Review by Jon Donnis
The Falconeer is what you get if you swap fighter planes with giant war birds. Yes really. Your job is to pilot a giant bird and engage in dogfighting and acrobatic aerial combat, (sadly there are no giant dogs to fight, a missed opportunity for sure).
As you play you will take on missions and join or oppose various factions and clans, missions may involve accompanying boats carrying goods between locations, where by you need to protect them from pirates or other war bards, or maybe you need to find out why defence Buoys have gone missing, or maybe you need to help defend an outpost from attackers, one way or another you will be flying back and forth a lot and getting into dogfights with the enemy.
You will buy upgrades for your warbird, better weapons, maps and so on, but let's not worry too much about that as it really isn't what is important about this game. This is a game about flying a giant warbird, and the question then becomes, is that fun? The answer is..... yes and no. The basic mechanics of flying about are perfectly fine, you can do barrel rolls, you can fly up high, dive down and even hit the water below, there are ocean thermals that you can fly into that shoot you up high in the air, and then jet streams up high that you can catch a ride on. It is all quite fun. But you still have to complete various objectives, and unfortunately this is where there game lets itself down a bit, when you are in a battle with the enemy you will find yourself flying round in circles while the enemy does the exact same thing, you may flying into an airship you are attacking, and you just kind of bounce off it in a weird way, the fights should be the best thing about this game but they are a bit of a let-down, that is not to say they are bad, but they should have been the main concentration of the game makers.
You will buy upgrades for your warbird, better weapons, maps and so on, but let's not worry too much about that as it really isn't what is important about this game. This is a game about flying a giant warbird, and the question then becomes, is that fun? The answer is..... yes and no. The basic mechanics of flying about are perfectly fine, you can do barrel rolls, you can fly up high, dive down and even hit the water below, there are ocean thermals that you can fly into that shoot you up high in the air, and then jet streams up high that you can catch a ride on. It is all quite fun. But you still have to complete various objectives, and unfortunately this is where there game lets itself down a bit, when you are in a battle with the enemy you will find yourself flying round in circles while the enemy does the exact same thing, you may flying into an airship you are attacking, and you just kind of bounce off it in a weird way, the fights should be the best thing about this game but they are a bit of a let-down, that is not to say they are bad, but they should have been the main concentration of the game makers.
The various missions are clear and easy to understand, you have a handy map that tells you where you need to go, and you can discover new areas, secrets, and physics destroying sunken areas in the ocean.
Check out my short game play video below.
The Good
Flying about is fun, when you need to recharge you can fly into a storm cloud and that is great idea.
The Bad
The dogfights themselves aren't the best, but my biggest gripe with the entire game is the menus, the writing is TINY.
Most of us like to sit on our sofa when playing a console game, I have a decent sized TV, and whenever I needed to remind myself of the controls, I would open up the menu, and the writing is so small, I would need to get off my sofa and go right up to the TV, I suspect that since this game was created on a PC, whoever designed the menus didn't think about seeing if you could read them if you were sat more than a foot away from the screen. For the record I have perfect eye sight, and this was a big frustration.
There was also a slight issue with game-play freezing for a second while it loaded up a bit of speech, you will see that in my video. I suspect this might just have been a one off, maybe my internet was playing up, or my Xbox was busy doing something else.
Overall
Despite my complaints, this is a fun game, I still think we need giant dogs, but that is just me being a bit silly.
If you are a fan of games with giant war birds then you should enjoy this.
I score the game 7/10.
You can buy it now from Amazon at https://amzn.to/3nloToR
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