Reviewer's Note: Scars Above was reviewed on an Xbox Series S.

At a glance, you might mistake Scars Above for a Souls-like or Rogue-like. The game's trailers, after all, make it look like the love child of Remnant: From the Ashes and Returnal. Yet you'd be surprised. This ambitious effort from Serbian developer Mad Hat Games is actually more of an action-adventure third-person shooter, with zero roguish attributes and only minor nods to the Dark Souls series and its progeny. So, if you're sick of all those Souls-likes, don't write this one off; and if you're searching for something to scratch that Elden Ring itch, well, keep looking.

Scars Above opens up in the not-too-distant future, in the space above planet Earth. Six months prior, an enormous, unexplained object arrived and finally confirmed the existence of some extra-terrestrial intelligence in the universe. In response to the arrival of this object, dubbed the Metahedron, Earth assembled a SCAR (Sentient Contact Assessment and Response) team to probe the alien artifact. Now, six months later, the four-person team, secure in its spaceship, stands on the precipice of first contact. Things go wrong — obviously — and the team is transported to a hostile exoplanet. Dr. Kate Ward, the team's scientist, wakes up alone on the surface of the planet, and sets out for answers.

Kate, who will be your avatar for the next 12 or so hours, is a competent protagonist, albeit more than a little generic. She's not a soldier, but she leverages a brilliant scientific mind to unlock the secrets and survive the horrors of the alien planet. Her biggest problem is that she narrates every discovery, which takes a lot of the tension and mystery out of this shipwrecked tale.

The tale itself is, like Kate, competent but generic. The story features a handful of provocative science-fiction ideas, and one interesting, sad revelation toward the very end of the game, but for the most part it's difficult to invest in Kate or the other SCAR team members, in part because of some middling voice work and in part because they all appear in conversation like sedated NPCs. Indeed, there's a level of graphical jankiness that runs throughout Scars Above, which is understandable considering the AA nature of the production.

Mad Hat Games might have cut some corners with facial animations, but the studio absolutely delivered when it comes to the game's very best feature: third-person shooting. As a reminder, Kate is no soldier; however, she is skilled with scientific equipment. Her very first "weapon" is an electrical discharge device used in Earth orbit before the disaster, which she reunites with in her first hour on the alien world. Throughout her quest, she'll find or craft (via 3D printer) modular parts for the device, granting them elemental powers: electricity, fire, ice, acid. This sets the stage for the improvisational battles to come.

Mechanically, shooting in Scars Above is fairly straightforward. You can aim and shoot, and deploy stamina-draining dodges — nothing out of the ordinary. However, you can also switch weapon attachments on the fly, which opens up many tactical opportunities. You see, most enemies have some elemental weakness, or attack in proximity to something that could be manipulated to gain an advantage. If an enemy charges at you on a frozen lake, for instance, you could use a heat weapon to destroy the ice beneath it, freezing it in the process. Alternatively, you could fire an electrical shot at a monster in the rain, getting a "wet" bonus to damage. Some larger enemies, including bosses, have color-coded nodes on their bodies that will suffer major injury when struck with the correct elemental weapon.

This all makes for some very dynamic and rewarding fights. It's extremely gratifying to find and exploit enemy weak points, use the surrounding environment to maximum advantage, and escape relatively unscathed. Things only get more interesting with the arrival of gadgets, energy-depleting tools that help turn the tide in battle. These include, among others, a shield, a decoy, a flammable fluid grenade, and, best of all, a "gravity trap" that slows down time within a small area. 

While the game's moment-to-moment action is enjoyable, it's unfortunately surrounded by other elements that drag down the overall experience. Scars Above fancies itself an action-adventure title, which is technically correct, but the term plays to its weaknesses. The story, for all its thought-provoking sci-fi ideas, feels disposable in the end. The game's puzzles are superfluous at best. They consist mainly of tedious augmented reality detective interludes or glyph-matching segments. Exploration, which could and should have been great, is diminished and streamlined. Almost everything is at your fingertips. The main paths are littered with experience point-granting relics, and it's not like weapon upgrades are hidden or inaccessible; they're found easily at the end of branching paths. The sensation of discovery is muted in Scars Above.

When you find enough of those XP relics — and you will — you can spend them in Kate's character ability tree. There are some interesting boons here, like extra healing injections or increased stamina. They're all refundable, too, which is a great quality-of-life addition. Regrettably, you don't really have to make any sacrifices, because the game throws so much XP at the player. I entered the final boss fight with 10 unused experience points, enough to buy the top tier perks again and still have points left over.

That brings us to another issue with Scars Above: it's on the easy side. Even at the normal "specialist" difficultly, you shouldn't run into too much resistance, as long as you invest in your ability tree and take advantage of your gadgets. Again, a Souls-like this is not. The good news is that the game offers three difficulty settings — rookie, specialist, and commander — and you can switch the settings at any time.

Apart from multiple difficulty tiers, Scars Above doesn't offer many avenues for replay value. There are no additional modes and no new game plus option after you've completed the game, which should take somewhere between 11 and 12 hours.

Graphically, Scars Above presents as a mid-tier Unreal Engine 4 project with artistic elements both bad and good. Some of the environments look a bit staged and, as mentioned before, many of the human animations are stiff and robotic. At the same time, the diversity of environments is quite impressive. There are humid swamps, airy grasslands, icy caves, living blood-red tunnels, and alien facilities with onyx-colored brutalist architecture. Enemy designs are great — the complete opposite of the game's human characters. There are hulking, armor-clad rhino-like beasts; abominable snow monsters with chest cavities lined with teeth; and many more. The main villain's design is excellent as well.

Performance-wise, Scars Above performs well, at least on Xbox Series S. Throughout my time with the game, I didn't experience any frame rate drops or bugs of any kind. There's some obvious pop-in in the wide-open grassy plains area, but that's about it.

Don't mistake Scars Above for a Remnant or Returnal knock-off; it's its own thing. That said, it's a rather middling thing, despite its ambition. While the core shooting mechanics and elemental weapons deliver the goods by setting up engaging, open-ended tactical battles, all of the elements that surround that core are lacking in some way. The story and characters are mostly forgettable; the puzzle-solving an afterthought; and the sense of exploration and discovery subdued. If there is to be a sequel — the game's ending certainly leaves the door open for one — hopefully it leans more toward third-person shooting and less toward action-adventure.