Game Review: Afterfall: InSanity Extended Edition

The game that I am going to be reviewing today is one that might not be all that well known, which is probably a good thing if I'm being honest, it's called Afterfall: InSanity. Afterfall: InSanity is a single player survival/horror game which was developed by Intoxicate Studios and then published by Nicolas Entertainment Group. If you haven't heard of the developer or publisher, that's probably because this is the only game that they've ever worked on or released from what I can tell. The game was originally released for the Windows/Steam platform on November of 2011, with a free updated version being given out later on. I'm reviewing this updated version of course on the Steam platform. 

Now, I'm not going to say that this is the worst game out there that you can play, but it's definitely not a good game at all. While there is a fairly decent sized chunk of the game that has some entertainment to it and could be considered enjoyable, it goes downhill fast and never comes back up from the downward spiral it takes. A good way to describe this game is if you tossed Dead Space, Fallout and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series into a blender alongside a burning bag of garbage. It's honestly hilarious how awful this game gets to be, especially with the inspiration that was taken from great horror/sci-fi series. 

You'll basically see that as soon as you start playing this games that it takes a lot from the predecessors that inspired it, which is putting it nicely. The games premise is centered on one of the very last human beings alive after a nuclear holocaust has happened, who makes a fair living as a psychologist within a dark, claustrophobic underground facility which is heavy controlled by the government. Of course, not too long goes by before things start getting bizarre and chaos promptly ensues as citizens within the shelter begin turning into mutated monsters that kill one another. 

The plot of this game is definitely one of it's weaker elements, as it's basically the plot of a B-horror movie with poorly done voice acting and visual elements to boot. Not everything within the game is done poorly, as the first portion of the game has some interesting elements to the gameplay and provides a decent sense of paranoia. The dark mechanical areas work well, and provide some decent atmosphere within the game. Beyond that, however, now much else is very impressive. The animations are very stiff to watch, the voice acting is hilariously bad in quite a few parts of the game and it has poor controls that feel clunky. The game just rarely does anything right, especially after you're a few hours into it. 

Now, while this is supposed to be a survival horror game, it's honestly pretty damn far away from being that. I would honestly say this is much more of an action game with some minor horror elements scattered about. It is also slightly a survival game, but only because ammo is scarce for the firearms you can find within the game. That really doesn't even matter though, since most of the combat in the game is done with melee weapons, which are split between blunt objects and edged weapons which are categorized in light and heavy. Something I noticed right away in the game is that you never really feel pressured even when all you have is a axe or a pipe to defend yourself with. That's something I think is an issue when you're playing a horror game with monsters in it. 

The combat in the game is beyond dull and boring, and I never had my pulse rise from being anxious or nervous or feeling like I was struggling to stay alive. All you need to do is click your mouse over and over until everything around you is dead, sounds fun right? There is a dodge and block system you can use, but honestly it seems less effective than just trying to beat or shoot things to death and going all out. There is a stamina system to try and counter balance this, but it refills itself pretty much instantly once you move slightly away from the non frightening enemies, nullifying any downside to being on offense the entire game. Maybe if the AI wasn't some of the worst I've ever seen, this would be a system that actually influenced the way that you play. 

Besides the combat parts of the game, there is some small sections that break things up from pretending your a B-movie action star. This is done by having very simple puzzles given for you to solve, or strange hacking sections of the game that are also pretty simple to do since they're almost all just a memory game or figuring out a simple pattern. Nothing here is challenging at all, and just feels like a waste of time that could have been spent trying to improve the other sections of the game that are poor. So, you know, pretty much all of the other elements of the game. 

While the first part of the game has some decent atmosphere within it, the second half of the game ditches it all entirely. I can't honestly say the game even remotely game close to scaring me or making me nervous, but I could appreciate some small semblance of a creepy atmosphere for the first few hours. Then about halfway into the game it becomes like a discount version of Escape from New York in video game form. The narrative becomes an even bigger mess, there are far too many quick time events for me to like and combat focuses on firearms over melee weapons since several enemies appear that can't be beaten to death. This becomes an annoying issue when they don't increase the amount of ammo available to you. 

I don't understand why the game changes so much in this section, but it is beyond sloppily done even when the first half of the game was already pretty poorly done. This honestly has to be one of the biggest, most jumbled messes of a game I've ever seen. All of the games problems become far more noticeable in the second half, and it shows how imbalanced the game really is. I probably would have thought the game was at least a bit better if they had stayed the course trying to make a creepy atmosphere for their poor horror game, but instead they give us a poor action game on top of a poor horror game. Just what the doctor ordered to feed my disappointment. 

This game could have been at least a decently entertaining horror game had it been polished up a bit with some rewrites, more work on the animation and graphics and a better voice acting cast. More than likely, it would have been a good indie game success at the very least. I really feel like it's a shame, and that the people who developed the game should have known better than to put something like this out considering things like Dead Space, Fallout and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. were the biggest influences on the people who made this. It could have had its own little charm, but they just fell flat on their face and produced a product that I can't even call mediocre at best. 

Overall, I definitely can't say that I would recommend anyone to try out this game given the chance. It fails to be a consistently entertaining or scary game, and can't even handle the basic elements of competent combat or narrative driven sections. This game fell to the wayside along with all of the other piss poor attempts at indie game making in the horror genre, and I can honestly say that it belongs there. The original concept of the game could have been an interesting one, but something clearly went wrong along the way of development. Either way, I'd consider this game a failure. 

Thanks for checking out my review! Appreciate it!