I Am Alive

We're in a small conference room in London with just over twenty other journalists. The lights have just flicked back on after a solid introduction to Ubisoft's digital title, and a general call for questions has lead more to discussion of how the game got to this point in development, rather that what's been shown on screen.

"This point" is the first proper gameplay demonstration of a title that was birthed into the public consciousness through an impressive E3 trailer back in 2008 and in-between then and now has swopped dates, developers, dropped platforms, downgraded on others. A game's that had more column inches dedicated to speculation than actual fact.

The facts as they stand now: it's a digital download title for Xbox 360 and PS3, weighs in at just under two gig in size and eight hours in length, and will be available early next year. Oh, and it'll "be the new reference for everyone on digital", says a company representative.

Whether it matches that bold claim we won't know for some time. What we're faced with today is a decent-looking title, an action-adventure that mixes extensive wall-climbing up decaying skyscrapers and skittering along twisted bridges, and urgent runs through city streets covered in a heavy dust that can kill if you linger too long.

It's post-apocalyptic territory by way of present day. It's a year since "The Event", and a year since the central protagonist - business suit turned Nathan Drake - set out to return to his home city to find his wife and daughter.

You begin having arrived on the edges of Haventon (as well as echoing present day horror and survival films in its opening framing sequence, which we won't spoil here). You'll play through a series of story-driven stages, mostly linear in path, but Interconnecting with the game's gradually expanding hub world - the city itself. A quick glance of the map shows it to be almost Manhattan Island in shape if not size.

The emphasis on climbing suggests the obvious names to compare, yet interestingly the only game the studio reference the entire presentation is Silent Hill, and that's to mark the atmosphere of dust-clogged and tomb-silent streets. Visibility is poor, the high density of the air pollutant a killer, and other dangers hide in the murk - excursions below the dust line are high risk, but can yield collectables useful to your survival.

Items are sparse, and most are there to recover health, bolster your stamina, aid climbing. Health's a slug on a water bottle, a climbing piton gives you momentary break mid-clamber to plan your next move. Because every action you perform is against the clock. Against the limited stamina of your own body.

Maintaining stamina if a key mechanic in I Am Alive. Every exertion, from running to hanging off ledges, eats away at the on-screen bar. Bigger leaps between grab points knock off bigger chunks of stamina. Once emptied you got to hammer RT to keep from falling, and hope you're by a ledge you can pull yourself up on to rest and let your bar recharge.

It's a well-integrated mechanic; it returns player urgency to a now-familiar manoeuvre, and turns every ascension into a multipart trial, cutting a standard A to B run into a number of smaller feats.

In one stage the developer climbs up a leaning skyscraper, its guts torn open by a neighbour's fall. Aside from carefully pronounced pipes and ledges, there's no clear exit point, requiring pans of the camera to plan the next possible direction, and note stop points along the way.

The studio's also built an obvious but decently formed hierarchy system in facing survivors.

Keeping weapons - which, pistol with one or two bullets aside, are of caveman complexity - tucked out of sight can keep some encounters on a conversational level.

But some groups will attack if you're armed, threaten and shove you if not. You've the option to kill your aggressor with a quick takedown at this point, but you need to take into consideration the gang's positions around you. It's a one-hit kill (or close enough to it) world. So, we're informed, pre-planning is needed.

Pulling a gun will swing the camera into first-person, and enemies clutching melee weapons will surrender; those with guns themselves will fire, and those garbed in armour will advance. You've only got one bullet in the chamber - call the right shot and knock out the rest with a quick punch, scavenge and carry on your way. Wrong, and you're looking at a restart.

Bullets are at a premium - we witness an optional side-quest earlier in which you have to weigh if shooting a lock to free prisoners-soon-to-be-cannibalised is worth the risk of earning items and getting leads. The stages are fairly linear, we're told, but there's multiple optional side pockets in each that flesh out back-story as well as tallying against your Victim completion score; a stat for each rescue you make and sits alongside the normal completion percentage, clearly indicating its importance as a gameplay factor.

The worry is perhaps more specifically an edginess at questions that patter against the shift from retail to digital, and the reconstruction of the game to match the belief put in it - rather than querying exactly what the audience has seen.

What it has seen looks to be an atmospheric story-driven take on the survivor genre with mechanics that mightn't be original, but fit well within the framework of the setting, and work as good gameplay elements.

Whether the rotation of climbing, stealth and combat has enough stamina to keep us going over the projected eight hours is obviously of key importance but unanswerable at this stage, as is whether the connection between character and player at controller may smudge the distinct lines between the gameplay elements.

In the context of the wider market, its understandable the trepidation the studio admit to in showing the title for the first time. As it notes, the shift in retail towards survival of only the biggest franchises makes everything else unfairly scrutinised for blemishes, and adopting an almost indie vibe by comparison - through mainstream perception and projected sales.

By embracing that independent spirit and shifting to the digital frontier, I Am Alive has a market it can potentially thrive in, and an audience that'd overlook technical limitations, and instead judge a game on its own merits.