'm not saying that the way they ended it is bad, I can't speak from experience if they pulled it off well or not, but that doesn't seem to be your main issue with the ending, but if I'm wrong and it is the way they executed it and not just that all of your questions weren't answered, I'd like to know that.

No, see, this is what I'm afraid people might take away from my rant. I fully expected the main character to die at the end from the get-go. I fully expected to not know what The Event actually entailed, and "oshit I wonder what happens next" is how pretty much every disaster movie ends, right (either that or "...and then they all died")?

What I hated about the story is how it sets you out to find your family, then almost completely forgets about that in favor of helping this other family, then, when it seems like it's going to get back to finding your dude's family, the game ends, and his family is shown to be fine, but he's implied to be dead, all within one minute.

Plus, if anything, the ending does wrap everything up; there's no blatant sequel hooks or anything. It's just that it "wraps it up" without telling you what happened in the final third of the story, but then shows you the end.

@SuperSambo said:

Sounds like a good ending to me...

I agree with Thierry Henry on this one.

Wait is the boat actually called U.S.S. Deus Ex Machina?

You're right though that ending does sound excessively lazy & useless on so many ways.

@fox01313 said:

Wait is the boat actually called U.S.S. Deus Ex Machina?

You're right though that ending does sound excessively lazy & useless on so many ways.

No BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL BE.

"Man, it sucks living in this post-apocalyptic shitshow remains of a west-coast American city, especially with all this toxic dust everywhere."

"Oh, player character, I'm getting transmissions on my radio from a boat that wants to come rescue survivors! But apparently somehow only us logical and sane ones and not just any random machete-wielding thug off the streets. Now, could you please be a dear and go into this beached ship that's somehow suspended a couple hundred feet in the air and occupied by all sorts of psychopathic scum and take the radio transmitter that I magically know is in there? Because once we have that, we can radio this magical ship, and it'll come and pick us up and solve all of our problems!"

I kept expecting it to be some plot twist, because, like, they mention that when The Event happened, they shipped the children away first. That sounds like a pretty good hook for some nefarious-ass shit right there, doesn't it? Especially since you're trying to get this mother and young child aboard it?

But, nope, the ship arrives at the end, and it's played absolutely straight as being a ship that will ferry them off to apparently the last place on Earth that's still actually inhabitable.

@takua108: is it a submarine or a ship?

@takua108 said:

@FateOfNever said:

Why does a game have to end a specific way, or wrap up neatly or something to be considered good though?

Look at The Thing. That movie ends with a great big "who the fuck knows" and is an amazing end to the movie. I haven't played and beaten I Am Alive, so I can't comment specifically on the ending. It sounds though like you want everything to be wrapped up. You don't want any mysteries, any unanswered questions, any "fill in the blank on your own." But why does everything have to end so neatly and cleanly? Why do all of the questions have to be answered? Why is it half-assed for a writer to have an ending that doesn't put a neat little bow on everything? I'm not saying that the way they ended it is bad, I can't speak from experience if they pulled it off well or not, but that doesn't seem to be your main issue with the ending, but if I'm wrong and it is the way they executed it and not just that all of your questions weren't answered, I'd like to know that.

No, see, this is what I'm afraid people might take away from my rant. I fully expected the main character to die at the end from the get-go. I fully expected to not know what The Event actually entailed, and "oshit I wonder what happens next" is how pretty much every disaster movie ends, right (either that or "...and then they all died")?

What I hated about the story is how it sets you out to find your family, then almost completely forgets about that in favor of helping this other family, then, when it seems like it's going to get back to finding your dude's family, the game ends, and his family is shown to be fine, but he's implied to be dead, all within one minute.

Plus, if anything, the ending does wrap everything up; there's no blatant sequel hooks or anything. It's just that it "wraps it up" without telling you what happened in the final third of the story, but then shows you the end.

