Developer: Little Orbit
Publisher: Little Orbit
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Wii U
Tested on: Xbox 360
Falling Skies: The Game – Review
There have been a few TV series of which there has been made a video game adaptation. Falling Skies can now count themselves among those adaptations. Fight as survivors of an alien invasion against the alien race in Falling Skies: The Game.
Story
Three years ago, Earth was invaded by an alien race called the Espheni. The Espheni had been conquering different worlds all over the galaxy, slaughtering all those that they come across. After slaying the inhabitants of the planet, they would start enslaving the planet’s children. Left too long in Espheni hands, they transform into inhuman beings. After the attack on Earth, there are very few survivors left, but there are some survivors left who are fighting against the Espheni. These human survivors get help from their alien allies, the Volm, they have given the survivors more powerful weapons.
All of this happened before the actual story of the game itself. In the beginning of Falling Skies: The Game you come across a surviving scientist who says he has a weapon that can completely destroy the Espheni. There is some bad news though, he is still missing some parts to build this weapon. The entire game is build around your squad finding the parts of this weapon and in the end defeating the Espheni.
The story in Falling Skies: The Game does not run so smoothly, the reason being that if you haven’t watched the series you feel kind of left out about some information about the characters and story. If you have watched the series then there shouldn’t be any problems concerning the story.
Graphics
There is no way around it that when playing the game, it will remind you a lot of XCOM. You’ll get the feeling that Falling Skies: The Game is heavily based on it, but it is a poor adaptation. Falling Skies: The Game has very poor graphics, the aliens are nicely designed and fun to look at, but the human models are less so. They have a very bad facial animation and the lip-sync is almost laughable. If you have watched the TV show then you should be able to recognise them as characters from the show, but overall the characters, and everything else looks like a PS2 game.
The environment is also not that special, a lot of your missions will take place in the same environment. Most of the time it will either be a forest or a city, both look rather basic and not that special.
Sound
If it comes to the sound there aren’t that much negative points. Most of the actors which have played in the TV show have lent their voices to the game characters. It’s a pity that they don’t speak that often. The only time you can really hear them talking is during cutscenes, sadly these only appear once in a while. For the rest of the game you’ll hear the characters saying one or two words whilst moving around.
Falling Skies: The Game has the perfect background music, it can create the perfect atmosphere during the entire game. It is silent enough so that you can still hear the characters when they say something, and it is loud enough so that you can get some blood pumping during action sequences.
Gameplay
Falling Skies: The Game is a classic turn-based strategy game. The gameplay itself is pretty simple, fisrst you pick a mission. Once you’ve done that you have to put together a team of survivors that suit the mission and can then be moved around in the mission area. Each turn the characters get the opportunity to either shoot at enemies or do another action depending on the class they are. It is advised to put your characters behind some cover like destroyed cars or buildings. After your turn the enemy gets the chance to attack you, even if the enemy forces manage to hit one of the survivors, the odds of that character dying, or not being able to complete the missions is low.
As mentioned before you’ll have the opportunity to choose between 4 classes.
- The Berserker: a survivor that is built for doing damage to the enemy. To deal this damage they can use high-powered machine guns and bazookas.
- The Fighter: a strong combat unit that has a focus on protecting those around them. All abilities of The Fighter are all about working together as a team.
- The Scout: the only class that can equip sniper rifles. The Scout has a rather short moving distance, so it is advised to keep them behind the team to cover the area.
- The Spiked Kid: the most diversive character in your squad. The Spiked Kid is able to heal wounded squad members and can throw useful grenades like smoke bombs and EMP’s. They also have a very diversive skill tree.
The game alternates between going on a mission and going back to Base Camp. After completing missions you’ll get resources which you can use to upgrade your equipment. Characters also gain experience after competing missions which results in them levelling up; this gives you the opportunity to unlock more skills. Skills that have been skipped in the beginning can be learned later on with enough resources.
A fun feature in Falling Skies is that you can change the features of the survivors you play with, it’s not very extensive but it can be fun to mess around with.
The enemy AI of the game is pretty bad and almost every time predictable. To add up to that, the physics of Falling Skies are pretty bad as well. You can kill enemies that are completely covered behind a massive rock or you can shoot an enemy on the street while you are standing in the middle, not on the edge, of a 2 story high building.
Conclusion
There is no getting around it that Falling Skies: The Game looks like a cheap copy of XCOM. Something that might work on your nerves is that there is not manual camera zoom. The offers players plenty of gameplay with lots of different side quests, the ability to change appearances of your survivors, upgrading gear and medicines,… Sadly all of this gets kind of boring after a few hours because it feels like it’s always the same routine all over again.
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