First, let's get one thing out of the way: this is not an Indiana Jones clone. Indiana Jones was himself based on and a tribute to Allan Quatermain (H.R. Haggard, 1885) and Professor George Edward Challenger (A.C. Doyle, 1912). And the protagonist of this game, James Lee Quatermain, Allan Quatermain's great-grandson, has a completely different personality (and a couple of jokes in the game point out those differences).

But the feel, the mood and the ambiance are the same, so Indiana Jones fans WILL enjoy it.

The good:

When Lucas created Indiana Jones, he was trying to recreate the feel of 1930s action serials. This game succeeds in re-recapturing that feel and it's the main point in favor of this game. The scenery is beautiful and even the ceilings are worth admiring (not to mention that they also sometimes hold clues or things with which you can interact). The plot is unoriginal, but still engaging. The puzzles are logical and well integrated in the flow of the game. There's an interesting selection of weapons and they feel well balanced. You can kill an unarmored human enemy with one or two bullets, but they can return the favor, so you can't play this game as if you were Rambo. The journal, a very obvious copy of Henry Jones' journal, is not interesting to read, but it is very useful. Sometimes it just provides a hint for a puzzle. Other times, it's a key part of the puzzle and you can't solve it without consulting the journal. A nice touch is that the foreigners you meet speak in their native tongue, which makes it feel more authentic.

The bad:

The game is so linear that you might not notice a difference if they put it on rails. Backtracking is impossible because your entrance is invariably blocked every time you enter a new zone. I can't see this game having a lot of replayability. It uses the lazy, antiquated, and much hated checkpoint mechanism. Sometimes, the chekpoint is so far back that it can take 10 minutes to replay the part leading up to your death. Movement and shooting are ok, but in almost every other part of the interface, it feels so much like a console port that it's practically a slap in the face to PC users. You can only scroll back and forth between your weapons; you can't select the one you want directly. The POV is very strange and gives you the impression that you're only 4 feet tall. This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that you're unable to jump on a crate that your grandmother could jump over. The jumping is so sluggish, in fact, that it's more irritating than useful. There are glitches that will let you get trapped between two objects and your only option is to restart from your last checkpoint.

The acting is a bit on the campy side, but not so much that it ruins the game.

But for all the little irritants, this is a fun little trip into an Indy-esque world and I still recommend it, though not at the ridiculously high full price.

One odd thing: the optional Allan Quatermain revolver that comes with the Deluxed edition is worse than the default Webley; it's just prettier.

Two suggestions: (1) don't swap your basic revolver for a better one you find. The basic revolver has infinite ammo, your new one does not! (2) If you're so inclined, you can change one of the ini files to give yourself infinite ammo for all weapons (instructions are on the web). A nice side-effect is that you end up keeping almost every weapon you find (you can usually carry only two), but you occasionally get stuck on one of them until some random event in the game clears the buggy state and you can switch weapons again. It's a fun way to run the game a second time.

Personally, I enjoyed the experience that was Deadfall Adventures, because this game is meant for people who are fans of the Adventure/Fantasy genre, but with archaeologists.

Sadly this means not everyone might enjoy this, as this follows the usual "Get to the artifact before the badguys get to it and use it for world domination" cliche. Also, since the game is focused in the first person, some gamers might expect alot of good action in a first person perspective environment, but I will say that the shooting bits of the game are pretty generic, along with the usual cliche armies of Nazis and Russians (yes the two most cliche kinds of badguys in shooters are in the same game together.)

In my opinion, I did not mind the cliches as they were exactly what I wanted and expected from the game, because the game does take place in the eyes of an archaeologist, and I always like adventures involving such a profession. This game does it's best to recreate the kind of Indiana Jones like adventure we expect in a game involving archaeologists, so I understand why the shooting sections seems generic, because the game wants to focus more on the actual adventure and not just drown it in FPS heaven... which can be a bad thing if overdone.

I heard a bunch of people complained about some of the puzzles in the game, saying it was either too confusing, too straight forward, or the hints of the ingame journal seem too vague. I played through the game myself and only once did I have to look up a walkthrough for a puzzle, turns out that certain puzzle I was stuck on was super simple as all I had to do was shoot a lever. Some puzzles in the game did seem confusing at first to me, but after some thought and looking around I did actually figure out what to do, and the journal only seemed very vague to me just once in the game, which was at that one super simple puzzle I mentioned. There was indeed some simple straight forward puzzles, but I felt these puzzles were a simple relief to the bigger and more complex puzzles I encountered previously. Overall, I felt the puzzles were fun and it felt good just to finally solve each one.