If your summary of the ending includes "implied" "doesn't tell you what happened" or the like, it didn't wrap everything up. Something doesn't have to not have a potential sequel to not be wrapped up. It also sounds like there's a lot of room for a sequel. Between the "maybe a monster 'thing' but I don't know" and the "no idea what happened to the main character between the the two different parts of the ending" it sounds like there's plenty to work with.

They could have a sequel where you play as the woman that's watching the video and how she came upon the camcorder and the gear. They could have you play as her looking for the main character from this game. They could have the main character from this game's "second half" of his story. Maybe the person at the end has no relation to the main character at all. Maybe it's just some random woman. For all we know the main character actually lived and the woman is just watching the footage out of curiosity of what this man went through. Maybe the end is decades after when the game you play takes place. Who knows.

As for the complaint of "he gets side tracked" - Isn't that something that could actually happen though? If you have someone that truly cares about helping other people in this now shitty destroyed world, isn't it entirely possible that they could get side tracked? Between the sidetracking of survival and the sidetracking of not being a total asshole that's willing to say 'fuck everyone else, I only care about me and my own.' It sounds like you want that all resolved. You don't want any question about what happened to him; you want a definitive answer about his quest for his family. The writers opted that that wasn't actually the story they wanted to tell. They wanted to tell a story about a man surviving in this destroyed world on a search for his family, and how that may not be as simple of a goal as it sounds. How it's easy to get pulled in different directions, what daily life is like in this world, the tough decisions you have to make (even if you, the player, are not the one making them.) It sounds like this was a short story and you wanted a novel. This was a chapter in the man's life but the only acceptable answer is to have the entire story, anything less is bad.

I don't know how it is presented - that might be the shitty part - but it at least sounds pretty good to me, to be honest.

I also liked the Lost ending. Patrick, I'm totally with you!

@takua108 said:

@fox01313 said:

Wait is the boat actually called U.S.S. Deus Ex Machina?

You're right though that ending does sound excessively lazy & useless on so many ways.

No BUT IT MIGHT AS WELL BE.

"Man, it sucks living in this post-apocalyptic shitshow remains of a west-coast American city, especially with all this toxic dust everywhere."

"Oh, player character, I'm getting transmissions on my radio from a boat that wants to come rescue survivors! But apparently somehow only us logical and sane ones and not just any random machete-wielding thug off the streets. Now, could you please be a dear and go into this beached ship that's somehow suspended a couple hundred feet in the air and occupied by all sorts of psychopathic scum and take the radio transmitter that I magically know is in there? Because once we have that, we can radio this magical ship, and it'll come and pick us up and solve all of our problems!"

I kept expecting it to be some plot twist, because, like, they mention that when The Event happened, they shipped the children away first. That sounds like a pretty good hook for some nefarious-ass shit right there, doesn't it? Especially since you're trying to get this mother and young child aboard it?

But, nope, the ship arrives at the end, and it's played absolutely straight as being a ship that will ferry them off to apparently the last place on Earth that's still actually inhabitable.

So your saying this game is just Children of Men: the game?

This ending actually sounds allright, from your description i would believe the problem is rather poor conveyance to the player. they set up a pretty big emotionally/emotionally charged premise but fail to act upon it.

I kinda feel like this ending was still in a draft stage stage for future revision and everybody spontaneously forgot to tie it in with the story in a proper fashion.

@Questionable said:

This ending actually sounds allright, from your description i would believe the problem is rather poor conveyance to the player. they set up a pretty big emotionally/emotionally charged premise but fail to act upon it.

I kinda feel like this ending was still in a draft stage stage for future revision and everybody spontaneously forgot to tie it in with the story in a proper fashion.

The problem was that it was suposed to be a Full fleged game, and was cut down to a $15 budget title. But they didnt cut the story.

@takua108 said:

@Klei said:

I think that, TC, you're actually burned of the game. You said it yourself, you haven't slept enough, so you're over sensitive. You also said you loved everything about the game, which means that, even though the ending displeases you, it's far from being a bad game either.

Reconsider your 3 out of 5 in a couple of days when you'll be better rested.

Nope, not really; I was torn between two and three, and gave it the three because I liked it.

