THE FALL Review for Nintendo Switch

The Fall by developer and publisher, Over The Moon, is a sci-fi 2-D puzzle shooter. In it, you play as ARID (armed robotic interface device) the on-board A.I. for a soldier suit. In the beginning of the story, the suit crash lands and falls 50 feet below the surface. ARID tries to contact the pilot of the suit to assess his condition. Upon receiving no response, ARID believes that the suit’s pilot was knocked out by the crash. ARID takes control of the suit and tries to find medical supplies before her pilot reaches critical condition.

As a shooter, the game is ok. It is what you would expect of a 2-D shooter, you and enemies can only move left and right, and you have the ability to jump. The game also features a cover system (which both you and enemies can use) and a cloaking device (which for most of the game is essentially mobile cover). The puzzle portion of the game is where the game gets aggravating.

The puzzles in the game are mostly of the sort where you find an item, click on a part of the environment, and then pick an item to interact with what you targeted. Most of the game’s puzzles require unconventional thinking to solve. This wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that every puzzle only has ONE solution. Anything that doesn’t work just results in the game saying “that doesn’t work.” For example, as part of a test, you need to find a way to get something to stop making noise. The solution is to melt a pipe in a room above the test and then fail a different test nearby, causing the ceiling to fall on the object and ‘silence’ it. Puzzles like this resulted in me needing to look up the solution to them multiple times to progress through the game. It got to the point where it was interfering with my enjoyment of the game.

Overall, I did not have much fun playing this game. It needs to either have more straight-forward solutions to puzzles or allow more than one answer to a puzzle. I think a fair rating would be 5/10.

Here is THE FALL Nintendo Switch Trailer:

The Fall is available now on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Wii U, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. The Fall Part 2: Unbound, the sequel to The Fall, is also now available now on PC, Mac, Linux via Steam, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.