Fall Trilogy Chapter Two
The Fall Trilogy is an adventure game that the developers have decided to release as three separate chapters. The first title in this series was entitled Separation (see my review at URL) and involved your game character, who was suffering from a memory loss, while attempting to escape from a mysterious old temple. Following the pattern established by episodic storylines, this first chapter ended with a cliff-hanging situation as you character has a bad fall just as he is about to complete his escape. Now it is the turn of Chapter 2 which is entitled The Fall Trilogy: Reconstruction which starts as your character awaken from the bad fall to discover that he is now in an office block.
If you missed out on the first part of this game then do not worry as this second chapter is entirely self-contained although the style of game play remains the same. A second reason for not worrying about missing the first chapter is that Avanquest, who are publishing this title, has included the first chapter as a bonus item.
When playing the game you have a choice of Casual or Adventure mode. In the case of the former, you will face easier puzzles with a quicker recharge cycle for the Hint/Skip feature plus more sparkles that indicate areas of interest for further investigation. Your mode of navigation will be set by default to using directional chevrons for left, right, up and down viewing and movement. Not surprisingly, Adventure mode is more challenging with puzzles set to Normal rather than Easy. There is a slower recharge for Hint/Skip and a smaller number of sparkles to help you. With regards to the puzzle difficulty level, you can switch between the two modes for specific puzzles.
While Casual mode uses directional chevron for changing your view point, Adventure mode goes for a full first-person 360 degree view. You can look in any direction whether to the left, right, up or down by simply dragging the mouse cursor with the right button depressed. As with the puzzles’ level, you can change the direction mode at any time from a menu option. It is worth while trying out both modes as not every task is best suited to a particular navigation mode.
As mentioned, this second chapter opens as your character recovers consciousness to find himself in an office building with a phone persistently ringing. On answering the phone, a voice gives you instructions regarding a mission that needs to be completed. Obviously this unidentified voice believes you are some sort of special agent who is skilful at investigation and the recovery of items. The use of an actual voice continues throughout the game as you hear the thoughts of your character as events unfold.
Giving you a first person view of the current scene with the ability to turn left and right, look up and down or move forwards, the game screen has your inventory running across the bottom of the screen. The inventory will hold items that you collect from various locations until you need them at some point during the game. To the left of the inventory are two tabs allowing you to access your current task list and the menu especially when you want to change the navigation mode.
At the opposite end of the inventory is a button which switches between Hint and Skip depending upon the current activity in the game. Small buttons to reset the current puzzle and provide instructions appear next to the Skip button when a puzzle is occupying your attention. One of the first puzzles to be solved involves the recreation of a map of the layout of the office you need to explore in order to complete the game. Once completed, this map can also be accessed from the bottom of the screen to help you complete your task.
As with the first chapter in the series, Reconstruction ends as your character suffers another fall while attempting to escape from the office building. Hopefully all will be revealed in the appropriately entitled “Revelation” third chapter. Although there are some challenges in the game, it does suffer from a lack of content with few surprises. It definitely needs the bonus title to make it a worth while purchase.
The Fall Trilogy: Reconstruction is priced at £10.20. System requirements call for a 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 160MB of hard disk space and support for DirectX 9.0c running Windows XP and later.
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