Generations of poisonous decisions and treason swirl in the deep, as factions collide. Become the Falconeer and soar through the skies aboard a devastatingly powerful Warbird. Uncover secrets lost to the sea as you join or oppose different factions and clans scattered throughout The Great Ursee. Take advantage of multiple Falconeer classes with individual stats, weapons and warbirds that can be upgraded through winning battles, completing quests, discovering secrets, or applying Mutagens or Chants. Use ocean thermals and energy to dive, dodge, barrel-roll, and twist to gain an advantage...

The Falconeer is an open-world air combat game, featuring fast, brutal aerial dogfights and deep exploration of an incredible fantasy open-world set not only above the clouds, but also amongst the waves and down through the sunken, ocean depths.

I really wanted to like this game, and for the most part I did. There are few decent flight sim games out there and on many levels The Falconeer does a lot of things well. However there are a few too many bugs and issues with the game to stop it being an essential purchase. At times it felt like this wasn't properly play tested, or if it was the developers ignored any of the feedback.

The early levels act as tutorials, but you'll have to think a little for yourself as the game never really flags things up to make it easy to fathom what you have to do. For starters you are told to head to the next waypoint. But there are a few points of interest already showing on your compass and it's not clear (to start with) where you're supposed to go.

Then when you start the game proper, for some reason you have to chose your character again. I thought maybe the one I'd spent a little time picking for the tutorial would instantly be accessible, but no, I had to scroll through them all again - and to be perfectly honest I couldn't be bothered and so I just picked the first character I saw.

A lot of the game feels rushed. While the main gameplay graphics are fine, the characters you can chose and those that you interact with look like old school Runescape characters. And the vocal acting ranges from good to truly awful.

The next issue is that should you fail any part of your level you will be forced to start the whole thing all over again. This is frustrating to the point that I can see a lot of people just giving up. In fact, if it weren't for the fact I was reviewing this I probably would have quit a lot sooner than I did. And that's a shame, because this is a good game, if you can overlook its many flaws.

When you get onto the game proper, each level is set at a certain location and from this you have different tasks or missions to chose from. Again, it wasn't overly obvious how to chose these - a little onscreen help would have been handy here. When I eventually worked it out (by randomly tapping buttons) I completed a few basic tasks by flying from one waypoint to the next, before eventually being shot down in flames. The thought of having to restart the rather dull flying portion was almost too much to bear. If I'm being honest, if I'd purchased this I would probably have quit there.

A game with great potential, but in all honesty just isn't ready yet. It even crashed on me at one point and so I had to shut the game down and restart it. Hopefully future patches will sort a lot of the issues out, but as it currently stands it's pretty much a mess of a game waiting to be saved.

6

Nick Smithson