“Millions of players have experienced these worlds over the years, and this will open the door for long time players to revisit those memories while inviting new audiences to discover them for the first time,” said New Business vice president Deborah Papiernik. “Atari has a rich gaming legacy and deep appreciation for these classic titles, we’re excited to see how they’ll evolve and connect with players in fresh, meaningful ways.”

With this acquisition, Atari has stated that it intends to bring back these smaller gaming experiences to a new audience, with releases being planned for current platforms with “renewed publishing frameworks”. Along with re-releasing the games under Atari’s publishing label, the company has also confirmed that it plans to work on expanding the audiences for them with new content and extended distribution channels as well.

“Ubisoft and Atari both have a legacy of crafting worlds that players can fall in love with — games that resonate with generations of players not just for how they played, but for how they made us feel,” Atari chairman and CEO Wade Rosen. “We’re excited to reintroduce these titles while also exploring ways to expand and evolve these franchises.”

For context, all of the IPs acquired by Atari have been dormant for quite some time, with the most recent of the releases being Grow Up, which came out in 2016 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The oldest among these acquired IP is 2005’s Cold Fear, which was originally released on PC, PS2 and Xbox.

Atari has been expanding its portfolio quite a bit. Back in July, the company had announced a deal with Thunderful Group, which ended up with the company becoming an 82 percent of Thunderful Group’s shares and votes. As part of this deal, around €4.5 million worth of shares were issued, amounting to 333,333,334 new ordinary shares. This announcement also came in light of Thunderful Group going through a rough financial period which also resulted in the company laying off around 20 percent of its workforce.

“This transaction marks another important milestone in Atari’s development with the expansion of its publishing and development capabilities in the European region,” said Rosen about the agreement. “Thunderful is recognized for publishing and developing critically acclaimed games, and with the announced transformation plan, as well as the quality and commitment of Thunderful’s teams, we are confident that Thunderful will be returning to a profitable growth path while helping to further develop Atari operations in Europe.”

As for Ubisoft, the French gaming company had recently opened up a new subsidiary with Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot’s son Charlie Guillemot taking up the position of co-CEO of this new subsidiary alongside Christophe Derennes. The new subsidiary was founded as part of a €1.16 billion deal between Ubisoft and Tencent.

I am Alive

Released in 2012, this game sees players assuming the role of a lone survivor in a post-apocalyptic world as he embarks on a quest to find his daughter and wife. I Am Alive starts off strong with its gloomy and dark atmosphere, and the gameplay is also brutal with an ever-depleting stamina bar and violent executions. However, the game starts to feel repetitive as you keep executing the same tried-and-tested tactics over and over again to get out of nasty situations alive. It’s not a bad game by any stretch, but it does fall short of exploring the full depth of these promising mechanics.

Deus Ex Human Revolution

Deus Ex: Human Revolution shared with players a dystopic future with questions of transhumanism that we may very well be answering in the real world soon enough as technology seems to rapidly develop. With such fantastic base concept, and the Illuminati stoking the fires of the war to come between the Augmented and the normal humans, what did the title have to say about the whole debate it presented? It just asks you to pick a button to decide your ending. We never asked for this.

I Am Alive was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360 long time ago and it’s now finally going to be released on the PC and Ubisoft has released a launch trailer for the same to celebrate the game’s release on the PC. The console versions were received well by critics and even our review was quite positive.

“It’s not a game for everybody, but for those who believe they will appreciate a game that spiritually evokes some of the best titles ever created, and who think they can actually use their imagination in conjunction with the game to create a beautiful, emotionally moving drama, I Am Alive is heavily recommended. It might be the most unexpectedly good game you have played in a very long time,” wrote our author Pramath.

The game  asts the player as a lone survivor in a believable, dark and insecure post-apocalyptic world. One year after the Event, a worldwide cataclysmic event that wiped most of the human race, a man struggles for survival in a desolate city as he tries to reunite with his long lost wife and daughter.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

About I Am Alive:

Game Overview:
In I Am Alive, players will be challenged by both the environment and the enemies. Stamina and resource management are key when being exposed to deadly atmospheres and scaling enormous buildings in search of supplies. The unique combat system requires players to utilize intimidation – cowards are easily swayed with an empty gun, while other enemies will put players to the test.

Publisher:Ubisoft

Developer: Darkworks

Platforms: X360 and PS3

Release Date: Already released

Stay tuned to Gamingbolt.com for more news and updates.

