Outerloop Games‘ Falcon Age finally hits Nintendo Switch. Falcon Age is really a single-player, action roleplaying game. You play as Ara, a young woman, imprisoned on the planet colony run by automated colonizers. In Falcon Age, you find out about your heritage and culture as a falcon hunter. It’s your decision and your falcon to liberate your colony and drive away your mechanized oppressors.
As I played Falcon Age‘s story, I was unfortunately uninterested. I had been excited to determine the sport hosted a cast of black and brown characters, Ara being one of these. However, I wasn't feeling the narrative to be enslaved and achieving to fight back my oppressors. I have seen this narrative a lot in media lately. But, what kept me glued to the game was the world Outerloop created, along with the soothing music while exploring this seemingly desolate planet and the hyper and intense music that loops in when you’re in combat.
While all the characters might be black and/or brown, I gravitated to Ara and her badass Aunt. Ara is this eager and headstrong young woman attempting to learn about her culture as a Falcon Hunter and help get back their colony. Ara’s auntie is really a hardened woman who incidentally she speaks has seen and experienced several things. She's stern and stubborn with Ara but only because she sees the possibility in her to do great things. This immediately brought to mind the women that raised me and continue to propel me forward into the person I am attempting to be.
Despite not being pleased with the narrative, the sport mechanics of Falcon Age were pretty great and who doesn’t want to bond with a falcon? You meet your falcon while in a prison camp and its mother attempts to battle a sentry bot looking to get rid of the nest. Within the scuffle, the mother falcon dies and also the baby falcon is badly hurt. Ara nurses the bird to good health and constitutes a friend while she toils away attending reorientation to become an upstanding citizen and mining ore. After months go by, Ara has had enough and escapes in to the desert and is rescued by her aunt.
Your aunt tasks you with taking back an outpost as well as in doing so you'll be able to mention your bird. In Ara’s culture, naming your falcon is a great honor and, in order to do so, you have to execute a great feat to exhibit that you could operate in synergy together with your falcon. It’s at this moment, Falcon Age drew me in.
You control Ara inside a first-person fashion, focus on things in front of you, and may view your falcon flying overhead. You’re equipped with a baton that doubles as a whip to open chests and doors or to hold enemies in place. You are able to call your falcon back or command her to attack a target, all with the press of a button. While beating and whipping enemies, your falcon can distract other enemies or use what to defeat their enemies for example impact grenades. The flow of battle was extremely balanced and always fun. Once the action is dull, you can either have your falcon continue to fly overhead or refer to it as to your arm and walk by using it. By holding a button, you can bond with your falcon with cute emotes, such as a high five or developing a shaped heart together with your fingers and her talons.
As you continue the storyline, your falcon can access tools to unlock different abilities. These abilities change from sonar to detect hidden mines in the ground to reinforced talons to dig things out of the ground. These tools also give your falcon an awesome and unique look. You can also provide your bird a bandana, which will come in a variety of colors, that slightly increases defense.
In most games, you have a life bar however in Falcon Age, your flacon has a life bar and many bars which are timers for power-ups given via snacks you’ve cooked for the companion. Ara, however, will close her eyes with respect to the amount of damage she’s taken. She will regain consciousness if incoming damage stops or maybe Ara can interrupt the incoming attacks. I appreciated this because it didn’t block the HUD and I was still effective in keeping tabs on who had been hurt and who needed healing. While Ara simply needs to escape from her attackers to heal, your Falcon could be healed with either feeding her snacks you’ve cooked at a camp, getting needles she’s been shot with, or having her drink from the save fountain.
While the sport is beautiful in the world graphics and music and is relatively action-packed, Falcon Age does have its minor flaws. They’re not game-breaking flaws but, over the course of the game, I wish several options were created available. While you progress along your adventure you'll start getting the surplus of items: materials from defeating enemies, plants used to make snacks for the falcon, and items and tools accustomed to dress up your falcon. Unfortunately, there is no sort button to wash in the mess that becomes your inventory. When you’re in the heat of battle, looking for grenades and healing items for the falcon is very troublesome.
Another flaw is that there is no fast travel. If you finish an objective, you need to trek to the person that originally gave you said objective. This can be slightly overlooked since you can open shortcuts by growing boulders blocking your way but attempting to complete objectives in one fell swoop can be time taxing. Finally, you should know recipes when cooking snacks for the falcon. Sure they gave you recipe cards to check out and they’re really quite simple to see because they’re just pictures of the materials you'll need, but you’ll likely get a number of recipes on your adventure to memorize.
Overlooking my problem with the narrative for Falcon Age, this single-player roleplaying action game has a pretty decent adventure with a relatable main character. Players will have a blast raising and bonding with their own falcon, and also the combat feels very intuitive by using different items and snacks that you could feed your falcon. If you’re looking for different things, Falcon Age is surely a game to add to your library.
Falcon Age is available for Nintendo Switch, Oculus Quest, PC, and PlayStation 4.
