[h1]Disclaimer[/h1]
I played the entire game on 2 out of 5 difficulty levels (veteran), entirely solo (more in cons).
[h1]TL;DR[/h1]
It's disappointing. Not because it's a bad game per-se - but because it could have been so much better if only devs actually made it reasonable to solo play.
The biggest issue of this title is that is balanced around co-op, but you won't be able to find any games and those you do find - will kick you. Apparently even near the end of the map for no reason.
It could have been so much more.
[h1]Description[/h1]
VR co-op FPS with manual reloading (optional). The closest pancake analogue would be the WWZ game or L4D.
Killing enemies earns you points that you can spend on buying new guns or improving them.
Beating maps unlocks new stuff to buy in the hub. You can also find data disks that contain bonus unlocks that you will earn if you successfully bring such disk to a checkpoint room.
You have grenades, bigger grenades, healing items and rage booster that increases firerate. These items can be bought for points in checkpoint rooms or found.
Enemies (Snowbreed) come in a few varieties. My names, I don't know what they are called ingame:
- normal - they lumber towards you and punch you
- runners - very common, they are like the normal zombies but run so they are more of an immediate danger
- jacked guys - huge dudes that lumber towards you and can grab you for a wound-up insta-kill unless you stun them with enough firepower
- jacked guy runners - same as above, but run, often jump at you for a slam-fist before trying to grab you for an insta-kill
- jacked gunners - same as the other two, but instead of melee - they fire bursts of machinegun fire, but they can also grab you if you come too close
- ice-clad bruisers - they are armored-up in ice guys that run fast and punch quick, can demolish you very fast in melee
- eater (for once actual name) basically boomer from L4D - he walks at you, punches you and explodes when enough damage is dealt to him
- boss guy - happens mostly at the end of the map, he has ice armored weak points, first you have to break the armor then the weakpoint itself to deal damage, meaning accurate concentrated fire is required, he can run at you and has large eoe
Game requires movement, can be played standing but you need to move your character a lot.
Manual reloading is optional, gives you a beefy bonus to damage if you choose to do that instead of automatic reloading by hovering your gun to your ammo belt. Manual works as you expect - you eject a mag, grab a new one, shove it in and rack the handle.
[h1]Pros:[/h1]
[b]+ Fundamentals[/b]
The act of running and gunning, reloading and killing zombies is fun and well-made. It's an improvement on Arizona Sunshine which was already very fun.
[h1]Cons:[/h1]
[b]- You can get kicked at any point[/b]
The one game I found a match that actually worked and loaded without freezing (no such issue playing solo) - I got kicked around the end of the map. I genuinely don't know why - I don't think I was playing badly at all, I even bought and shared items with the team, I wasn't going down, I was killing a lot.
So... was it a mistake? Did they intend to kick someone else? One of the players was lagging behind a lot, we had to wait for him several times.
The other option would be malice. Just to screw me over.
I can't overstate how much I don't care which one that was. Point is - it caused immense disappointment in the community of this game and directly impacted my enjoyment of it.
[b]- Co-op balance[/b]
It's a problem with design, not the community.
It's a VR title, so community is very limited. Also this is not a new game anymore by any means, meaning a bunch of people probably played and are done with it already. There's just not enough people playing to saturate the need. This poses a problem because of balance.
And on top of that - you can get kicked for no reason at any point.
It's balanced squarely around co-op. It's technically solo-able, but doing so on any difficulty above 2 requires not only immense skill, but also a degree of cheesy playstyle. Manual reloading is out of the question. Dual wielding 2-handed guns seems common.
[b]- No drop-in[/b]
Finding a room is impossible. The most common are rooms on highest difficulty levels, always password-locked in my experience. There are very rarely singular rooms that play on the lowest skill. Honestly, I was able to easily solo that with bots, so I don't see the point other than just... hang out with random people, I guess. There are very rarely rooms on middling difficulties and the two times I joined - I got immediately kicked. Or kicked near the end.
This game really needed a drop-in co-op feature, where you could join a game that's ongoing.
[b]- Bots[/b]
They are inaccurate, constantly get hit by most basic zombies, have weird pathfinding when you need them to stand still for the objective and they can't even be given any items to carry for you. The only good thing about them is that they can revive you for free if you died close to the end of the encounter - easy enough for them to finish by themselves. But if you expect them to fight off a full wave - forget it.
I don't even expect them to be able to throw grenades. But at least give them scaling damage and fire-rate on higher difficulties for ♥♥♥♥'s sake. And let us give them items so we don't have to spend time painstakingly gathering and moving all goodies from one spot on the ground to another until we can use them.
[b]- Soft lock[/b]
On MISSION 1, yes, the very first mission - if you let a spawned gunner shoot his gun at all - there's a chance of you getting your guns locked - making you unable to fire and as such - unable to continue the mission. Only on that mission, but it's a problem when it's the FIRST damn mission.
This was brought to devs multiple times, plenty of threads about it - never fixed.
You have to be kidding me.
[h1]Lowdown[/h1]
For all the problems with progression through difficulties and online play due to design choices around co-op balance
I'd give After The Fall a:
[h1]5/10[/h1]
It's heartbreaking that another co-op focused game can't stand the notion of people trying to play with bots and had no plan for when community gets small enough to pose problems with matching and attitude.
It's relatively fun for beating it one time on lowest two difficulties with bots, which took me probably around 6-ish hours. Then it's apparently unplayable. The other 12 hours I spend grinding difficulty 2 and trying many times to beat difficulty 3 solo, then trying my best to join game only to get screwed over.
I'm tired of this.