The gameplay is pretty clunky and, like, holy shit, the pacing is so bad. One minute you're sneaking around in sewers avoiding little gangs of thugs and looking for water and food to survive (this takes maybe 15 minutes) and the next minute you're doing a thirty-minute skyscraper climb just to light some fireworks on top of it and then slide all the way back down, encountering a randomly Bible-thumping family living within along the way. You can steal their somehow-grown-up-in-this-skyscraper-even-though-this-family-has-been-living-here-for-plural-months tomatoes, and if you take too many, they get irritated at you. Then after that you wander around the hub city thing for the sixth time to get to what turns out to be the final level, wherein you lose your gun and just have your bow (which is actually pretty cool), but instead of making good on this temporary stealth mechanic, the level is over in five minutes. Then the level floods, oh noes!, and you strap this little girl to your back and you're all ready to heroically save her by jumping across these building rooftops... but then you do, in literally twenty seconds. Then the holocaust they call an ending happens immediately afterwards in the space of maybe three minutes.

In terms of "do I think you should go out and get this game and play it right now," the answer is "probably not, unless you're weird like me and liked Silent Hill: Homecoming because of the atmosphere."

To me, you sound pretty pissed at the game. I bet I would to, had I played it for 6 hours straight on while sleep deficiency.

@Klei said:

To me, you sound pretty pissed at the game. I bet I would to, had I played it for 6 hours straight on while sleep deficiency.

No! Well, maybe a little, but it's a game that I enjoyed overall! It's just, there's so much more potential with where they could've taken it, and the ending didn't feel like an ending at all. Rarely was I not enjoying myself playing it, save for when the credits started to roll.

I really enjoyed this game. I hope they make a sequel and work on deeper survival gameplay elements. Would be cool if you could talk to the people you encounter even the thugs not just say get back, you know try to reason with them.

Yes the ending was well not that great feels like they had to cut a big part of the game, guess they had to get the game out or the project would have been terminated. But I don't regret buying it I still think it's an awesome game. Hope it sells well so they can make a sequel.

...and also the mutant creature thingy you are talking about you can get to it need to do some climbing thats all :)

Just finished it. I found the ending kind of fitting. He saved one family when in all likely hood, he wouldn't be able to save his own. A personal salvation kind of thing. I'm a huge fan of bad endings (Main character dies, the goal ends up failing by design, and just shit going south in the end.), so it worked for me.

Also, that mutant thing is totally accessabile be doing a little climbing around. If you decide to help him, which takes a lot of resources, he gives you something awesome.

So, in the "beginning" of the game (of the story, i guess) he's already dead. Cool, the game title is better because it (not really).

Mass Effect 3 ending was bad first time ive been pissed off after finishing a game

I have to say that doesn't sound great. Having not played the game, I can't comment too much but it sounds like either they wanted to set up a sequel or just ran out of time/ideas for the ending. I can appreciate the whole 'Set out to save your own family and wind up saving another' thing but to then just leap from that to 'Oh by the way your guy died somehow and his family found his stuff' is kinda strange.

@SuperSambo said:

Sounds like a good ending to me...

Same here. I think that sounds fucking crazy and great. It's sort of like the Silent Hill: Shattered Memories ending just...not-ish.

@JasonR86 said:

@SuperSambo said:

Sounds like a good ending to me...

Same here. I think that sounds fucking crazy and great. It's sort of like the Silent Hill: Shattered Memories ending just...not-ish.

Like I said, maybe it's because I've played Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, but from the outset I recognized the framing device and was 99% sure the guy was gonna end up dead. That's not the problem I have with the ending; I'd probably be disappointed if he ended up alive at the end. I just thought the last twenty minutes of the game was the most rushed, oh-shit-we're-out-of-time-here-quick-cobble-something-together portion of a video game I've ever played.

The idea of him helping another family instead of us finding out whether he finds out his family is even alive at the end sounds like a really great ending. That's sounds like a smarter way to end the story than "hey I found my family everything's ok now, you am winrar thank's for playing!"

