Nukezilla Review: Afterfall: InSanity (PC)

Afterfall: InSanity is a third person survival horror game set in an underground shelter after a nuclear war. The back story is almost identical to the Fallout series, but without any of the 50′s-style technology that made Fallout unique.

The story follows Albert Tokaj, a psychologist who treats the survivors in a shelter suffering from Confinement Syndrome, a mental condition caused by spending a long period underground. Albert is tasked with investigating an unknown incident in part of the shelter, and when crazy people start attacking it’s up to him to find out why and try to stop it. Overall, I found the story to be uninteresting and predictable; I guessed the twist after a couple of hours, even though it leaves a massive plot hole at the end of the game.

Other than a couple of exceptions, the voice acting and animations are terrible; most of the voice acting sounds wooden and read straight from a script, and the animations are exaggerated making the characters look silly. The music — while nothing ground breaking — was fine, but I’ve never heard so many irritating sound effects in a game.

Despite being a survival horror game, InSanity isn’t scary in the slightest, and is almost insultingly easy on the normal difficulty. Early on in the game you are forced to use a variety of melee weapons in combat, but each weapon feels the same, and the clumsy controls make for an annoying experience. Once you get a gun things start to get a bit better, but the shooting isn’t particularly great, and there are only a few guns to try out. There are only four types of enemy in the game, and all but one of these can be killed with two or three shots from a pistol; when you can take upwards of 20 hits before you die, you would have to be a terrible shot to ever be killed.

Navigating the game’s environments is frustrating; I lost count of how many times I got stuck stumbling around in the dark because the radar was directing me into a wall when I needed to go in the opposite direction.

I really wanted to love Afterfall: InSanity, but after 10 hours of being disappointed at every turn I can’t find much that I liked about it.

This review is Day 13 of The December Review Nukestravaganzagain.

Disclosure: We were provided with a free copy of the game by Nicholas Games.