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Deadfall Adventures
PC (Steam)
H. Rider Haggard is Rolling in His Grave
2.5/5 stars
“Deadfall Adventures” is the most recent release by Polish developer The Farm 51, known for ‘beloved’ previous works as the ‘NecroVisioN’ and ‘Painkiller’ franchises. Calling themselves a ‘farm’ is quite appropriate for this particular group of programmers, as most of their projects have been ‘farmed-out’ to them by third-rate publishers. In the case of “Deadfall Adventures,” that publisher is Nordic Games, a Swedish outfit that mostly deals in IPs scavenged from the corpses of other dead and dying videogame publishers.
With this stellar pedigree, nobody should have expected “Deadfall Adventures” to be an amazing game. But at a budget price, I was hopeful to at least get some enjoyment out of an ‘Indiana Jones’ style FPS, without the mainstream pandering and terrible shooting of the closest analog franchise, ‘Uncharted.’
Presentation
“Deadfall Adventures” is a very mixed bag when it comes to looks. As an Unreal Engine game, it, unsurprisingly, has all of the problems typically associated with that engine, such as texture pop-in. But it also has a large number of graphical issues that have nothing to do with the engine. The worst thing about “Deadfall Adventures’” graphics is the cutscenes, which are game-engine rendered. The characters look incredibly stiff and puppet-like, their animations are unnatural, and facial expressions (including both eye movement and lip-synch) are at the very bottom of the Uncanny Valley. The cutscenes are absolutely cringe-worthy! On the other hand, enemy animations look okay during fights, which is somewhat surprising… or maybe NOT surprising when one considers that it is possible to buy canned motion-capture assets for combat animations, while the cutscenes had to be hand-animated.
The environments, however, look a fair bit better than the people. The variety of ancient temples and cave complexes the player can explore isn’t particularly diverse, nor is anything in the game particularly unique. This higher-quality and non-unique appearance leads me to speculate that the environments mostly make use of canned Unreal Engine assets as well.
The audio is likewise a mixed bag. The music is blandly inoffensive (or absent) most of the time, occasionally swelling into something dramatic or moody. The voiceacting though… is just inexcusable. It seems like most of the lines were done with a single take, and there are awkward pauses mid-sentence whenever there’s a break in the subtitles. The delivery ranges from flat and amateurish to merely tolerable, while a number of villains can’t seem to nail-down their foreign accents.
Technically, “Deadfall Adventures” is reasonably solid for a budget PC game. There are clipping issues in places, and it’s possible to get stuck inside walls at times, but the game’s checkpoint system makes it easy to retry without a lot of repetition. The game never crashed on me, which is nice, but I did experience numerous times when the buttons to switch between weapons and various adventuring tools got gummed up and wouldn’t work properly, sometimes resulting in a compass floating in mid-air, other times resulting in a compass balanced on a pistol-wielding wrist, and often just refusing to switch.
Story
“Deadfall Adventures” shares the same pedigree as ‘Indiana Jones.’ Both are based on the works of British author, H. Rider Haggard, who wrote adventure novels in the late 19th century which forged the basic tenants of Adventurer Archaeology and Lost World fiction. Haggard’s lead character, Allan Quatermain, has passed into the Public Domain (due to the lack of the draconian copyright measures we have to deal with in modern times), thus anyone is free to create commercial works based on the character and his exploits.
“Deadfall Adventures” does not, however, feature Allan Quatermain. Instead, it takes place in 1938 and follows the exploits of Allan’s great-grandson, James Lee Quatermain, who lives a hard-drinking, hard-gambling life while earning money off his family’s fame by leading guided tours in Egypt. One of these guided tours involves British-American archaeologist, Jennifer Goodwin, on the hunt for an artifact known as the Heart of Atlantis, which is also being sought-out by Nazi Germany.
