I do not know when I picked this game up, but I certainly know why I did. The first game was not the most impressive thing to me, but it was intriguing, especially as a story of survival, not from the point of view of the human who needed help, but the AI who's whole goal in life was to protect and ensure that life would go on. So to see it go on, it really was only a matter of time before I picked up a controller for this one too. And yes, it was worth the trip....
Story: Most sequels rely on their predecessor to begin their story, but this is exceptionally true here. If you haven't played The Fall, you probably should stop right here and not proceed until you finish it. But if you have, you are continuing A.R.I.D.'s story. Warning but spoilers below:
In the last game, A.R.I.D. performed an orbital drop as part of a military unit, only something when horribly wrong. The human who's suit she ran was not responding and it became her job to take over the motor actions of the suit to protect him and get the medical care he needs. During her ordeal to do so, she found herself bending and breaking the rules she was meant to follow as the need got more and more desperate... only to be disassembled and deconstructed as a malfunctioning unit: her human was never there.
We continue from this point as A.R.I.D.'s process are being stopped and she is being decommissioned only it doesn't go as planned. Rather she makes a choice that is unthinkable for an AI system: she resists and fights to survive, ultimately abandoning her "body" and escapes into the net itself.
This is only a temporary reprieve as she is tethered and will have to return to her processing unit, and she is not alone. Entities of a program intent on wiping her out follow her, and the User behind all this is the key. If she can stop him, she will live another day.
This basic setup will frame this next adventure for A.R.I.D. as trace the user to his location with the intention of killing him before he kills you, and it will be the driving factor till just about the end of the game as A.R.I.D. doggedly does everything in her power to ensure her own survival. Just don't expect the path to be very direct or without some serious twists this time, culminating in one of the most satisfying endings I have seen in a good long while. Don't get me wrong, this is another "to be continued" ending just like the last, but if it were to stop here, this time I would honestly be satisfied with where everything ended up. But the way it's woven into the actual gameplay means I will have to cover it more when we get to that.
8/10
Graphics: Much like the previous game, the best way to describe this game in a single word would be "dark." You will spend a lot of time looking at worlds made of blacks and greys depicting situations often just as bleak starting with ARID's own struggle to survive being hunted across the starkly lit web as she looks to turn the hunter into the hunted and just getting worse as she encounters others AIs in everything from being regularly abused to their own personal hell. This is not a game of light and hope, but worlds of hopelessness, often created by the one stuck there.
But this darkness also aligns with the look of the game itself which often chooses shadows and inky blackness to depict these worlds and in fact I was forced to increase the brightness of the game itself. This is definitely a "cant see shit, Captain" game. Which honestly works to this one's advantage. While the darkness is used expertly for the moodiness of the game itself, it also serves to hide how simple a lot of the models in the game are, really only lighting areas in neon bits to hightlight those areas exclusively. The result is moody when it needs to be, high tech, when it can be but looking really slick overall without working too hard to get there.
7/10
Sound: Most of the music in The Fall 2 fallows the lead of the graphics being dark, oppressive, moody, but also fairly minimal. There are many areas you will not hear music at all, only the ambiance of the world around ARID and her current ally. Still, expect to here a background overtone thrumb up to the mood as needed or a little combat music when called for. It's not a lot, but it is used just right to finish the mood the visuals create.
Nor can you expect a lot of sound effects since really most of your actions are not things that create them, leaving you mainly to the occasional rummage, shooting your weapon, or mechanical bits whirring in response to something you did. It fits the world, but it's nothing special.
The real standout here is much like it's predecessor, the voice acting, and this time, we have a few main characters to share it. Everyone is absolutely on point, carrying a suprising amount of emotion and delivery for AI voices, and yet they are all very very believable... and much to the credit of the actors, this does not make everyone likable. In fact, it's more likely to invoke sympathy with some, fustration with others, and others may even piss you off, but do so by design. To explain much more is to ruin the story this time around.
9/10
Gameplay: Much like the first game, The Fall 2 plays primarily as a side-scrolling point-and-click game, but this time your mission is not one of mercy. This time around, ARID is fighting for her life, choosing to live rather then accept being decommissioned. she follows the trace being used to escape her physical head, and starting her in one of the four areas that will take up this game. Being cyberspace, it's also a place where viral code will attempt to take you out, occasionally sticking you into rooms where you will have to defeat a handful of them before leaving. This is done by avoiding them till they make an attempt to attack (going from black to red to signify it), then shooting them while they remain blue afterwards. And while you do have and will want to use a lock on mechanic for this, you can not just fire at random, for you have an energy meter which will deplete with each shot. It will regenerate very quickly, lose it all and you can't even jump to avoid the enemies anymore, making the combat more like a puzzle then really anything you can twitch your way through. It's effective, and the closest thing you will have to any puzzles while in this area. But that all changes when you start meeting the other cast members.
Most of the time, when you are not in cyberspace, you will be effectively possessing other robots, but not so much able to take over as being placed in a possition where you need to manipulate them into completing your current goals. For example, your first "ally" is a robot butlet who's entire life is based on serving his master and his mistress dutifully. As such, despite ARID believing this master might be the user she needs to eliminate, she can not get him to just confront the man. Rather, the butler will not let her near him until they can deliver his tea, and even then he wants nothing more but to move on to complete his routine. The puzzle of this portion is to disrupt the routine in ways that will get the guy to follow ARID's commands and help her find her would-be killer before he can finish the job.
You do this by interacting with the world via a drop-down menu available in just about all parts of the game: when you are in aim-mode, things you can interact with or observe have magnifying glasses appear on them, and if it's highlighted, you can choose it to either change your mind with the X, interact with the hand, or if you have inventory items, their icons will appear below the hand. It's compact and efficient and much like what the first game did. It will also be the main way you interact with the world as the standard whichever part you are in or ally you are involved with.
The end result is effective, not consistent as the bugs will list. Also, expect to need a nudge from time to time as also like the original, there are some puzzles here that reach Sierra-level logic.
7/10
Bugs: Sadly I can not say this game ran flawless, as the UI seemed to have some issues. There are times this game decided for whatever reason, the interaction menu would ignore the stick. Since the whole game pauses while you are in these menus, it makes it look like the game froze when this happens, but it instead requires you to back out of the menu and re-open it. Add to this times when the game just wouldn't update the interaction properly requiring you to repeat yourself multiple times and there are some times this game will piss you off just from a tech perspective.
Overall: What you get when you start up here is a solid and interesting title, but one that is obtuse and at times a bit buggy in ways that will actually get in the way of figuring it out. It has a lot more variety then the original game did and even improved on some of the clunkier aspects of combat from it, but it needs to be compared because unlike many sequels, this one really does depend on you playing the first one first. If you are looking to try the franchise out, stop right here and go play The Fall first. But if you have and want to continue the adventure, come on in. Just don't be ashamed to grab a hint or two along the way.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Any 2 Ghz processor
- 2 GB RAM
- Any GPU with 512 MB VRAM or more
- Windows 7
- 500 MB hard drive space
- Ryzen 3 2200G running at 3.5 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 10
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Steam
No comments:
Post a Comment