Falling On Its Face | Falling Skies: The Game Review

The second a game is spun-off from a movie or TV-series people are immediately wary. This includes me, and I’ll completely admit to going into Falling Skies: The Game with some serious suspicious. For the most part I was completely right, but I was a little surprised by some elements Falling Skies offered. It made some attempts to soar, but I can safely say, this game fell quite hard from the sky.

I am not a die-hard Falling Skies fan, but I enjoyed the show for two seasons before never going back. I see the appeal in the show, and it isn’t a bad premise for a game either. Naturally, you’d think a terrible first-person shooter would’ve been cranked out, but Falling Skies is a RTS surprisingly. This intrigued me as I saw a new take on a spin-off series. There was hope that this could be something unique after all. It isn’t.

Falling Skies: The Game is a pretty shallow RTS in every way imaginable. It isn’t horrible where it is unplayable, but it doesn’t go above-and-beyond any of the basics that an RTS needs. You have your typical map, group of characters you control, various enemies to go against, and random objectives you need to complete. By all rights, Falling Skies has the formula down for an RTS, but nothing that makes it standout. Then, it has issues that only drag it down from decent to bad.

The presentation certainly dates Falling Skies to the PS3 era at the latest but maybe even back to the PS2. There seems to be only one song that apparently plays on a loop throughout the entire game, and it gets extremely annoying as one would expect. The graphics are atrocious and while some may same graphics don’t matter—that usually only applies when the game’s story or gameplay can make up for it. In this particular case, it does not.

The story – well, I’ll be honest – it didn’t hold my interest so I didn’t really pay attention to it. At least it is separate from the show so you don’t need to understand the television show to know what’s going on. Some character from the show do make an appearance to satisfy any fans. The main downside to the story is you can’t skip the cut-scenes so you are forced to watch it. A plus side is the voice acting is pretty decent surprisingly, nothing to write home about, but I didn’t hate it entirely.

The maps are dull and they didn’t seem varied enough where I needed to change my strategy. The enemies all imply the same strategy where they run up and attack. Often committing suicide runs if you hunker down well enough. An enemy will run right up to my group of soldiers, attack one, and then stand there as an easy target. They didn’t show any real intelligence, or strategy. Plus it was annoying searching the map for them every time. They only moved after spotted, so I wasn’t worried about being snuck up on or flanked unless I was careless.

Similarly, my strategy for almost every level was to keep my people in a group, move them slowly through the level, wait until an enemy appeared, and blast him away. The only time I lost was when I got too bored and spread my people out too thin, or I got extremely unlucky with the aiming.

I tried going up high with my sniper because she got a bonus for being on an elevated level, but I couldn’t get her to shoot down at any of the enemies. There are times I can’t see an enemy because they’re behind a wall, but I still have the option to attack. So I do and magically the bullets go through the wall to damage them. Other times an enemy will be leaning out a doorway, but I can’t target them because they are somehow hidden. There is some good basic combat here, but there are too many flaws that constantly frustrate you.

The real issue I had with Falling Skies are the simple things that would’ve made the game a lot better, but they were currently too frustrating. This is a little thing, but you can only move over the squares with the joystick, not the control pad which is generally easier in a stand block grid. I misplaced my people multiple times or struggled far too long to place my character in the proper position. The camera cannot rotate smoothly, but only move in quarter turns. Many times I couldn’t see what was going on. I even lost a character because I couldn’t find their body to revive them. My person was standing next to them (I think, couldn’t quite see) with the proper equipment, but I couldn’t revive them. So they died and I lost them forever.

I like that part of Falling Skies at least. People who die actually die. It’s a little hardcore for a game that is mostly for fan service, but it gives the battles a little extra importance. There are other nice touches like needing to reload, which takes a turn, and to you carry a grenade or a health pack. Options like that give this game a little more hope than everything else that tears it down.

The best part of the game is off the battlefield believe it or not. You can level people up with skill trees, send people out to gain material, you use that material to create better equipment, and other extras of that nature which make Falling Skies a lot deeper than I was expecting. Again, nothing amazing or new, but when everything else is shallow in this game, even the slightest level of depth should be rejoiced.

I was a little surprised to find characters I preferred because of their ability and skills. Technically, that’s what one should expect in an RTS, but I had low hopes for Falling Skies, so luckily I can report that aspect of the game is pretty solid. It isn’t deep where you’ll spend hours tweaking every aspect of a character, but you can at least pick some options to have a more diverse squad.

When one of my squad members was injured and I lost them for my next mission, I actually had some difficult with that hole missing in my squad. The game isn’t difficult (minus technicality frustrations) but it doesn’t hold your hand either. You will die and lose people if you aren’t careful. That being said, any real RTS expert will blow through this game without worry.

Falling Skies: The Game is exactly what you would expect from a spin-off video game, but it does throw in a few surprises. An RTS style game is a nice change of pace from the usual shooters we get from spin-offs, and the character development system in place with a couple other features shines a little light into this foggy game. There are even some fun moments in the combat, but it is too basic to hold your interest for long.

The standard missions and levels feel repetitive after a while. The character gaining new skills is nice, but I never really had to change-up my strategy that much while playing through this game. I never felt like I was really advancing or using any critical thinking skills. I moved in a group, maybe split up here or there, and took out one enemy at a time. I didn’t get the same intense strategy thinking I get when I play other RTS’s and I never felt any real motivation to play—I was essentially forcing myself. If you are a die-hard fan of Falling Skies, or enjoy simplified RTS games, then you may enjoy this title, otherwise, you should avoid it at all costs.

This review is based off a review code of the Playstation 3 version of Falling Skies: The Game developed by Torus Games and distributed by Little Orbit.