Retailing for £11.99 on Steam and Ubishop, it will allow PC gamers the chance to experience the everyman’s quest to find his wife and daughter in a world fallen into ruin.

An “Easy” mode – featuring infinite retries – and “Replay” mode for revisiting levels will also be added to the mix when it releases this September.

I Am Alive is now available on Sony Entertainment Network.

I Am Alive takes a realistic approach to the survival action-adventure genre, challenging players to strategically assess situations from a real-life perspective. In the new combat system, players will focus on intimidation and bluffing to gain the upper hand. Resources are scarce and an empty gun may be your only hope in a torn-down society.

Players will enter Haventon one year after “The Event” – a mysterious cataclysmic disaster – and will be challenged while traveling the direful environment. Using a unique Stamina system, players will have to manage their energy while scaling the buildings in Haventon. Those who use their stamina well will gain access to areas with more resources.

Stay tuned to GB for more news and updates.

XBLA charts for this week shows some interesting things, and its an Ubisoft game that tops the chart. Most of you must have heard of I Am Alive, if not, our review will explain why the game is so good. Do check it out.

Gotham City Imposters takes the no. 2 position, and the legendary Pinball FX2 takes the no. 3 position. Check out the entire list below, courtesy of Major Nelson.

Xbox 360 Top LIVE Titles (based on UU’s)

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. FIFA 12
4. Battlefield 3
5. Halo: Reach
6. Modern Warfare 2
7. Mass Effect 3
8. NBA 2K12
9. Skyrim
10. Gears of War 3
11. GTA IV
12. Forza Motorsport 4
13. Madden NFL 12
14. Resident Evil Operation Raccoon City
15. NHL12
16. Saints Row: The Third
17. Halo 3
18. Red Dead Redemption
19. Call of Duty 4
20. NBA 2K11

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

1. I Am Alive
2. Gotham City Impostors
3. Pinball FX2
4. Rayman 3 HD
5. Sine Mora
6. Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team
7. Shoot Many Robots
8. Fruit Ninja Kinect
9. Castle Crashers
10. Trials HD
11. Alan Wake’s American Nightmare
12. NBA JAM: On Fire Edition
13. Stacking
14. Costume Quest
15. REAL STEEL
16. The Simpsons Arcade Game
17. Full House Poker
18. Dungeon Defenders
19. UNO
20. Peggle

Top Indie Games (Full Versions purchased)

1. CastleMiner Z
2. CastleMiner
3. Total Miner: Forge
4. FortressCraft Chapter 1
5. The Impossible Game
6. Miner4Ever
7. Fortress Wars
8. Avatar Deathmatch
9. The $1 Zombie Game
10. Avatar Paintball
11. FLIRT
12. Techno Kitten Adventure!
13. Toy Stunt Bike 2
14. Avatar Legends
15. DLC Quest
16. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1
17. Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!
18. Zombie Invasion
19. 20 Games
20. Avatar Laser Wars

Games for Windows Top LIVE Titles (based on UU’s)

1. GTA IV
2. Age of Empires Online
3. Microsoft Flight
4. Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition
5. Batman Arkham City
6. F1 2011
7. DiRT 3
8. Gotham City Impostors
9. Resident Evil 5
10. Fallout 3
11. Bioshock 2
12. Fable III
13. F1 2010
14. Colin McRae : Dirt 2
15. Street Fighter IV
16. Bulletstorm
17. Batman: Arkham Asylum
18. Virtua Tennis 4
19. Red Faction Guerrilla
20. Operation Flashpoint Red River

Thanks, VG247.

However, miracles do happen, and just as Final Fantasy XIII, Duke Nukem Forever, and Gran Turismo 5 finally saw release, so I Am Alive has finally been released, four years after its original announcement. To many who were eagerly following the game’s troubled development, just the fact that they finally get to play it will be reward enough. However, what about others who were perhaps only vaguely or tangentially interested in the game, and need to know if the game is a worthy purchase? What about those who perhaps didn’t even know the game existed until they stumbled upon it while browsing their console’s online marketplace? Is I Am Alive worth the price of admission? Was it worth the excruciatingly long wait?

Let’s get the game’s strongest selling point out of the way- it has an incredible concept. Taking cues, perhaps, from the minimalism of games like Shadow of the Colossus, a concept that is perhaps rooted in games like Disaster: Day of Crisis, and an atmosphere that evokes Will Smith’s I Am Legend, the game tells the story of some unspecified disaster- we don’t know what it was, we don’t even know if it was natural or man made- hitting the country, and taking it entirely offline. There is a complete absence of governance, there is no police force, and it’s pretty much every man out for himself, a pure survival of the fittest. In this desolate, concrete, post apocalyptic jungle, the law of the jungle- eat or be eaten- applies.

