Have you ever played a game which provides you with next to no information of what you’re meant to be doing which leaves you constantly browsing the internet to see what you need to do in order to progress? Its okay, we’ve all been there. Sometimes we need to be pointed in the right direction and, although some deem it as ‘cheating’, it can’t be helped if the design of the game is so poor, it see’s you constantly stuck on the same level for what seems like days. With this in mind, I’ve been playing The Fall, a puzzle-action game which was released back in May.
I will admit now that after completing the first level of The Fall in 50 minutes, I failed to progress from a section in the second level no matter what I did. I viewed Let’s Play videos via YouTube, I searched high and low for answers on how to progress, but I found that no matter what actions I performed in-game, it just wouldn’t work. Even though I followed every exact step one YouTube video had shown me, the game would not work in the same way. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it suffers from major game-breaking bugs and it is very temperamental. This review will only really be focusing on the first level that I played (as I can only write from my own personal experience with the game) which does suffer from some problems itself.
When you are introduced to The Fall, you are provided with a tutorial which guides you through the game’s nonsensical control scheme. I only played the game using a keyboard and mouse, but the buttons you have to press in order to perform certain actions seem convoluted and unnecessary. You play the game as a mechanical suit, which contains a human who is severely injured after his spaceship had crashed and it’s up to the suit to help the human inside recover. You aren’t provided with any objective and it’s up to you to investigate the environment and see what you can find to aid your progression from this area.
In order to find these items you have a gun with a flashlight and nothing else. Items can only be interacted with if the flashlight is pointed at the item in question and a lot of the game feels as though you are a part of CSI and you are having to comb through every last detail of the level and both levels which I was able to play were dark and not interesting in the slightest. When you finally do find an item to interact with you have to hold down the right mouse (which is to use the flashlight), hold in “Shift” and then select if you want to log-in to your discovered item or if you want to pick it up using the “A” or “S” keys. It feels far more complicated than it ever should be. It’s almost reminiscent of trying to shoot in first-person in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of the Patriots which is frustrating to say the least.
The difficulty of combat is another downside to The Fall. While the pistol is very effective at taking on enemies, it is frustrating as you have to aim a charged gun at an enemies head or else they won’t die. When confronted with a few enemies you can take cover behind pillars and small crates by pressing “E” and this doesn’t flow smoothly at all. The gunfights stop and start too much and while this isn’t a dedicated 2D shooter, the gun does play a major part in fending off enemies and solving puzzles from time-to-time.
As I’ve previously mentioned, the environments seem very dark and there isn’t a lot to appreciate in terms of graphics. The robot character you play as does look good when the light is shining directly on it, but those moments are far too few and far between. One of the few strong points of the game is the voice acting. The dialogue is crisply delivered when interacting with other characters and you soon become intrigued in the place which you have crashed on, although I didn’t get anywhere near far enough to explore the environment more, but the dialogue was intriguing to say the least.
There isn’t much more I can say from my time playing The Fall. I gave the game every chance possible, restarted the game several times and even followed a YouTube guide and still couldn’t progress to what I can only assume is a game-breaking bug. I can see what Over the Moon tried to do with The Fall, but even with my limited experience it’s frustrating, dull and pretty much broken. Hopefully they can patch the game as I would be intrigued to revisit this game if it were to be fixed to see how the story progresses and to see if the gameplay sorts itself out. For the moment, however, it should have been put out of commission a while ago.
While I’m aware that some reading this may wonder why I bothered to review this game at all as I cannot provide a definitive score in regards to the entire game based on my experience. I thought about giving the game an “N/A” score, but decided a 3 was suitable as this game is on sale right now. I can see what Over The Moon have tried but it hasn’t worked for me, literally.
The Fall is available now on Steam for £6.99.