Left Alive

I often found myself willing to overlook all the obvious flaws in favor of engaging with what sits at Left Alive’s messy core, a sort of ultra hardcore, Metal Gear-looking-but-not-really, room escape-slash-solo-board game sort of deal that really got my brain juices flowing.

Left Alive is a tough game, hard and even unfair (because of the enemy's AI), with a highly non-responsive control, a questionable checkpoint system and other shortcomings, even from the technical side. Mechas, stealth, action... none of its elements shine completely. But, even given that, it has "something" that can hook you in to keep playing.

Left Alive is a reason to question the reason. A game to question taste and good will among gamers. It is not a superb title, it's clunky, unpolished and can drive you insane, but there is just that one weird part of it that could make it up to you... It's surprisingly cool, for reasons unknown. If you consider yourself a brave man, give it a go. You just may find something worth your while.

Left Alive has many good ideas. Some of them are well-executed and many others are not. It’s a shame that many of these issues are on the gameplay side, but if you really like the concept, you can manage to enjoy it.

Left Alive has an interesting approach, but is defenestrated by so many things: game mechanics, level design, control scheme and execution, AI... that barely manage to lead the player to see what the game has to offer.

The only people that will truly enjoy the game are either those that actually love a challenge, or those of you that are more interested in the story aspect of a game than the mechanics, since this is the only department where Left Alive impressed me.

Left Alive could have been a fantastic game with a little more work. It has some phenomenal moments, but often drowns in frustrating scenarios.

Unfortunately, Left Alive ends up being the heir of a period of Japanese development that we thought was extinct. Neither its stealth nor its shootings convince.

The problem is that Left Alive really misses on too many things: it presents itself with clearly limited gameplay, which only in the number and in the diversity of gadgets succeeds in convincing. When it comes to infiltration and shooting the problems are overwhelming, and they concern the responsiveness of the control system, the artificial intelligence, the variety of stealth approaches, the structure of the missions.

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.

In concept, Left Alive could have had the potential to bring about the revival of Front Mission and fill the void left by the absence of Metal Gear at the same time, but none of its elements click to become a cohesive whole.

The unique way in which Left Alive approaches the survival theme is easily its most appealing aspect. However, from graphics to enemy AI, there are just way too many issues. And while it’s high difficulty might make sense from a survival standpoint, the lack of stealth kills and hard to utilize weapons make it so hard that for most players it will be beyond simply “challenging”.

Anyone who like unfairly hard games may enjoy this but everyone else should just skip this game. I waited to see if a patch would maybe make it better but that patch never came. I can’t say it isn’t worth the time or money because I’m sure someone will enjoy it, but there are so many better stealth and action games out there that I refuse to put a price point on any half baked recommendation I could give this. Just don’t pay full price because that is highway robbery.

This was a poor attempt at reviving the franchise, and Front Mission deserves better.

Establishing expectations high almost never goes well and unfortunately this game does not meet those expectations.

Left Alive fails to deliver a modern stealth experience. A good story can't save this total mess of a game which sports too many flaws and too many frustrating moments.

Every single positive element is completely squandered on a gameplay foundation which is barely playable and utterly devoid of merit. On a fundamental gameplay level, there's nothing in Left Alive that wasn't done twice as well fifteen years ago.

Anyone looking to get involved with Left Alive needs patience and tremendous frustration resistance.

I’d stay as far away from Left Alive as possible. For all of you hardcore Front Mission fans hoping for a proper sequel in the series, you can bury those hopes and dreams. With a team consisting of so much talent behind it, I truly wonder what went wrong with Left Alive. I love Square Enix games to death typically but this is frankly unacceptable…and it’s $60.

Left Alive is most disappointing because it had such potential to revitalise the stealth genre. Instead you get something far behind even the titles it tries to emulate. [Issue#161, p.85]

Left Alive falls short in many areas. What could of been an interesting title ends up being one you best avoid.

Ultimately, Left Alive was such an awful experience that I wouldn’t recommend purchasing it for its full $60 price or even half that. Throughout my time with the game, I thought about how money someone should spend to buy this game and I eventually decided on an amount: No more than three dollars.

Left Alive’s half-baked nature feels like a real pity because quite a few elements of the game are actually really interesting.

There’s almost no joy to be found in playing Left Alive, only bitter disappointment.

Left Alive is one of the most serious contenders for one of the worst games of this generation, at least compared to other AA and AAA productions. Both the stealth and the action approaches are extremely derivative and lacking utterly important features (such as stealth kills function) to the point that the game looks as if has been published in its alpha state.

Left Alive is simply not worth your time or money. It has a fairly interesting story to unravel, but only the most patient and persistent of players will be able to enjoy it, even if they pop the difficulty down to its lowest level.

With so many narrative, technical and gameplay issues that pop up at almost every turn — all wound up within some of the worst third-person stealth mechanics imaginable — Left Alive is both a horridly-conceived experience and a fundamentally unenjoyable product to even attempt to immerse one’s self in.

The sort of crushing disappointment that only comes around once in a while, Left Alive feels like an emaciated, innovation bereft meditation on Metal Gear Solid and in matching up so poorly with its inspiration, provides the Front Mission franchise with arguably its weakest entry in years.

Left Alive is dated, boring, and simply not fun, and in 2019, this deep into a generation, a game like this should not be released.

Nothing in Left Alive is a success, except perhaps for the Front Mission universe and the artistic design. Unbalanced AI and weak, outdated graphics and a tremendous number of game design mistakes.

A game bursting with interesting ideas but dragged down by a lack of technical competence and some very outdated ideas about game design and controls.

Yoji Shinkawa's contribution is obvious and together with the variation in weaponry these are the only positive aspects of Left Alive. The rest is garbage. Graphics are horrible. The AI is incredibly stupid. The story is non-existent. The user interface is clunky. There is no variation in levels. Do you want us to keep going? Take our word for it, don't buy this excuses for a game.

Plenty of good games are being released right about now. Left Alive is definitely not one of them. Even if you looked through a microscope trying to find something, anything, good about this trainwreck, you’d still fail.

Left Alive falls flat on its face at nearly everything it attempts to do. The story and characters aren't that compelling, the piss-poor stealth is thrown out the window thanks to the forced combat, and the combat at its best made me burst out laughing in pure disbelief at how terrible it was. So, at least it has that going for it.

Left Alive is an ambitious new development from Square Enix. Unfortunately, that ambition is squandered. The gameplay is dreadful, the enemy AI is broken, and the visuals are bland as all hell. Those issues are complemented by a boring story and a slew of audio and gameplay bugs that simply make Left Alive a failure on all fronts.

With the exception of the story, everything about this ill-conceived Front Mission spin-off feels totally broken, horribly dated, and entirely unloved. Left Alive works better as an unpolished frustration simulator than an action/stealth game.

Left Alive categorically fails at everything it sets out to accomplish. Wonky and unreliable AI makes engaging in stealth a frustrating chore, poor gunplay leads to numerous misplaced shots whizzing past the bullet-sponge enemies, and an unfair difficulty means you’ll need to repeat those enraging moments over and over again. This game could have filled a gaping hole in the market, but instead it needs to be taken round back and put out of its misery. This is a truly miserable experience for even the most die-hard supporters of the genre.