In this context, we are given control of the game’s protagonist- his name is unknown. he travels back to Haventown, from across the country, a trek that takes a year, to find his estranged wife and daughter in the aftermath of the disaster. Why are his wife and daughter estranged? We don’t know, we’re never told. What we do know is that as soon as the protagonist enters the town, he finds a young girl surrounded by several men, whose intentions are more than suspect. He saves the girl, and she then accompanies you. Helpless, sweet Mei helps you to form a bond with herself, and by extension, with the game itself. The bond evokes the bond that Ico in Yorda shared in the seminal PS2 game, or the one that, to a lesser extent, the Prince and Farah shared in Ubisoft’s own Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

The game’s great concepts aren’t just limited to narrative devices alone- they also extend to the gameplay. In true survival game fashion, you’re given a gun, but no ammunition. Bullets are scarce, and every time you find one, it’s a small victory, a ray of sunshine in a bleak and inhospitable landscape. To fight, you can pull your gun out. Maybe the people who threatened you wanted to fight you, but are afraid of your gun. In that case, expect them to try and attack you again as soon as you put the gun away. Or maybe they are people trying to survive, help themselves and their families, and they hope to get something from you that will make it easier for them. But they don’t want to fight you. Will you attack them because they threatened you? Especially because they probably have something, valuable, something that will make survival for you and Mei easier? Or will you turn away and walk on?

The game shifts the burden of emotional weight entirely on you. The world is a bleak place, and you’re in it. the people there are desperate for survival, and you’re one of them. When society and all its structures break down, do the standard human ethics and morals still apply? In a jungle where the only law that applies is survival, would you be justified if you killed someone else and stole their stash, especially since they would probably potentially do the same to you?

The best part is that unlike many modern games that try to deal with themes like these, I Am Alive is successful, largely because it never says anything specific, never tells you anything. Everything is left up to your imagination, fueled only by the vaguely disturbing hints and leading questions that the game drops over the entirety of its seven hour playtime.

However, most of the fighting that you do in this game will not be with the other people, but with your surroundings, which are unforgivingly hostile. The disaster- whatever it was- left behind a huge, persistent dust cloud that pervades everything. Stay in it for too long, and you die. Buildings fallen over and cars strewn all over the place mean that you have to climb and scale your environments a lot. The game’s Shadow of the Colossus-esque stamina bar raises tension, as often you need to time everything just right if you are to reach safety and prevent yourself from falling to your death. Happily enough, the game often gives you items to recover your stamina while you’re climbing, which have to be accessed via a rather jarring looking inventory.

As a matter of fact, I believe this is the one fair criticism that I can level at the game- its HUD, its menus, its interface, everything, is completely at odds with its aesthetic. It pulls you out from the game’s flawless immersion, and it reminds you that yes, you are in fact playing a video game, an illusion the game works so hard to dispel otherwise.

I Am Alive is, therefore, a great game. Like Assassins Creed in 2007, it has an incredible concept that can carry the game all by itself. The problem is, what you take away from I Am Alive is directly contingent on what you went in with. Use your imagination just a little, and I Am Alive comes together beautifully, like it did for me. However, if you don’t use your imagination, you are left with a combat heavy game that gives you no ammunition, a game replete with heavy platforming. The people who persistently attack you now become dumb AI opponents. Everything falls apart.

It’s not a game for everybody, but for those who believe they will appreciate a game that spiritually evokes some of the best titles ever created, and who think they can actually use their imagination in conjunction with the game to create a beautiful, emotionally moving drama, I Am Alive is heavily recommended. It might be the most unexpectedly good game you have played in a very long time.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360

Ubisoft have also launched a companion app along with the game, which you can get it from the iTunes store over here.

The app features:

* Street map of the main game area with exclusive hints from the developers
* List of all resources from the game detailing the level of rarity and effects on health, stamina and stamina capacity
* List of all Achievements and Trophies with a check/uncheck tracking feature
* 5 videos including a trailer, a making-of and the 3 “survivor tapes”

* Over 50 production concept arts, promotional artworks and screenshots
* Never seen before O.S.T., including 6 tracks exclusively composed for the app
* Photo mode that lets you create your own I Am Alive-themed photos and post them to Facebook or email them to friends