The game is loaded with subtle details including some fantastic bird and other creature models, interesting Steampunk airships, and boats, and some unique city designs integrated into what almost looks like procedurally generated landmasses. There is a day/night cycle with gorgeous shifts in color and light including some breathtaking sunsets and sunrises and when the stars come out at night it’s magical. THE FALCONEER FISHING SIMULATORI’d stack these clouds up against Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator game. What truly stands out is the color and lighting and how they interact with the clouds and water. The Falconeer isn’t going for photorealism, so the water may look simplified and the polygon count for the rocky islands might be average but that doesn’t matter in this hybrid world of Steampunk pirates and quasi-Vikings all trapped in some ancient mythical universe. The look and feel of the game is surreal almost like a 70’s album cover came to life. THE FALCONEER FISHING FREEThere are over 60 discoverable locations and activities scattered about the world map, so there is no shortage of things to do between missions, and you are always free to simply take off and explore. Electrical storms are also shown on the map and useful if you need to recharge during a mission, but don’t overcharge or you will explode. Tailwinds will boost your speed while waterspouts will send you high into the clouds. A smaller window to this map can be found in the mini-map which also shows your flight path and nearby wind currents. Opening up the world map was a jaw-dropping experience just seeing the sheer scale of the world and the endless potential for adventures. Speaking of islands, The Great Ursee is basically one massive body of water with all sorts of islands scattered about some big enough to build a city and others too small to land. He’s surprisingly useful and not just a distraction. The longer missions will often have you traveling with a wingman that you can command with a button press to attack your target. Every chapter has a primary list of missions along with challenges and even races. There is a nice selection of mission types like patrol, combat, delivery, salvage, bounty, escort, and minesweeping, and sometimes these will combo like one mission where you had to salvage an item then deliver it to another island. You’ll earn money after each mission that can be spent on upgrades needed for future assignments.Įach chapter offers a home base with multiple NPC’s offering up a variety of missions and challenges as well as an item vendor where you can purchase assorted upgrades for your bird like weapons, armor, and mutagens that will boost your attributes like speed and agility. Oddly enough, they never did teach me about diving down to catch red and blue fish to eat them and replenish my health and stamina had to figure that out myself and it’s super-useful. THE FALCONEER FISHING HOW TOYou’ll learn to dive and rebuild stamina so you can pull off dash and roll moves and you’ll learn how to fly through electrical storms to recharge the batteries on your back that power the electric lance. THE FALCONEER FISHING PLUSIt’s pretty basic stuff but nicely designed so you are instantly comfortable flying and fighting, plus the way the missions are designed you are eased into the more difficult aspects of gameplay the more you play. Buttons and triggers handle dashing, evasive rolls, and firing your electrical weapon. You control your falcon with the left stick and pan the camera with the right. The prologue sets up the story of you engaging in a performance test to prove you are worthy to be in the service of the Empress a slick way to hide the tutorial that will teach you just about everything you need to know to play the game. There are already cutscenes, narration, and hours of professionally recorded voiceovers for a variety of characters including your spunky wingman – more on him in a bit. My preview copy had a prologue and the first few chapters of the game which offered a surprising amount of content. This game could have just as easily been designed with dragons, dragon riders, breath weapons, and all the medieval trappings, so I want to applaud the designer on creating something truly unique and special here. I’ll get this out of the way at the start. Marco Polo even wrote about these mammoth creatures, and yes, in The Falconeer your bird is large enough to saddle and support a passenger. I really had no idea what to expect going into this perhaps a twisted version of actual falconry where handlers were weaponizing their birds? I had no idea the falcons in this game were of mythical scale, the size of the fabled Roc from Middle-Eastern culture. Over the past few weeks I’ve had the pleasure to be playing an early build of Tomas Sala’s upcoming game, The Falconeer, and I have to say I am very impressed.
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