On a side tangent I don't like when games or movies have to have every little bit explained to me. We've gotten into this situation where every sci-fi story has to be a Star Wars/Star Trek thing, where every little tiny bit is explained in excruciating detail to the point where the story gets completely lost. I haven't finished the game, but whether this story works or not I'm really glad they went that way with it.

Based on the trailers from 2008-2010 I'm guessing this game changed a lot and the vast majority was scrapped. I understand what they were going for with the ending, but it feels like some story related stuff between the boat and the end scene is missing. It's just sort of, "And then he went back out to find his family except he died somewhere at some point. The end." I don't need exposition about all of his adventures in between. I don't need him finding his family just as they're in trouble and he dies to save them. I like that they didn't feel the need to explicitly tell us his fate. I just feel like there's some small thing missing to connect it together.

@TheUnsavedHero said:

I'm a huge fan of bad endings (Main character dies, the goal ends up failing by design, and just shit going south in the end.), so it worked for me.

Yep, me too. That's why it sounds pretty good to me actually.

@FateOfNever said:

Why does a game have to end a specific way, or wrap up neatly or something to be considered good though?

Look at The Thing. That movie ends with a great big "who the fuck knows" and is an amazing end to the movie. I haven't played and beaten I Am Alive, so I can't comment specifically on the ending. It sounds though like you want everything to be wrapped up. You don't want any mysteries, any unanswered questions, any "fill in the blank on your own." But why does everything have to end so neatly and cleanly? Why do all of the questions have to be answered? Why is it half-assed for a writer to have an ending that doesn't put a neat little bow on everything? I'm not saying that the way they ended it is bad, I can't speak from experience if they pulled it off well or not, but that doesn't seem to be your main issue with the ending, but if I'm wrong and it is the way they executed it and not just that all of your questions weren't answered, I'd like to know that.

actually you do know remember how kurt russell gave the guy a drink?? thats pure alcohol a human wouldve had a gag reflex its all in the details ;)

well then again if he died, why would all his gear be intact. it's possible the guy was reunited and the girl just felt like watching his adventure

Just finished the game. The ending was pretty bad. It would have been better if I didn't think the missing missions (the main dude mentions at the end) were coming as DLC.

@spartanlolz92 said:

@FateOfNever said:

Why does a game have to end a specific way, or wrap up neatly or something to be considered good though?

Look at The Thing. That movie ends with a great big "who the fuck knows" and is an amazing end to the movie. I haven't played and beaten I Am Alive, so I can't comment specifically on the ending. It sounds though like you want everything to be wrapped up. You don't want any mysteries, any unanswered questions, any "fill in the blank on your own." But why does everything have to end so neatly and cleanly? Why do all of the questions have to be answered? Why is it half-assed for a writer to have an ending that doesn't put a neat little bow on everything? I'm not saying that the way they ended it is bad, I can't speak from experience if they pulled it off well or not, but that doesn't seem to be your main issue with the ending, but if I'm wrong and it is the way they executed it and not just that all of your questions weren't answered, I'd like to know that.

actually you do know remember how kurt russell gave the guy a drink?? thats pure alcohol a human wouldve had a gag reflex its all in the details ;)

It was whiskey.

https://twitter.com/#!/TheHorrorMaster/status/172531459201052672

@louiedog said:

@spartanlolz92 said:

@FateOfNever said:

Why does a game have to end a specific way, or wrap up neatly or something to be considered good though?

Look at The Thing. That movie ends with a great big "who the fuck knows" and is an amazing end to the movie. I haven't played and beaten I Am Alive, so I can't comment specifically on the ending. It sounds though like you want everything to be wrapped up. You don't want any mysteries, any unanswered questions, any "fill in the blank on your own." But why does everything have to end so neatly and cleanly? Why do all of the questions have to be answered? Why is it half-assed for a writer to have an ending that doesn't put a neat little bow on everything? I'm not saying that the way they ended it is bad, I can't speak from experience if they pulled it off well or not, but that doesn't seem to be your main issue with the ending, but if I'm wrong and it is the way they executed it and not just that all of your questions weren't answered, I'd like to know that.

actually you do know remember how kurt russell gave the guy a drink?? thats pure alcohol a human wouldve had a gag reflex its all in the details ;)

It was whiskey.

https://twitter.com/#!/TheHorrorMaster/status/172531459201052672

Shit just got real, again.

