Chartered Territory?
The year is 1938. James Lee Quatermain, great-grandson of the world-famous adventurer Allan Quatermain, is a man of many talents, yet holding on to money isn’t one of them. Quatermain isn’t all too keen on escorting Jennifer Goodwin, a US agent and former colleague of his, to an Egyptian temple complex in order to retrieve an ancient artifact – The Heart of Atlantis. Neither does he believe in the reputed invigorating qualities of this artifact, nor does he care that a division of the Ahnenerbe, the Nazi department specialized in the occult, is after The Heart as well.
On paper the game sounds great, a story about a great explorer and ancient artifacts mixed with a first person shooter with puzzle elements. James has something of the Nathan Drake look to him and the setting is nice, but then I started playing and all my expectations had crumbled due to clunky controls, poor AI and outdated visuals. The puzzles themselves show real promise, but are poorly executed…which sums up the game as a whole.
The story is incredibly clichéd and cheesy as well, they’ve tried to blend in elements from Indiana Jones, Uncharted and Tomb Raider but it just fails miserably. Just moving around is awkward, maybe it’s better on Steam and the screenshots with this review are from that version since any Xbox 360 ones seem to be almost impossible to find. There are shooting sections and you start with a pistol that has infinite ammo, but can pick up other weapons that have limited ammo. The weapons lack imagination or power; while the enemies vary in design…they are all mindless as each other. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I thought I was playing an FPS from the 90s.
The visuals also back that up, the cutscenes look incredibly dated and the voice-acting is dreadful to say the least. It’s obvious the game had a small budget when even the box art doesn’t seem intriguing to gamers. There are also a number of bugs to be found which hurt the experience even more.
The Verdict
Deadfall Adventures tries to take on the likes of Lara Croft and Nathan Drake to come up short with outdated game design, flawed puzzles, dumbed down AI and a clichéd story. There’s a multiplayer mode which is also just as bad and flawed, I’d recommend not going on this particular adventure…
