It's a funny old world. No sooner have we finished mourning the loss of our traditional Tomb Raider, as Lara's seemingly decided she'd have more fun turning her adventuring game into Cabella-lite, (just with more screaming and plot holes), than another game comes along that's arguably closer to Tomb Raider than Lara's latest. Looking at things from a slightly different perspective (after all - it's a first person game), Deadfall Adventures is one of those games we don't really have enough of - a game that tries something new, that can't really be shoehorned into any one box, and has a good time doing it.
While it may have a bit of an odd name, Deadfall Adventures is, for all intents and purposes, a first person take on Tomb Raider - only with a bit more shooting than Lara ever managed. The story follows the tale of James Lee Quartermain, grandson of legendary adventure Allan Quartermain, as he sets out (somewhat reluctantly) on a quest to find a powerful and hidden artefact, before it can fall into the wrong hands. Taking a page out of Indiana Jones' book, those "wrong hands" happen to belong to the Nazis, and it's up to you to put your adventuring prowess to the test, in a game that seems two parts Tomb Raider, one part The Mummy, and three parts Indiana Jones.
Although it's played from a first person perspective, it's hard to describe Deadfall as being a true shooter. Yes, there's a fair amount of shooting in it, with some pretty lengthy combat oriented sections - but then there's also plenty of times that the shooting dies down, the enemies back off, and you're left to explore an incredibly detailed ancient temple in all its glory.
Watch out for traps!
As a seasoned explorer, it stands to reason that you'd have a few handy tools in your pocket to make adventuring that much simpler, and Quartermain doesn't disappoint. First off, you have a torch, which is anything but as bog-standard as it sounds. Imbued with the power of a crystal from Atlantis, this torch can not only light a dark passage, but can also be boosted using the left bumper, and used to damage certain supernatural enemies. While the Nazis may be the main baddie you come across, these cursed tombs and pyramids have their own share of beasties too - like mummies, which can only be killed by burning through their shield with the torch.
Push left on the d-pad, however, and you'll pull out your ace in the hole - a handy compass, that doesn't seem to work like any other. Rather than pointing magnetic north, your compass will instead point you in the direction of any nearby treasure, changing colour to indicate what type of treasure it is. Strolling around the dust covered passages of the tomb, your compass will spend most of its time spinning aimlessly - but when it stops, you ought to pay attention. Head where it's pointing, and you'll likely find yourself coming face to face with one of the game's many puzzles, with an artefact your prize for completing it.
Yeah, this is a cutscene - you don't really get to walk over the friendly crocs.
Every place you visit has countless hidden artefacts waiting to be discovered, with puzzles that range from fairly obvious, to the obtuse, and everything in-between. One of the game's simpler puzzles asked you to retrieve some treasure from the end of a room, behind a load of sparking wires that were dangling down from the ceiling. You couldn't crouch low enough to sneak underneath unscathed - so what could you do instead? The answer? Look for the power source. A quick trip outside the building lets you find the generator, which, one grenade later, causes you no more problems. A trickier puzzle a little bit earlier in the game presented you with a sarcophagus and a number of gems on the wall. Going across horizontally, there were five gems, each surrounded by a unique number of smaller gems, below which lay a single large gem, with ten smaller ones going in a circle around it. With no pointers from the game, you're left to figure it out for yourself. And what do you do? Shoot it? Nope - that doesn't do anything? Grenades? Nothing. You can't touch them, either, as they're high up on the wall. The answer, it seemed, was to use your torch. Shine your light on one of the five gems in the row, and the corresponding gems would light up around the big gem below. All you had to do was get them all to light up at the same time - which was easier said than done.
Somewhat brilliantly, though, Deadfall's one of the few games that lets you tailor its settings to suit your preferences, as it has separate difficulty levels for puzzles and combat. If you'd rather test your brain than your trigger finger, you can adjust the game to suit - but if you'd rather wade in all guns blazing without having to worry about stopping to think, you can do that too.
At least, to an extent. While you can adjust the levels of each difficulty, it's important to remember that these are ancient temples, and as such, they do come with their fair share of traps. Whether they're set up by the tomb's creators (walkways that give way as you cross them, tiles that trigger darts to shoot out the wall if you tread on them), or a markedly less creative Nazi creations (a pair of grenades swinging from a rope, or a trip wire), there's a lot to look out for as you make your way around the tomb, and loads of nice little touches waiting to be found.
But while the puzzles are well done, the game does suffer from a few problems, most of which, sadly, seem to just point to a lack of polish. The voice acting is pretty poor, and characters in cutscenes seem incredibly awkwardly animated, coming across as being more creepy than believably human in most cases. There's often too much of an emphasis on combat, too, with waves of enemies that keep coming for too long, rather than letting you get back to your much needed adventuring. Those less experienced at first person shooters may also find it hard to even spot the enemies in the first place, as without any radar or other indicators, picking out a grey Nazi against a grey background isn't as easy as you'd think, while the checkpoints are that little bit too far apart. In the days of universal hard drives, we'll never understand why more games won't let you save at any time, rather than rely on an autosave to trigger.
While it may not be as polished as we'd like, though, Deadfall Adventures nevertheless represents a brave attempt to try something new. With intricately crafted tombs waiting to be explored, puzzles to be solved, and Nazis to despatch, this is one anyone left in the cold at Lara's latest should consider checking out. Here's hoping for a sequel on the next-gen consoles that fixes the few niggles.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
