Grade: C-
Control two characters at once in this solo co-op tree-climbing adventure
The opening sequence in this game is pretty cool. It reminded me of the RPG Paleomythic, which is a fantasy cave-person world. In Above: the fallen, your tribe has fallen on hard times and there’s very little food to eat. You’ve got to climb up through the canopy to the top and find a new food source.
Controlling two characters at once
It’s a solo co-op game, and you control both a male and a female character simultaneously. You control the female with the right joystick, and with the left, you control the male character. Psychologically, that makes sense that the man would be the left joystick and the woman would be the right joystick, I guess. I wonder if that was an intentional decision.
I was looking forward to controlling two characters at once, and I’ve only done it in one other game, “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.” Brothers made me cry for about an hour at the end of it (like sobbing in tears crying), and thankfully this was not an emotional experience like that. Just being reminded, even slightly, of the Brothers game made me tear up a bit, but that’s a game story for another day.
When you get into the timed areas where water is filling up a chamber, and you need to proceed quickly through the platforming, the single co-op becomes challenging. That was the roadblock between me and finishing this game. I could have grabbed a second player and done traditional co-op, but I wasn’t having enough fun to keep going with this game.
Controls and Animations felt unfinished.
I. went into Above: The Fallen without skepticism, but the gameplay wasn’t quite there. I experienced two game crashes; the controls were wonky, the animations were incomplete, and it just seemed like it was in an unfinished beta state as a game. For instance, when you hit a thorn patch, there’s a zoomed-in still picture of the avatar, and you hear a weird grunting noise that reminded me of the original sega genesis Maddon football. Little things like death animations make a big difference in a game experience, and it wasn’t something the developer prioritized.
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