The Fall Part 2 Unbound Review - Great atmosphere due to lack of color

braini (61)in #gaming • 8 years ago (edited)

It happens regularly that sequels of games come true. These work nine times out of ten on the story of his predecessor and some adjustments are made in terms of gameplay. The Fall Part 2: Unbound, however, omits the latter and just continues on the same foot. Now this is done more, but then it concerns games that are published as episodic content and the time between the various chapters is small. The second part of The Fall, however, comes out almost three years after part one. Does this setup still work?

The story continues

In the first part we saw that the artificial intelligence ARID was activated in a 'high-tech combat suit', after the human carrier lost his consciousness. Her job was to help the soldier, only this eventually led to ARID being disconnected from the combat suit and ending up in a large global network. In order to save herself, she now has to call in the help of different robots. Only these are programmed to perform certain tasks and nothing else. ARID must therefore manipulate them in such a way that the robots ultimately do what they want.

Split

Just like its predecessor, The Fall Part 2 is divided into two parts. You have an 'action section', in which the game has a metroidvania-like character, and there are 'puzzle sections', which are very similar to a point-and-click adventure. These segments are alternated during your adventure. This seems to be a strange combination, but they are certainly good to combine with each other and fit well with the story. But even though this interaction works, both parts are not worked out equally well. The puzzle sections are generally well constructed, but with the action sections it becomes a different story.

Stern

What the game in general is most in the way is the control. Pointing your gun or pointing at objects, which you do both in the same way, works stiff and wooden and is not very intuitive. During the puzzle sections that is sometimes a bit annoying, but it does not get in the way too much. During the action part, this is the case, because you have to react faster. Now you can also use a lock-on system here, but switching between enemies does not work well. It just does not work as it should and the enemies are not to write home about intelligence. These parts of the game take place quite quickly rather than adding something to the whole.

So it seems a bit like that there is just more time spent in the point-and-click segments. Here the game lives a lot more and one of the reasons is that there is more focus on the story here. At first glance, this does not seem like a lot, but gamers who played the first part know that there is a deeper meaning behind them. This does not mean, however, that it is all very serious, because it is in itself very light - and especially very good - written. This ensures that you want to continue playing. Also the puzzles that are present you know how to entertain and that is partly because you have to take into account the programming of the robot that you have taken over. Only the solution is sporadically very far-fetched. This works this segment of the game quite occasionally against something,

You do not get far with HDR

What distracts is the use of HDR. If this is properly applied, this can provide very nice pictures. Here it is only in the way of the game. The white colors are nicely highlighted, but every black tint is now made much darker. Since the game frequently uses mainly different blacks, HDR often becomes a very dark affair. This is at the expense of the great atmosphere that is presented by the different dark shades. Some scenes are simply as good as not to be seen. Now you can adjust the level of brightness in the game, but it also hardly helps at maximum. So turn off the HDR function or play on a TV that does not have it anyway.

Conclusion

The Fall Part 2: Unbound continues on the same foot where part one started, so both the good and the bad points remain the same. The story is very good and the combination of genres is strange, but still provides an interesting whole. However, the game only shines in the adventure section, because here the well-written texts come out best and you get fun puzzles for you. Occasionally these are a bit far-fetched, but mainly it is good to stay. The action part is simply nothing special and soon becomes more of a distraction than a good addition. It is all a bit stiff and stiff and the enemies are not very intelligent. The Fall Part 2: Unbound, like its predecessor, does not know what to put into it.

The plus and minus points

✔ Interesting story
✔ Well written dialogues
✔ Great atmosphere due to lack of color
✔ Fun puzzles...
✖ ...the solution of which is a bit far-fetched
✖ Smooth control
✖ Action scenes do not run well
✖ Poor use of HDR