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In this case, offering more than motolovs, sensors, and mines was needed, something mechanically closer to Koei Tecmo's trap-heavy Deception series. The problem there is the crafting system doesn't really offer enough items for players to get more creative. Left Alive wants you to trap your enemies, not kill them directly. Instead, the developers seem to want you to use explosive cans, land mines, and shock wires to take foes down. If you have to hit a guard with a pipe, or shoot them, you've already failed. There's no instant kill stealth in Left Alive, which feels like an odd omission, but is seemingly there to push you towards alternate weapons. Melee could stand to have more weight and impact to it. In other cases, they'll spot your head peeking out from yards away. In Left Alive, the enemies are variable: sometimes they'll miss you, even though it feels like they should've seen you. There's no readability about being in cover, the players needs to reliably know if they're hidden or not.

Cover is a huge part of stealth games, but in Left Alive your character will sometimes snap to objects that look like cover, and other times you'll vaguely flail around near them. The animations are stiff, your character is painfully slow, and the roll isn't big enough for a quick entrance into cover. You hunt for resources, build traps and weapons, hide from overwhelming enemy force, and generally try to get through the next area.īut Metal Gear Survive, for all its faults, lifted its combat and play from Metal Gear Solid 5. If you squint just right, it looks like Metal Gear Survive with no base building and a stronger story. The B-grade Metal Gear feeling is only added to by the character designs and the general user interface. The muscles of Left Alive have some life in them, it's the bones that are brittle.Īt heart, Left Alive straddles the line between stealth action and a survival game. And the maps are generally pretty open, giving you freedom to sneak around and cause some havoc while you make your way to your objective.

Left Alive's graphics prowess aren't completely up to snuff-the textures look bad in places and some objects simply float above the ground-but a once-vibrant city reduced to rubble in the midst of some sort of Christmas-like festival? That's a great setting. I can also offer some praise to the environments. You'll make story choices that will also decide who lives and dies. Areas on your map show hotspots in the ongoing occupation, which are probably best to stay away from due to increased enemy presence. While you're playing as each character, scrounging for materials to build makeshift first aid and traps, you also have the chance to save survivors. And this ties into gameplay, where you have to decide who lives and who dies. They're a bit heavy-handed, sure-the Garmonian soldiers shoot innocent civilians for no reason and then just go about their business-but they largely get their point across. These three stories are probably the strongest part of Left Alive, focused as they are on showing the outcome of the war on the average person. Unlike the other two, Leonid has a less nebulous reason to survive: he's trying to get revenge on who framed him for an assassination. Finally, there's Leonid, a battle-hardened mercenary who uses to work for a resistance movement in Novo Slava. Olga is a former pilot of the Garmonia Republic, turned police officer in Nova Slava. Mikhail, who I lovingly call "Russian Leon Kennedy", is a young Wanzer pilot in the Rutenian army. Left Alive picks up in the ruins of the occupied city as three survivors try to stay alive. Given the lack of warning and the military might of Garmonia's Wanzers, the city easily falls. The Garmonia Republic has declared war on the country of Rutenia, starting with a surprise attack on the city of Nova Slava. It's a stealth action game that takes place in the middle of an active warzone. Sadly, Left Alive has all the charm and polish of a mid-range PlayStation 2 game. Sure, it wasn't a proper Front Mission game, but at least it could be interesting. Director Toshifumi Nabeshima produced several games in the Armored Core series.

Shinkawa was joined by Takayuki Yanase, mecha designer for Metal Gear Rising, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Xenoblade Chronicles X. In fact, the staff on Left Alive hinted at something potentially exciting. What we were shown instead looked a lot like Metal Gear Solid, and it even included former Metal Gear Solid character designer Yoji Shinkawa on its staff.