The Fall: Down in a hole
You awake, darkness is all around you, save from a few strands of light falling through the hole you created. This is how the 2d puzzle platforming game The Fall starts. You are Arid, an artificial intelligence, connected to a combat suit worn by a human military pilot, but your pilot is unconscious from the fall (see how they did that) and you are programmed to save your pilot at any cost.
The Fall is heavy with atmosphere. It's palette is dark and gloomy, it's score is quiet and unsettling. As you make you're way though the underground caverns the score is subtle and somber; it ratchets up just at the right time creating perfect tension and immediacy to the few scares in the game.
Most of the gameplay consists of exploring areas and finding items to solve puzzles with. There is a good amount of backtracking to solve puzzles. Some of these puzzles are very clever, while others are more obtuse and frustrating. Sometimes the connection to a puzzle and it's solution is so vague it's infuriating to finally figure it out. I played the game on multiple sittings, with days in between sometimes, and found myself stuck to the point of just trying every thing in my inventory on the puzzle at hand until something fit. Once it did fit I had to scour my memory for every little detail about my last play through to figure out how I was supposed to make such a connection. And unfortunately I found this happening more and more towards the end puzzles--even though I played the last 3 areas in one sitting.
The combat is minimal. You will fight other robots once you find a weapon. It's aim and shoot and hide behind cover. It's not demanding but it's not fun either. The rest of the gameplay consists of you shining a flash light on the environment searching for clues, items, and puzzles to interact with.
The true hero of the game is the story and the questions it presents. The Fall seems to be dealing a lot with identity and how we use that as a tool to help ourselves or how we are forced into certain ones based on our environment and situation. The game makes some interesting commentary specifically on women and how they may be forced into a role they don't see themselves in to prove their love for their man.
The Fall is a very atmospheric game, that's story, score, and art design all come together in really great ways. Even though the combat is uninspiring and the puzzles obtuse, this is a story that you will want to see play out and will leave you with some interesting thoughts once it's gone.