With the help of a Nazi defector named Hagan, Quatermain and Goodwin find themselves on a globe-trotting adventure in pursuit of the Heart, while avoiding (or just shooting) German Nazis, Russian Commies, and Muslim mercenaries (Because why not let us shoot every contemporary group of terrible people simultaneously?!). The story arcs play-out predictably over 11 stages (providing around 12 hours of play time), and don’t really scratch the Adventure Archaeology/Lost World itch, even for someone who hasn’t seen an ‘Indiana Jones’ film in years. That said, the story isn’t terrible and it at least makes sense within its own context… it just isn’t very original or interesting, particularly because the Archaeologists vs. Nazis storyline has already been done to death by… ‘Indiana Jones.’
Gameplay
“Deadfall Adventures” is a very linear, thoroughly modern First-Person Shooter. Each of the 11 stages has a large number of checkpoints which correspond with points of no return in the stage design, either due to doors that lock behind Quatermain or little ledges that he can’t be bothered to hop back over. The game features a two-weapon loadout, in which one weapon must ALWAYS be dual pistols, while the other weapon is typically some sort of rifle or shotgun (very rarely, Quatermain can pick up a THIRD weapon, which is always a rocket-propelled grenade). The game also features regenerating health and a very minimalist HUD.
What a modern FPS fan won’t find in “Deadfall Adventures” is anything resembling a mini-map, waypoint, or compass. Instead, these common game mechanics have been transformed into more old-school variants of themselves. If Quatermain wants a map of a given stage, he’ll have to scrounge around at the beginning of the stage to find a crudely-drawn paper map (usually on a corpse or a crate). If Quatermain wants help finding a hidden treasure, he’ll have to pull out his old compass, which points toward hidden loot, but occupies his left hand, preventing the use of two-handed weapons.
Finding hidden treasures is a significant part of the gameplay in “Deadfall Adventures.” Indeed, a large portion of the game doesn’t involve shooting at enemies at all, but instead focuses on solving optional puzzles to gain access to loot or just hunting down loot in out-of-the-way corners of the stage geometry, which slows the pacing to a crawl far too often. This loot isn’t just for show or for achievement hunting, however, as it can be used to unlock a series of upgrades to Quatermain’s health, stamina, reload speed, accuracy, recoil, rate of fire, and flashlight duration.
The shooting in “Deadfall Adventures” boils down to mostly setpiece battles against either evil humans or undead mummies. One interesting gimmick about the undead in “Deadfall Adventures” is that they are effectively immortal unless Quatermain burns them with the concentrated beam from his flashlight, causing them to catch fire and become vulnerable to bullets. Other than that gimmick, the shooting in “Deadfall Adventures” is fairly par-for-the-course modern-style shooting, where the player needs to peek out from behind cover in order to pop-off some shots when the enemy stops firing or backpedal away from persistent melee enemies. The aiming mechanics are solid, with typical ironsights for all weapon types and enemies go down with a reasonable amount of shots, however there are significant problems with hit detection that ruined the combat for me. I found that the solidity of rocks and crates was usually quite questionable, as enemies could randomly shoot THROUGH the things they and/or Quatermain were hiding behind in order to score cheap hits against the player. I also found that shooting through chain-link fences was typically more of a crap shoot than shooting through boulders… which is insane. There were also numerous times when an obstacle managed to protect an enemy from gunfire even when the enemy was clearly in the open. This kind of unpredictable cover behavior is NOT the way to earn praise for a FPS.
The boss battles in “Deadfall Adventures” are somewhat unique and surprising in how utterly understated they are. All but one of these battles is against a normal run-of-the-mill person, but instead of being buffed-up bullet sponges as they are in so many games (*cough* ‘Bordlerlands’), these commanders are nearly as weak as their rank and file cannon fodder, oftentimes going down to a single grenade or a couple bursts of rifle fire. I found this refreshing, as far too many games rely on making human bosses unbelievably super-human.
Overall
“Deadfall Adventures” is not the ‘Uncharted’ competitor I’ve been looking for. It’s just another low-budget Polish knock-off with cringe-inducing cutscenes, a hackneyed plot, plodding treasure hunting, and spotty hit-detection that ruins the shooting. And the title doesn’t even make sense!
Presentation: 2.5/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 2.5/5
Overall (not an average): 2.5/5
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