REVIEW: The Fall Part 2: Unbound


Title	The Fall Part 2: Unbound
Developer	Over the Moon
Publisher	Over the Moon
Release Date	February 13th, 2018
Genre	Platformer
Platform	PS4, PC, Xbox One, Switch
Age Rating	T for Teen
Official Website

The Fall Part 2, as one might expect, is the follow up to The Fall. To refresh, that was about an AI that inhabits a space suit trying to save the human inside of it. You had to try to achieve your goal while operating under the AI’s strict rules. The Fall Part 2 picks up where that leaves off. You’ve since been captured and a virus is now being pumped inside of you and you can’t move your body. Thus, you need to figure out where this virus is coming from and shut it down.

The story has you encountering other AI, and you have to try to get them to help you. Only, much like yourself in the first game, they have strict rules they must abide by. Thus, you need to try to convince them to assist you in ways that don’t conflict with their programming. Going into much more detail about it would spoil it, so I’ll leave it there.

From there we get to the gameplay, and there are a few different “styles” this game uses. The first is a point-and-click adventure where you walk around, look at things in the environment, and figure out how to progress. Getting the AI to do your bidding can be tricky, and these are essentially puzzles you’ll have to solve. The puzzles are satisfying enough, though there is a very specific “path” you have to follow to solve each puzzle. Finding the right solution can come down to just clicking on everything you can interact with. Though this is more of an issue later on in the game where the puzzles become a bit more abstract.

The other style of gameplay is a run and gun shooter. The gimmick is that shooting and jumping use up an energy meter, so you have to be attentive. The enemies are parts of the virus infecting you, and each one has a different way of attacking. They all just look like black globs, but each enemy has a different shape, so you can still easily tell them apart. For example, one has an elongated shape and shoots out a long horizontal beam, so it’s easy to remember how it attacks. I really like how the game introduces each enemy, as it shows what the enemy does, and how to avoid it, before even really fighting.

The combat isn’t anything amazing, but it’s fun enough. If you don’t care for it, you can knock the difficulty down at any point and just enjoy the story and puzzle solving. There are also some segments later on that have beat ‘em up style gameplay. While it was pretty simple, it was surprisingly fun and involved. The game even jokingly gives you style ranks in these fights, which is neat.

I’m dancing around spoilers here, but the game integrates some of the mechanics in its story in a really interesting way, and the final boss implements a mechanic that surprised me. A lot of thought went into this game to make gameplay mechanics relevant to the narrative, and I always respect that kinda thing.

Visually, this game looks quite good when it comes to its environments, though the human character models looked a bit lacking. The sound of the game is fantastic as well, with synth tracks that compliment the setting and establish atmosphere. I enjoyed the voice acting for the main characters, though the voice acting for side characters I found not too great. It’s certainly passable though, none of the voices are ever grating.

One issue I have on the technical side is how the game runs. I was surprised that the game runs at 30fps with a lot of stuttering in certain scene transitions. You can turn Vsync off which improves the framerate, but then you’ll get some screen tearing. Fortunately, this wasn’t a deal breaker for me and after a while I didn’t notice it too much.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game’s setting and story. The way it uses the main character’s perspective as an AI to tell the story is really smart, and it does a good job of putting you in their shoes. Despite the fact that the protagonist is indeed not human, their struggle is quite relatable. While the action parts of the gameplay didn’t amaze me, there’s nothing wrong with it either. By the end, I appreciated it being there.

If you want a great story about an AI struggling with their own sentience with fun action and adventure gameplay, I can easily recommend The Fall Part 2. Though, you might want to consider playing Part 1 first. The game is only about 6 hours long, and you can pick it up for $17 on Steam, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.