I'm figuring by now, quite a few people have heard of this little indie action/horror game thanks to it's surprisingly clever "$1 pre-order" marketing scheme. I got a chance to play the demo today, and, to be honest, I'm a little concerned.
Insanity puts you in the shoes of Dr. Tokaj (pronounced tokay) a psychiatrist/pharmacologist. See, Afterfall takes place in an alternate present where a fusion bomb was detonated during WWII that all but obliterated human life, save a lucky few who were fortunate enough to be part of the "Afterfall" initiative, a secret Polish project involving the usual bomb shelter/vault/end of days who-ha. Seems all is not perfect within these shelters though, thanks to Containment Syndrome, a kind of "cabin fever", or maybe a virus. To be honest, the set up in the demo was really thin so I'm making a lot of conjecture here as the whole Containment Cyndrome thing plays pretty strongly into the overall mystery. So Tokaj is is the usual smart-ass, reckless yet roguishly charming hero whose troubles with authority land him in various vats of hot water. The most recent, being sent down into the sub-levels to investigate "behaviour problems" cause by a suspected "chemical leak". You quickly find out the "behavioural problems" is bigdogspeak for "bat-shit crazy" as your little scouting party is attacked by a bunch of, well, bat-shit crazy people. Here you get your first taste of Afterfall's combat, a hybrid melee/shooter, with a heavy focus on caving dudes skulls in with whatever you can get your hands on. Melee combat is satisfyingly heavy, especially with the bigger fireaxes and hammers and the like. Choosing a smaller weapon like a crowbar does less damage, but allows you to work in a basic combo system. Deaths are satisfyingly gory as well. Combat is aided by a lock-on system that seemed to perform alright with one or two enemies at a time but became rather finicky when facing three or four. Better to just "spray and pay". Guns are sparse and suitably powerful but for the most part, in the demo at least, the focus seemed to be very much on getting up close and personal. Unfortunately, two problems arise here. Firstly, there is just way too many weapons available. Whether this is just a demo thing, I don't know, but there was at least one fireaxe in every room and no end to things that can be used to cave in skulls, which kind of weakens the "survival" feel. As does the fact that enemies, on the normal difficulty (the only one available in demo) do such insignificant damage they feel more of an inconvenience than anything. I didn't even realise there was a block till I stumbled on it by accident and never had to use it. Oh, and the controls are rather badly explained, too. Like the fact that you can climb and crouch contextually. I spent ages running around because I thought I was limited to horizontal plane like most Unreal games. Speaking of Unreal, the game uses it well, it looks great and runs butter smooth. Aesthetically it was a little too close to dead Space for my liking, though the later section when you get outside provided a nice, if stereotypical, post-apocalyptic world vista. Also, before I forget, regenerating health in survival horror? Really? You can't really justify that, can you?
Another key gameplay feature is Tokaj's fear levels, which increase as he becomes more afraid, blurring and distorting your vision and affecting your performance. I really liked this, reminded me of Amnesia. The trailers have hinted at Tokaj's decaying mental state (a mechanic sadly absent from the demo) and I really hope there is a strong focus on this, and not just the more throwaway feel of Dead Space 2 where it was almost always painfully obvious what was real or not.
Afterfall sems to suffer from an identity crisis. The tone is very hit and miss, and throughout the demo, it really struggled to maintain a consistent atmosphere. It's not creepy or scary or anything really. The second section of the demo, which takes place later in the game, managed a great atmosphere, even when it opened up from the tight corridors into the outdoors, but a completely out of place "giant boss" and a lighter section where you drop a container on top of enemies really threw me, tone wise. Are you Alien or Aliens, Aftefall? You really need to decide. Are you trying to scare me, or giving me free reign to carve out justice in monster faces? I just don't know.
Afterfall's one real big let down is audio, the most crucial part of any horror experience. Hopefully these are all demo related bugs, but I experienced crackling, cut-out, bad mixing, bad-syncing and the music was way too quite throughout. On the subject of music, it's of surprisingly good quality, though it hardly has the necessary effect when it's so low in the mix. Ambient sound effects were mostly effective, the usual array of footsteps, moans and groans, but seemed to just trigger at random, or only before confrontation, lessening the tension. Voice acting is also incredibly hit and miss, though that is to be expected of a localised game. Or what I presume is dubbing. God, I hope it's dubbing. And that's all I have to say about that.
EDIT: It appears the audio problems were with my speakers, not the game. My points about the voice acting still remain, though.
As I said at the start, Afterfall's demo has left me concerned. With it's release mere weeks away, there is little time to fix some of the more glaring issues. Still, I did enjoy my time and for an indie game with triple-A ambition, it is surprisingly decent. I already preordered so I can only hope my concern is misplaced and the final product is a flawed but enjoyable experience. But seriously guys, what's with the giant boss battle? And the regenerating health? Just because some big triple-A guys jumped off the cliff, doesn't mean you have to. That is all.
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