Developer: Nordic Games
Publisher: Nordic Games
Platform: Windows, Xbox360
Deadfall Adventures – Review
Deadfall Adventures is the newest title of Noric Games. The game features combat like it was in the 1930’s and mummies! Lots of mummies! Together with your female sidekick you venture into the depts of ancient Mayan temples in search of artifacts and adventure!
Story
You are James Quartermain, great-grandson of the world famous adventurer Allan Quartermain. One day, Jennifer Goodwin tries to recruit you for a mission to retrieve an ancient artifact, the Heart of Atlantis. Because you have a gambling problem and are short on cash, you decide to accept this mission.
You first go to the deserts of Egypt to get the heart. After being kidnapped by a Nazi officer you’ll find the heart, but it is divided into 3 pieces. The Nazi’s take the heart piece from you and you manage to escape the temple. You now have to find the other pieces and retrieve the first piece from the Nazi’s. The second piece is located in the arctic, when you finally fight past all the Nazi’s and mummies, you also lose this piece. The third piece is located in the jungles of Guatemala, and no surprise, this part gets taken too. When united, the three pieces give the wielder the power of the gods. Able to live an eternal life and control the elements. You have to stop the Nazi’s from reuniting the pieces, but you just might be too late…
Graphics
Deadfall Adventures has much graphic customization but from medium to high it doesn’t seem to differ all that much. The cut scenes look beautiful and the scenery when standing far away is gorgeous. However, don’t let that fool you. When you get close, you notice that there isn’t a great amount of detail put into the graphics.
Another bad remark is the physics. Some enemies seem to have necks as long as their arms when they fall with their head onto a railing. You can imagine it’s quite funny when this happens. Although it’s funny, it shouldn’t be happening if there’s enough attention put into the game.
Sound
The music in Deadfall Adventures sounds a lot like the Indiana Jones type of music, so it’s perfect for the game. It really contributes to the liveliness of the game, you feel as if you are somehow connected to the ancient civilizations and the environment. There aren’t really many songs, but this isn’t disturbing at all because the music is so vivid and calm.
Sound effects on the other hand are really basic. They get re-used and gun shots don’t feel like real shots, the shooting effects have close to no kick to them. Although the effects get re-used, it doesn’t mean they are that bad. The mummy sounds are very good and don’t get bored at all, when you hear that scream, you know it’s on.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Deadfall Adventures is OK, but not great. At times, it seems to be a bad rip-off from the Call of Duty franchise. There is absolutely no unique feature that the combat system offers, except for your flashlight when dealing with mummies.
Controls are pretty basic: moving, crouching, jumping, aiming and shooting. You also have a notebook and a compass, these can be accessed by pressing the corresponding key bind or just holding down middle mouse button and selecting the thing you need.
There are also tons of ladders and platforms scattered around the levels, but you cannot climb them in any way. The game encourages you to explore the levels to find more treasure, but there is almost no exploration possible. You can only go up ladders except when there’s a cutscene after them and the whole level is sealed off with invisible walls.
As said before, to kill mummies you need your flashlight. The normal light doesn’t hurt the mummies at all, but when you hold down a button it suddenly turns into a burning laser as strong as the sun. Once you almost incinerated the mummies, you can shoot them, so basically it’s the good old point and shoot again with the addition of your flashlight. The damage of the guns isn’t well distributed either, a shot in the chest with a shotgun might not kill your opponent, but a shot with a sniper rifle in the foot of a Nazi soldier does.
Aside from the combat system, you can collect treasures which are basically points you spend in a talent tree. The talent tree is very basic and simple: more stamina, more flashlight damage, faster reloading… It would be very refreshing to see some active skills in the talents, because now it’s just passive upgrades.
Aside from the poor combat, there are puzzles! And they are fun! For each puzzle you get a clue in your notebook, you can decide whether to use the clues or not. Some puzzles require smart positioning of mirrors to guide a beam of light to a precise spot. Others just require you to shoot stuff. Even though it might sound easy, some puzzles will have you searching around for up to 30 minutes.
For people who can’t get enough of the game when they finished it, there is an adventure mode which you can play with friends or alone. Adventure mode is pretty much a mummy invasion where you use traps and guns placed around the map to get as high score as possible. For the even more competitive players, there is a multiplayer mode!
Conclusion
Deadfall Adventures isn’t the greatest of games, but it’s an okay distraction for a while. The masochistic Quartermain provides a funny distraction from the game itself. However, it cannot be overlooked that the game is all about exploration when there is nothing to explore.
Currently, the game is sold for a moderate price. I would not recommend this game to anyone soon. You’d better wait until there is a special discount because you would be throwing your money away when there are much better puzzle and action games out there.
Deadfall Adventures - Review,
No Comments