Earthfall

Lost in time

PS 4

Almost everything in this world is made better when there is a gaggle of good friends by your side. That’s true of so many things that you’ll encounter in life, regardless of whether you are running activities outdoors or teaming up to fight back an encroaching enemy threat online. In fact, this comes into a particularly sharp focus when considering the realms of online gaming, as even the most rote of multiplayer experiences can become transformed by the addition of a few friends to a game lobby – the lines of communication a muddled mess of in-jokes, bad tactical decisions and howls of laughter that echo long into the night. This is one of the reasons that judging an experience such as Earthfall – a cooperative shooter by its very design – can become an exercise in expectation management. Get the right people together and you’ll certainly have an enjoyable enough time, though is that because of the game itself or because of the people you’re with? In the case of Earthfall, any good times that are to be found are largely in spite of the game itself rather than a direct result of anything it has to offer.

It is, truthfully, difficult to separate Earthfall from the litany of genre games that have come before it. That was always to be expected. Left 4 Dead and its sequel cast such a monumental shadow over the co-op shooter space that any game that dares step into it will not only inevitably invite comparison but also come off worse because of it. A decade ago Valve South (Turtle Rock Studios) perfected the co-op shooter, setting a benchmark for AI design, expansive linear storytelling and dynamic interplay between characters that simply hasn’t been matched since.