Xbox one the falconeer plus#
Xbox one the falconeer series#

Shooting the individually-targetable sails of boats or guns off the big sea beasts is a welcome dynamic, but with few tactical options, it starts to feel like dogfighting with extra steps. New enemies are introduced fairly steadily, but your weapons all feel much the same. When the birds and the dinos are swooping all over, and those lumbering airships are distracted by the boats, tempting you to dip into the water to pick up a mine and drop it on them… yeah, that’s some damn fine dogfighting. Its big fights are superb, particularly one where some factional skulduggery demanded that I only pretend to fight a hostile force, while actually letting it blow up a neutral base so my side could say at least we tried. What does drag it down a little, though, is the repetition. But it’s hard to drag a tone into the mire when you spend all your time watching beautiful sunsets or exchanging shots with other falconeers to a backdrop of dramatic storms. Even Dunkle responds to being screwed over by immediately turning to blackmail, and pretty much everyone likes to use pirates as a smokescreen for much worse behaviour. Sure, its factions are duplicitous, and you’ll blow up hundreds of people. But where Arkane’s stabby assassin game was murky and bloody, The Falconeer is more like its high adventure cousin. There’s a kind of Dishonored feel to the whole thing, what with everything being submerged, and aquatic industries, naval power, and aristocratic roles dominating society. Initially you work for Dunkle, a somewhat downtrodden ‘free house’, who get treated unfairly by a local power.

Xbox one the falconeer series#

It’s a decent enough story, too, as you play a mercenary taking on jobs from a series of jostling local noble houses. There is, bluntly, not all that much to do outside the main story, unless you really get a kick out of simply flying, delivering, and taking in the ambience. Sooner or later though, you’ll want to get stuck into the story. Why would anyone explain it to you? Do you talk to the postman about what trees are? It’s part of the world! It’s clearly THE local feature. It’s a huge chasm gouged out of the ocean, with a weird little watery bridge, and for the longest time the game absolutely refuses to explain what it is or how it’s possible. There are aerial races to unlock alternative birds, package delivery side jobs, and a brilliant geographical feature called The Maw. The friendly merchant boats you target sometimes offer escort jobs, which paid surprisingly well for often no combat. There was a honeymoon period where I just flew around exploring, flying for its own sake, landing at ports and occasional shrines (which bring up fully voiced flavour text and unlock some side trinkets). There’s something exciting here, and I want to see more of it.

Xbox one the falconeer plus#

Plus it does make combat a bit less hectic. You’ll be needlessly spinning as well, just because it feels like the right thing to do. There’s some tactical value to this too, as it zooms out your minimap, and diving naturally drives your speed and replenishes your stamina, and, well, of course you’ll be divebombing your enemies. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. The range of colour and light you’ll see played out across its vast sky is wonderful, and I can think of no other game that’s had me periodically fly directly up, away from my troubles, just to break out above the clouds and hear the music gradually drop to a gentle windchime to accompany the starlight. Even seen entirely from the air, its ocean is easily the most gorgeous I’ve seen outside of Sea Of Thieves. It’s an endlessly pretty game, for one thing. What it loses in capital-F features it gains in originality and atmosphere.

It’s just now occurred to me that there isn’t any trading in it, for one thing. Its world is so fresh that I’ve found myself rating it above games that, on reflection, have a lot more in them. Instead of lasers, you fly into storms to charge up your lightning guns. Instead of ships, you ride a giant falcon, and fight flying dinosaurs, semi-mechanical (I think?) insects, and huge undulating serpents covered with gun banks. Instead of space, you fly over a vast ocean. The Falconeer is, broadly speaking, one of those games, but in a much more novel and colourful setting. There are only so many laser cannons and thrusters and made-up space minerals I can keep track of, y’know? Shooty games about wandering a somewhat living area of outer space doing odd jobs in between a chain of story missions are their own subgenre, to the point where even the good ones can blur together. A beautifully realised world housing an enjoyable and original, but limited 3D aerial combat game.Ī bit of imagination can go a long way.