Simply Amazing.
Excellent pacing, superb storytelling and very atmospheric.
The Fall is a 3D side scrolling adventure game with some action elements. It does a very pleasant mix of side scrolling shooter, simple yet elegant puzzle solving and subtle storytelling. There is a fair deal of excellent voice acting and I found my self being invested in the characters. Many games does the mistake of telling the player to much about the game's world. The Fall knows the value in keeping some secrets, letting the player reflect on the setting and the story.
The controls are responsive and does what they are supposed to. If I'm to find anything to note is that the aiming takes a few minutes to get the hang of.
This little gem shows the value in keeping a small scope and delivering quality within that scope.
That is truely art.
There actually are some faults that may have taken place due to the size size of the development team like glitches, pretty horribe combat mechanics, stiff controls and stuff like that.
BUT it's somehow still 10 out of 10. It's a game which you can forgive for pretty much anything it does wrong because the feeling you get from playing it is far more superior.
A bit more text would have been nice, as the possibility to maybe study some archives and extract more about the backstory of the game universe would have made the wait for the next installments much more justifiable and pleasant.
Over the Moon have begun something very special with The Fall and you’ll be looking out for ARID again even months after you finish this intriguing opening act.
Despite the initial plan to cut The Fall into several episodes, Over the Moon decided not to tease us with a cliffhanger – it’s a self-contained, albeit short, story.
From the protagonist's initial fall to this planet, the story captured me and drew me in. The art and sound created a world beautiful and eerie. Shortly after the story began to unfold, I felt that I was getting a window into a much larger, intriguing world; complete, very real and deeply dark. The dialogue and voice acting created characters that I became so emotionally invested in that I have thought of them for days since, wondering about their histories and motivations. The puzzles, for me, were a reason to further explore the depths of this bizarre world. As a filmmaker, this game left more of a mark than many films I have watched. There was a haunting beauty about this world, and I laughed out loud many times, thoroughly enjoying the wit of characters, and morbid absurdity of certain tasks throughout the game. I was left feeling so invested that I am eager to experience the next installment. This is a brilliant game.
I thought the game looked interesting so I purchased it. On a positive note, this game has great sound effects, beautiful artwork, and a really interesting story. I found myself getting lost in this games puzzles and story for hours. Some of the negative aspects of this game are the terrible mechanics, and has poor A.I. capabilities. The logic for the dialog is very 2 dimension which hearkens back to the days of 8 bit, 16 bit , and 32 bit games. In addition, some of the puzzles make no sense and have terrible logic as well. The game only allows the user to solve an issue 1 way which I thought was pure laziness on the developers part. Overall its still fun to play, and well worth the 10 bucks.
I bought this game for the atmosphere and to support indie adventure game development. It was enjoyable, but there were a few things that distracted me. First, the action sequences felt very out of place. While the game is mostly a LucasArts-style point and click adventure, you'll be occasionally thrown into a gun battle. These sequences don't really add anything to the game and they aren't challenging. Your health regenerates and there's very little chance of dying.
The keyboard-mouse controls were also a little questionable. You don't get a mouse cursor on screen, so all your clicking needs to be navigated with your flashlight and this can feel very strange at first.
There were a few neat elements that I liked, but weren't fully explored in this game. Your character has the ability to "network" with various objects in game. This element is used so rarely in the game, that it's almost an afterthought and I was disappointed that there aren't more puzzles that use it.
The atmosphere of the game and the overall look and feel is nicely done. I particularly like how certain parts of the game force your user interface to pseudo-glitch. I was expecting a lot of jump-scares, but thankfully, there were only a few jumpy moments; the majority of the game's tension was built up by the environment and interaction between the (very few) main characters.
I played this game using a keyboard and a gamepad (xbox pad) and the controls are poor - responsiveness is stiff and delayed in both cases but I found it to be a little easier to play with a gamepad due to the funky keys/combination presses and holds you need to use.
There are bugs, really crazy bugs. The game crashed twice on me in my single play through and several times I would start floating through the level ending up in random locations. Also, sometimes when an area loaded I would not be able to control the character at all except for moving around (no shooting/jumping/flashlight/stealth/etc.).
The puzzles are basic - use a thing on this thing to get to the next place. It never really goes beyond that but due to level design you often need to walk around looking for the thing or the place to use the thing for a long time, backtracking is often needed.
The combat is not as good as I was lead to believe. You have a gun, just one, as your weapon and there's only a few different enemy types in the whole game. You can also stealth, but you can't move when stealth. It feels very lacking.
The game is short. Really short, which is good because if the boring combat and tedious puzzles went on much longer I think I would have just quit.
The only really good part of the game is the story and the voice acting, which is excellent except for 3 tremendous flaws. It is absolutely linear which is fine, but you are given "choices" that aren't choices - you must take one specific action to move forward - don't present false choices to me. The overall plot is obvious. Finally, the game/story is incomplete - WAAAAAY incomplete. It felt like just when I was ready for the real story to come into play, it was suddenly over. Booooo!
There's very little redeeming value here, I picked it up on a steam sale and it still wasn't worth it. Fellow game player, don't make the mistake I've already payed for. Move on, find better games and adventures out there in the digisphere.
SummaryTake the role of ARID, the artificial intelligence within a high-tech combat suit. The Fall is a unique combination of adventure-game puzzle solving and side-scroller action, all set within a dark and atmospheric story. Get ready for a disturbing journey as you explore the world of The Fall.