It’s been so long since I played Left 4 Dead I forgot how much I miss a good team-survival game, and NO, Call of Duty Zombies does not count. It’s been nine years since Left 4 Dead 2, and while other games have attempted to capture the magic that made those zombie games legendary, none have come close until Earthfall. First, I’d like to thank developer, Holospark for making this game about aliens instead of the painfully overused undead antagonist, even if many of these alien types are direct knockoffs from their zombie cousins in Left 4 Dead.
As far as story and presentation, Earthfall is as barebones as it gets, with simple menus that allow you to play alone or online with friends or strangers. There are two campaigns, each with five missions, and while the missions do flow together in a thinly connected plot with brief opening introduction, all ten chapters are open from the beginning allowing you to play them in any order whenever you want. As it turns out later, this is a good thing. For any type of backstory you will need to read pages upon pages of info found in the Lore Database, most of which has to be unlocked while playing the game. Here, you will get all the info on Aliens, your character bios, history of the world, missions, and weapons.
There are four characters to choose from or you can let the game randomly assign you one. Aside from covering the entire racial/gender spectrum, there is no difference playing one character over another other than the bits of dialogue. It would have been nice if there were character-specific abilities like making Roy, the big black dude, the only guy who could carry around a mounted gun turret, but token female, Maya can yank one of those guns out of the ground just as easily as a guy twice her size. Girl Power! Even their names don’t seem important, as they will be replaced with any human player’s name in the subtitles.
The game is four-player co-op all the time, so if you are playing alone or with less than three friends the bot AI will fill in the gaps. You can adjust the AI from Newbie, Average, Skill, and Masterful, and while there are noticeable differences, none of them can match the performance of a functional four-player human team. After struggling a bit in a two-player/two-bot match using Average AI, I switched to Masterful and the bots got much better…much better at stealing all the loot drops. Those guys aren’t shy about snatching up all the med kits and powerful guns, but when it comes to setting up barriers or using a turret they are nowhere to be found, but they are usually good about healing/reviving fallen players. Ultimately, the more human players you have for Earthfall, the better.
One of the main reasons you’ll want human players is that Earthfall is hard…really hard, and that’s on normal Playing on Intense or Overwhelming is just asking for trouble, but there are achievements for doing so if you can make it to the end of each chapter facing incredible alien opposition. But even on Normal my success rate for a chapter was maybe one in five attempts. The game is definitely built upon the fail-and-try-again model because with each new attempt you have previously learned knowledge of enemy spawn points, strategic bottlenecks, loot locations, etc. And it seems there is always something new to find. Even after two nights of play and probably 10-12 attempts at the first chapter, Supply Run, we found a garage loaded with guns and supplies. Not sure how we missed it before, but those supplies made it much easier in the backyard battle that follows.
Mission length is an odd issue, as we discovered when we decided to speed-run the first chapter. It normally takes 30-45 minutes to complete Supply Run, but after dying in the final battle four times in a row (two hours wasted) we decided to just sprint from the start of the level to the final area stopping only to pick up our favorite weapons, load-up on health supplies, and only kill any alien directly in our path. Interestingly enough, it seems the aliens spawn is based on location but ALSO on a timer, so if you are casually searching for loot new waves of aliens will swarm in. By sprinting through the entire level in under five minutes we avoided all the timed spawns and none of the location spawned enemies pursued us outside their areas, so there was no parade of aliens at the end.
I’m not mentioning this as a glitch or even an issue really. Any game that has missions that when played properly can take 30-45 minutes then kill you in an instant, forcing you to replay them entirely needs some sort of exploit. It’s so easy to have your entire team wiped out in Earthfall, and not just in the final battles. There are chokepoints, swarm events, and mid-level bosses that can take out four players fast, and there is nothing worse than needing somebody to heal you and all the teammates with health are already down. There is a cool incapacitation system where players will go down but can still fire their pistol (but not use a stim kit?) for a brief period before going unconscious. This allows you to shoot aliens while a friend heals you, since healing takes several seconds and that person is defenseless while doing so. If you pass out your camera view will switch to a teammate until revived or dead.
Gameplay varies across the ten missions with some chapters consisting of linear exploration missions and others more confined into tactical defense events where you can bunker down, build up barricades, place turrets, and wait for the inevitable swarms to come. Playing the ten chapters in order offers an even mix of mission types as well as a smooth progression of difficulty, as new concepts are introduced like the 3D Printer. In some missions you’ll come across a printer capable of creating specific weapons. Often you’ll need to restore power before using, but when operable these will grant you an unlimited supply of loaded weapons with no cost to you other than the time it takes to create. Need fresh ammo for your gun and there is no ammo crate around? Just print a new gun.
Controls are fine with keyboard and mouse or a controller, but there is definitely an issue with cursor creep in the menus when using a gamepad. I tried several controllers and the arrow always creeped to the left edge, even as I fought it with a mouse. Gamepad controls are smooth and precise once in the game. The guns and aiming feel really good and there is a nice weapon variety. I’m a big fan of the AK67 and the MP5 but the Glint sniper rifle can do one-hit kills, even when fired from the hip. Flamethrowers are especially effective against the basic alien drones, but you’ll want to bust out the shotguns and heavy turrets when the larger bosses charge into the fight like a bull on steroids. You even have a melee attack that can knock back enemies; especially useful for the one that inflates and explodes toxic green gas when it dies.
Technically, Earthfall looks and sounds fantastic for a mid-range survival shooter with a few surprises. My GTX 1080ti was able to easily output a 60fps Epic experience at 1080p. There is quite a bit of detail in the design of both outdoor and indoor locations along with good day and night effects and even weather effects for snowy levels or rainstorms that drip water on the screen. Environmental textures are nice and there is good use of light and shadows that will have you toggling that flashlight. The in-game UI is functional and minimal with a pop-up wheel to issues commands/requests to teammates and health, ammo, and equipment icons in the corner. You even get real-time health meters for your team along with who has a med kit. The sound effects can be terrifying at times, especially when an Enrager is nearby or the ominous horn sounds right before a swarm attack. The soundtrack is energetic and threatening at times and fits the game perfectly, but not the sort of music I would otherwise listen to, but for those that would the OST is available for $5.
Earthfall is $30, which isn’t bad for ten chapters that will take 20+ hours to complete, but much of that initial playtime and future longevity is all about playing the same levels over and over again, and while things mix up slightly, these are fairly linear missions with repetitive trigger events. Also, considering that your fun is directly related to the number of humans playing, I would like to have seen a $20-25 price or even better; a 4-pack offering for a discounted price. I totally recommend you don’t play this game with strangers. All my attempts were met with at least one or two idiots who either weren’t active or actively trying to screw up the game for everyone else. Even worse I couldn’t find a way to kick those players. Definitely a “friends only” game.
Earthfall is easily some of the best online co-op I’ve experienced this year, but as with any co-op driven experience, you are at the mercy of not only having friends buy a copy of the game, but then coordinating play times, etc. I tried several times to play Earthfall alone, and even with the smartest bots could never complete a mission on Normal difficulty, so the future of solo play isn’t good. If you have 2-3 friends you can talk into playing then definitely check this out, otherwise you might want to wait for a sale or find something more suitable for solo play.
