The Fall Part 2: Unbound (2018)

This game, along with the first, have amazing stories. And honestly, the story is really the only thing that go me through these games. I really enjoyed the new combat sequences with the timed left and right key presses (played w/ mouse & keyboard), I also enjoyed the upgrade of jumping. However, the thing that kills these games is the lack of effective clues to help the player progress.

Getting a new ability/choice option and having to test that ability on every single interactive item to find the correct result is frustrating. I often found myself completely lost on what to do and had to frequently refer to a walkthrough. Often finding that the solution to my problem didn't make sense and was something that I would have never come to without interacting with literally everything. I also ran into an issue were I didn't do something in a specific enough sequence and this halted my progress; causing me to have to quit and reload the game from the main menu. Not feeling like I could solve the problems myself and essentially being forced to just run through every option (or getting lucky) made it feel less game like and more like structured elimination of options.

Ultimately great story, but I highly recommend having a walkthrough handy, hopefully it will eliminate frustrations and allow you to enjoy the game better.

Hm. This game was incredible at the beginning. Really cool concepts, fun gameplay and puzzles, and totally creative. But it just kept devolving after the butler’s first act.

Maybe it went over my head, but I rarely knew what I was trying to do. The puzzle mechanics became incomprehensible, to where I just clicked everything with every inventory item. The writing became nonsensical as well.

I truly thought it was going to be a 10/10 game, but suddenly I was just wanting it to end. Idk what happened, but I really wish it had kept that amazing initial quality.

The Fall was a cleverly designed adventure game about an AI facing the conundrum of violating protocols in order to save its human occupant. The Fall Part 2: Unbound is a direct sequel and takes place directly after the ending of The Fall. If you haven’t played The Fall yet, do not play this game. The only way to talk more about this game is to explicitly spoil the ending of part one, you have been warned!

The Fall Part 2: Unbound follows up with our protagonist AI, ARID in the process of being disassembled after learning that it never had a human residing in its suit. ARID in a last ditch attempt of staying sentient, decides to hack into the network and control other robots to save its own life.

Unlike in The Fall Part 1, ARID navigates the interwebs in a metroid-like fashion. In this futuristic internet, ARID battles viruses and hacks into logs to learn more about the world. Unfortunately nothing works in this part of the game. The combat is boring and tedious. The enemies are all black blobs with tentacles. There is nothing interesting to do but dodge enemy attacks and shoot back. It’s fairly easy to get lost especially when there is no map and there is a lack of environmental variety.

The puzzle solving aspect kicks in when ARID hacks into the robots. Each robot has their own distinctive personality and offers a unique approach to puzzle solving. This is the strongest part of the game and it was a joy to see how ARID communicates with each robot. I found ARID’s conversations with “The One” especially hilarious. Unfortunately I found the puzzles a bit too hard with a lot of pixel hunting and trial and error. The game tends to hide vital clues on the ceiling. The game wants you to solve the puzzles in a specific way but doesn’t give enough hints to tell the player that they are on the right track. I ultimately had to resort to several walkthroughs after getting stuck twice exhausting every single option I had. I don’t remember ever getting this lost in the original game.

The story in The Fall Part 2 doesn’t pack the same punch as the original. Most plot lines remain unresolved and the focus is dedicated more on the robots that ARID hacks than ARID itself. There is also a lack of creative AI introspection compared to the first game and the writing tends to lean on the typical Sci-Fi cliche of an AI gone rampant. Fortunately, the ending of the game showcases what could be a promising final third part.

I was satisfied with my time with this game but was bitterly disappointed that The Fall Part 2 is nowhere near as good as the original The Fall.

I really enjoyed the first part of The Fall. It was a great sci-fi story about AI, reality and bending the rules. It had its share of obtuse puzzles, but overall everything worked for me.

This follow-up though... for some reason they added two different types of new combat (different from the fairly simple and infrequent combat from the first game). One is a mindless auto-target shooter and one a kind of rhythm game. They weren't the worst things to try once or twice but they were so overused. One character (called The One) would have multiple combat sequences in a row and they could be quite challenging, even on easy. The puzzles were even more obtuse this time around, I often had to resort to trying to use every item in my inventory on every object to move forward, and the voice acting and characters seemed like a step down.

The first game was such a good start but this was a struggle to get through.