Review

Deadfall Adventures

The market is so flooded with familiar types of games that when something new comes along, gamers flock to it in droves. And for the most part, those games are well received even if they aren’t that successful. My guess would be that people understand the risks of doing something different and are a little more lenient to developers who do so. That said, sometimes no matter how great the idea is on paper, the game just doesn’t live up to its potential. That’s seems to be the case with The Farm 51’s Deadfall Adventures.

The game follows the story of James Quatermain, descendant of the legendary Allan Quatermain, as he embarks on a quest to find a powerful artifact before the Nazis can get their hands on it. This quest takes him around the globe, from temple to temple to search for clues, avoiding deadly traps while battling creepy mummies and enemy soldiers. It’s basically India Jones meets The Mummy in a FPS title; again, a great idea on paper. I just wish things would have turned out better for the final product.

It is a shame on so many fronts that the end result isn’t as great as the premise is. You get to solve puzzles that are normally regulated to third person titles, navigate around pressure sensitive traps that activate giant rolling boulders of doom when triggered, and deal with cheesy villains straight out of an 80’s B film – at its best Deadfall Adventures is truly refreshing. The last shooter with puzzles during its campaign (not related to side quests) was Half Life 2. And though the places you visit during the story aren’t outright unique, they do feature interesting environments. There are no crumbling buildings, shootouts on space stations or boring sniper missions. What I’m getting at is this is nothing like the Battlefields, Call of Duty’s, or even the Serious Sam’s being released today. It actually stands on its own when it comes to first person shooters.

Regrettably, the game is almost always at its worse. For one, the controls don’t feel calibrated for the Xbox 360’s controller. When pressing to the left or right the crosshair will move very slowly before snapping over to the far side of the screen. This inaccuracy makes it tough to hit enemies who are more than a few feet away from you. The options for adjustment are no help; messing with the settings only slightly improved my chances of hitting my target. The same thing goes for moving with the left analogue stick. It’s always been difficult to platform in first person shooters, but here it’s downright dreadful. At least at first, after some time I was able to somewhat adapt to the controls and compensate for their imprecision. Still, I never felt 100% in control over Mr. Quatermain.

Struggling with unruly controls wasn’t the only issue I faced while gaming. There were a plethora of bugs and technical problems that hindered my enjoyment as well. At times I’d get shot through walls, get pushed through walls, get stuck in invisible walls; the walls seemed to be alive with how often they’d impede my journey. The human enemies weren’t very smart, often stepping out of cover and slowly walking towards me in single file. This was balanced with their insane weapon accuracy and wall-piercing bullets. And then there were the poor check point placements, the bad voice work, the inconsistent visual quality and drops in frame rate…you know what, for the sake of not sounding like I’m trying to bash the game, I’ll just say that Deadfall needed a lot more polish before being released.

Beyond the campaign mode are some multiplayer options. They offer what you’d expect as well as some cool mechanics, like racing to find hidden treasure before your opponents. The sad thing is that the servers are completely barren right now. Understandable when you think about the recent shooters to hit the market. The competition is stiff and the lack of gamer awareness compounds this problem.

I really wanted to be able to recommend Deadfall Adventures as I’m sure I’m not the only one growing tired of the same redundant experiences. A game that offers something fresh within the military shooter-dominated FPS genre (besides BioShock)…who wouldn’t want to play it? I mean, for all Deadfall Adventure’s issues I genuinely had some fun with it in small doses. Some of the puzzles are real brain teasers and the story, though bland, does remind me of Indian Jones. There’s even a cool mine cart segment straight out of The Temple of Doom. But, with the overall lack of polish it’s hard to completely defend this game.  I do think that the developers are talented and hopefully, they’ll continue making shooters. I also don’t think they should give up on making a game of this ilk. As obvious as this may sound, they just need to make a better game.