An imperfect but solid title that could become great with enough developer support.
When After the Fall is at its best, it delivers a fun and fresh VR experience akin to a virtual reality Left 4 Dead. Unfortunately, there are a few roadblocks which often stop the game from reaching its full potential. Ultimately, though, After the Fall delivers arcade light gun style thrills and is a good base which will improve with post-launch updates.
Overview
After the Fall is the newest title from Vertigo Games, a VR game development studio known for titles like Unplugged, A Fisherman’s Tale, and most notably, Arizona Sunshine. Arizona Sunshine was another VR zombie shooter that received generally favorable reviews, and was remarkable in that it was a legitimate game with a fleshed out campaign, unlike many other zombie shooters for VR.
Vertigo appears to have learned a lot from Arizona Sunshine, as After the Fall improves on the original in a variety of ways. After the Fall also sold a great deal more copies than its predecessor, achieving $1.4 million in sales in 24 hours, whereas Arizona Sunshine reached those numbers in its first month of release. Instead of the Arizona desert, After the Fall takes place in an alternate 1980s Los Angeles, where some apocalyptic event has iced over everything and brought about the “snowbreed,” the game’s zombies.
The short, roughly 2-3 hour campaign will have you scouring five different locations in search of harvest, the game’s currency. Runs consist of navigating through abandoned buildings and snowy open areas, in order to kill zombies, “specials,” and bosses for their harvest. This harvest can be used to buy new weapons, and upgrade these weapons with attachments that are randomly dropped after each mission.
Story
The actual story in the game is pretty barebones. Missions are received from Luna, the character in charge of the main hub, and she briefly gives you background information before you set out. Another character will communicate with you over a walkie talkie during missions, giving you more story information and some jokes to fill in quieter moments.
The writing, story, and characters are all pretty forgettable, but the story is brief enough to do its job and not overstay its welcome. Unfortunately, replaying missions comes with the same dialogue and story every time. It would be nice to see more variety in the dialogue to keep the missions more fresh.
Graphics
After the Fall’s visuals are a huge part of what keeps the game entertaining and satisfying. At a glance, the game does not look particularly great, especially when looking at screenshots or recorded footage. In game, however, the visuals are extremely impressive and really make you feel immersed.
Shooting zombies and watching them explode into bloody chunks is very cool, and zombie designs are stylized and interesting enough to warrant fighting huge waves of them over and over. The game’s six guns also look good, especially after customizing them with attachments.
Where the graphics really shine, though, are the environments. The five mission locales are varied and give an extremely cool sense of place. Whether walking down an abandoned highway, or scaling the side of a skyscraper in a window washing elevator, the locations are fun to be in and visually impressive.
The only negative aspect of the graphics is in the inconsistent character modelling. One of the player characters in particular, Jimmy, looks awful. This is particularly odd because pretty much everything else in the game looks great.
Gameplay
The first issue the game presents is immediately apparent after the calibration sequence. The default controls are incredibly unintuitive. So much so that I believed the controllers I was using, with which I was unfamiliar, were broken. Had I gotten to experience the tutorial mission, I may have realized how the default controls worked, but alas, I accidentally skipped the whole tutorial, which cannot be replayed.
This would be less of an issue if the game had a basic controls menu explaining some of the game’s unique mechanics. However, the game is simple enough that it is possible to learn the controls on your own after the first couple of missions.
After getting the hang of the controls, the gameplay is surprisingly fun. It’s easy to compare After the Fall to Left 4 Dead style games, but the unoriginality is easy to ignore after seeing how well the concept works in VR. Unlike Left 4 Dead, however, strategy and accuracy are put on the backburner.
I played the first couple of missions similarly to how I would other co-op zombie shooters, being careful not to draw attention from too many zombies, and attempting to be accurate with headshots to save bullets. I quickly realized that After the Fall is much more fun when you play it as you would an arcade shooter like House of the Dead. The flashlight attached to your weapon acts as a makeshift laser, so you can generally be pretty accurate while firing from the hip, and ammo crates are around every corner.
Iron sights can be used to line up shots, but a lot of the time they feel like more effort than is needed. That said, later unlocks grant alternate sights, like red dot and holographic sites, that make taking the time to aim much more rewarding.
The core gameplay loop is built around replayability. While there is a campaign, the same five campaign missions are endlessly replayable to farm harvest and loot. Replayability is so emphasized that even before you complete the campaign, the mission end screen has a map voting system like Call of Duty, encouraging the player to revisit previous missions.
The biggest issue the game has so far is also what might hurt its infinite replayability the most: a lack of variety. By the time you’ve played through the first or second mission, every enemy the game has to offer has already been revealed. There are two types of base snowbreed, three “specials,” and one boss. Even the final boss is just a bigger, stronger version of the boss that you fight multiple times throughout the other missions. The lack of variety does not ruin the game by any means, but the upcoming new harvest run map and new snowbreed detailed in the season 1 roadmap are desperately needed.
Online
Unfortunately, After the Fall’s main selling point is where it suffers the most. Online play is just not very enjoyable. The biggest issue here is how often the game disconnects. After playing through just the five main missions, I already had at least a dozen disconnects. Players on my team would also disconnect mid mission, leaving me and my teammates with a near-useless AI teammate. Even after determining it could be an internet issue on my end, “fixing” this issue still resulted in several frustrating disconnects.
Matchmaking is also inconsistent. Maybe the majority of the player base has already moved on to the higher difficulties, but finding a full party for a mission on standard difficulty will often take a long time. Again, this leaves you with AI teammates who are much worse than most of the players you’ll run into online. If you can't find at least one or two real players, good luck passing the mission. It would be nice to have an option to play through the game by yourself, but at the very least, the AI needs some work. Ultimately, the best way to play After the Fall is to have a couple of friends to play with.
Final Impressions
While After the Fall presents a solid foundation as a VR co-op shooter, it needs a bit more content to get it to where it wants to go. When the conditions are right, it’s an incredibly immersive House of the Dead-esque experience that keeps you coming back for the grind and arcade shooting fun. Unfortunately, various online issues plague the game, often interrupting your fun with long matchmaking times or disconnects.
If you know you’ll love After the Fall, you probably will. If you aren’t convinced, consider waiting for the season 1 update, or grabbing the game with a group of friends. Repetitive gameplay and online issues might sometimes make for a frustrating experience, but under the right circumstances, After the Fall really shines.
Comentarios