I am Dead.

@Shun_Akiyama said:

bummer ending oh well It's good that some games actually don't have happy endings

I never understood this. Unless the game is going to have a dedicated sequel, why can't it at least have an optional happy ending? I am totally bummed out when a game ends badly because it doesn't fulfill me with any closure and is almost like a middle finger to my feels because I put a lot of love into those characters. I don't mind people dying off, shit happens, but when the entire story ends badly it doesn't leave me with a happy feeling for the game or series.

@Shun_Akiyama said:

bummer ending oh well It's good that some games actually don't have happy endings

I never understood this. Unless the game is going to have a dedicated sequel, why can't it at least have an optional happy ending? I am totally bummed out when a game ends badly because it doesn't fulfill me with any closure and is almost like a middle finger to my feels because I put a lot of love into those characters. I don't mind people dying off, shit happens, but when the entire story ends badly it doesn't leave me with a happy feeling for the game or series.

@takua108 said:

@Dagbiker said:

Lost ended worse.

It would be like if Mass Effect 3 never got made and instead Mass Effect 2 ended with "...and then Shepard went onto unite all the alien civilizations and they worked together to fend off the Reapers oh and by the way Shepard died THE END."

Trust me that'd be better than the clusterfuck of an ending 3 has.

@SuperSambo said:

Sounds like a good ending to me...

@ccampb89: Why does it need to have a happy ending? It needs whatever story the theme and plot dictate. This doesn't sound like a game where it'd make sense to add a last minute, happy ending.

@Dagbiker said:

So your saying this game is just Children of Men: the game?

That would make it fucking incredible.

My vote goes to Lost. Top 5 series of all time, absolute worst ending I could possibly imagine.
 
Also, Metal Gear Solid 2. Goddamn that was nonsense.

Just finished the game, so happy I can finally look at this thread :)

I was happy I could at least save this woman and kid, and also happy that I didn't somehow found my kids too after a couple minutes, because I knew the game was not much longer. They do mention one reason why he was helping this family: the guy in the wheelchair says he will tell him the location of some safehouses where his family could be, if he helps the wife and kid. But yeah, I don't think that is his primary reason for helping his kid, they just remind him of his wife and kid, and he hopes someone will help them like he is doing.

The coolest part of the ending was the summary of my actions. Aparently that meat was human!

Anyway, I absolutely LOVED this game, it might be clunky and weird and badly paced but damnit it has the guts to be DIFFERENT. Here comes a game where climbing is actually a tense affair, and where NPC's are not just quest dispensers or loot pinatas.

Give me that overpriced DLC damnit, I will buy all of it.

@takua108: There's a way to get to that hunched-over guy, yeah i freaked out the first time i saw him, but he's a good guy, and after you give a bunch of supplies he gives you a freaking shotgun with 5 shells.

But more on topic, yeah the ending was weak, and very open.

But it goes with what i said ealry about this game, this is just a sample of what they really wanted to make, that's why it turned into a downloadable game, it's like a test to see if there's a market fpr a game like this, think of this like a side story to main game they wanted to release on retail, and hopefully will someday.

But i liked it, i liked the atmosphere (man the part where you go out at night is awesome!), i lke all the things they tried to do with the gameplay, really made me plan and think ahead, i liked the music, it has it's problems but for 15$, it's a steal.

Worth playing.

Oh, and BTW, you really need to sleep more, i played this game in 4 or 5 sessions, over a week, finished with a time around 6 hours and a half.

Playing for such long streches doesn't do you any good.

Pshhhhh...
 
That's nothing. ME3 ending easily tops this one. Not even breaking a sweat.