When the Metal Gear pastiche falls apart, what’s left is technical shortcomings, wonky controls, poor balance, and so much frustration it wasn’t worth suffering all the way to the end after I’d already wasted dozens of hours on it.The military story is the only part of Left Alive I found remotely decent, thanks to a couple of surprising techno-thriller twists, but even that is mediocre when compared to Metal Gear Solid or prior games in the Front Mission world. And yet it fails on every level, including at performing acceptably on a PC above the recommended specs. Left Alive tries to be so, so many things: a stealth game, a military thriller, a third-person shooter, and an urban survival adventure.