The Fall Review (PC)

very good
key review info
  • Game: The Fall
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: Yes  
  • Reviewed on:
The Fall

The Fall is an atmospheric, narrative-driven game that blends action platforming with the timeless gameplay of point-and-click adventures, offering an attractive story to explore and an intriguing setting that is full of juicy secrets to discover, which will feel especially flavorful for fans of science fiction.

The game is indie developer Over the Moon's debut title, following a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, and it explores a premise that science fiction fans have often dreamed about, of an artificial intelligence attempting to step over its innate boundaries.

Story You take on the role of ARID, an artificial intelligence aboard a combat suit that gets activated as an emergency response procedure after the suit crashes through the surface of an unknown planet, and the pilot becomes unconscious.

Your mission is to do what you can to rescue the pilot, so you embark on a journey of exploration, using the exosuit's limited capabilities to navigate the environment and solve various puzzles, and on your way you discover that there is a bit more to the story than you initially expected.

The premise is pretty interesting, seeing an artificial intelligence breaking out of the mold of its original programming in its quest to save the human inhabitant of the suit at all costs, sometimes even tricking the rigorous protocols set in place to limit its reach in order to gain access to the advanced functions of the exosuit.

Over the course of your adventures, you will uncover disturbing facts about the world around you, some flavorful dystopian nuances, and a glimpse of why humankind oftentimes doesn't have a glorious future in speculative fiction, which will make ARID question her very essence and the limits of her programming.

The writing itself is pretty decent and is made to shine even more by the competent voice acting delivering the lines. The style is serious and to the point, the text is plausible and seems pretty well thought out, there are no cheesy lines and references, and this confers a more immersive quality to the entire experience.

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They're so bad they make Storm Troopers look pro
Now I see why "The Fall" is a fitting name

Gameplay

The Fall plays like a hybrid between Metroid and Broken Sword: you move around using platforming controls and shine your flashlight on stuff in order to highlight objects that you can interact with, pick up stuff in one place and use it elsewhere in order to solve a puzzle and progress through the story.

For the most part, the context is pretty well fleshed out, and if you pay attention to your surroundings and hints from ARID's descriptions, you'll be able to figure out what to do pretty fast. There are, however, a few parts where you might get stuck on account of everything being so dark and not being able to turn on the low-light vision that the suit no doubt possesses in order to make out what's really in front of you or that there's a small thing you can interact with on the ceiling, but those moments are few and far between.

Puzzles are pretty interesting and make sense, don't feel forced, and you won't clutter your inventory with useless stuff. There are also many puzzles that use the environment in clever ways, feeling very rewarding when you figure them out.

There's an overall feeling of uneasiness that follows you around, creeping into your head and tugging at you, like a premonition that there's more than meets the eye to the entire thing and that something strange is about to happen, and fortunately the hints dropped along the way do turn out to be conducive to a twist, in the end.

One area where the game seems to be lacking polish is its control scheme, which seems to have been designed primarily for controllers and doesn't use the level of freedom and precision that a mouse and keyboard provide. It instead channels them through the limited scope of a gamepad and ends up introducing a certain amount of tedium and frustration in playing the game.

Another area where The Fall could have done with a bit more work is represented by the platforming and shooting mechanics, which seem a bit wonky. For instance, you can't run, jump and grab onto a ledge in a fluid motion, and all movement seems like it has a bit of inertia and lack of precision that will translate into a chaotic outcome if you try to move a little bit faster.

The action part of the platforming sees you shooting robots in the face, and uses a classical but dry scheme that dates back to Blizzard's Blackthorne. You hide behind cover or meld in the shadows, let the enemy shoot, then come back out and return fire in the small window of opportunity afforded, rinse and repeat, with the option to also perform a "stealth takedown" when robots aren't facing you.

It feels a bit stale, and enemy robots rarely pose a threat, which makes battles feel rather clunky than threatening, but it's ultimately not too different from other action platformers, so it's not that bad, because it also doesn't happen too often, and it's usually integrated with your actions somehow.

Sound and visuals

Even the menus have an interesting design, having a rudimentary operating system feel to them, and thus being cleverly integrated in the story.

The sound design is solid as well, from drips and clanks and various electrical noises, to the servomotors in the exosuit, everything seems to come together to deliver an enthralling experience and to complement the solid narrative.

There's a very ominous background score always following your every step, and when the action picks up so does the music, whispering alertness into your ears and letting you know that things are about to become a bit more hairy.

The visuals are also in tune with the heavy atmosphere presented by the entire experience, being for the most part dark, with subtle highlights on the more important set pieces, and having a very theatrical effect, overall.

It does, however, also mean that the graphics end up being a bit uninspired, dominated by black and blue hues with the occasional blinking light or patch of direct illumination, which although atmospheric and ominous, also look a bit barren.

Conclusion

The Fall attempts to pose the same questions that some of the most well-known classical science fiction writers did, tackling the very notion of what it means to be alive, to have a conscience and purpose, touching on themes that Phillip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov played with, and attempting to explore the consequences of the realization of free will within the boundaries of a complex but ultimately very finite system such as the one found inside a machine.

The narrative is pretty clever and engaging, and the story managed to carry some of the more lackluster elements of The Fall, and makes it easier to overlook some of the more frustrating puzzles, allowing yourself to become captivated by its great setting and piquing your curiosity about what's going to happen next.

The primary downside is that this is just episode one out of three, and the story is left hanging in the air at the end, but it is a pretty satisfying journey nonetheless, albeit a very short one. 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.

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story 9
gameplay 7
concept 9
graphics 8
audio 8
multiplayer 0
final rating 8
Editor's review
very good