My only complaint in the game is character animations in the cutscenes. Characters move awkwardly in cutscenes, which reminded me of how bad the character animations in the game Dead Island were in cutscenes when I used to play that.
Other than that, I pretty much enjoyed myself with the rest of the game.

My favourite part of Deadfall Adventures was the very cool and well done minecart chase scenes were done in the Mine level of the game. That part of the game made me feel very nostalgic as this seemed to be a clear reference to the minecart chase scene in the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Sadly I could not try out the multiplayer portion of the game, since nobody was hosting anything. So I shall skip this part of the review since I was late for the party.

Overall, I enjoyed this game. I really liked the adventure it let me experience, as I also had alot of fun with the characters, even if our archaeologist hero seemed awkwardly animated in cutscenes along with everyone else. I got through alot of fun puzzles and moments in the game, just feeling the nostalgia of older adventures touching my heart with each step.

Now, I recommend this game to people and fans who enjoy adventures starring archaeologists, travelling, exploring temples, avoiding traps, solving ancient puzzles, and recovering mythical and genuine artifacts for fortune and glory. This game is not as bad as Metacritic says on the store page, as I feel it deserves more, because the game is based for a certain kind of audience who would enjoy this, no matter how cliche the things in this game sound. I missed playing a good adventure starring an archaeologist in the 20th century, and that is exactly what I got to play once again with Deadfall Adventures.

Thank you Farm 51 for giving me another adventure to play. I hope the next adventure you guys make will be a successor to Deadfall Adventures, because you guys deserve more than that cruddy 53 out of 100 Metacritic gave you for it.

As a game, DA is a fair one. It's probably not going to be one of the titles that you will remember with nostalgy 10, 20 or 30 years from now, but it's not horrible either.

In terms of game concept, the main shortfall is its lack of originality: there's not a distinctive feature that sets it apart from other titles, not in terms of mechanics nor progression, or characters. The fact that the game is inspired by the H. Rider Haggard novels (the same that inspired Lucas/Spielberg for Indiana Jones) makes the game feel like a knock-off of the glorious franchise from the '80s. There's the fedora, the rolling rock ball chasing you, the ride on the mine cart, the female sidekick, etc...

At this point I would have still given it a "thumbs up" though: afterl all, not every single game must be ground-breaking and innovative. However the execution is also unimpressive:

• I played it on "hard" (the max level available) on both combats and puzzles, but neither were much of a challenge (and I'm just an "average Joe" kind of player).
  
• A couple of times I walked behind a rock/tree/wall only to remain trapped behind it, or having my character bouncing up and down and not moving anywhere.
  
• Sometimes clicking items in an order that did not reflect the programmers expectations (e.g. during the briefing at the agency) simply made impossible to make any progress, obliging me to reload the last saved checkpoint.
  
• Body animation is rigid and definitively sub-par relative to mainstream titles.

I should also mention that I played DA on a linux box (64bit, brand new nVidia card with proprietary drivers, CPU 8 cores, 16Gb RAM) and the port is of beta quality at best. In particular there is some issue with shader compilation, so that even on my machine (which is quite top-end, hardware-wise), just to boot the game requires ~3 minutes.

In-game transitions between different segments of a map are affected by the same problem, although at a much smaller scale (5-10 seconds of waiting). This is acceptable while roaming on foot in the map, but it totally breakes the experience in fast-paced transitions like those in the mine cart run (basically you are left with a fixed screenshot and the music background, and when animation resumes you are much further down the railtrack than when you last were playing.

Again: the game is not horrible. It's "ok", but the world is a big place, and I would rather recommend something else to a friend.

I cannot recommend this game at the full $40 price point, however that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not worth trying out at a discount. The levels are large, gorgeous, and fun to explore and I enjoyed teasing out the solutions to the various puzzles. However, the game was prone to breaking in frustrating ways, some of which could not be solved by loading a checkpoint; this occasionally rendered treasure collection impossible. Moreover, the update made substantial changes to the first couple of levels, and that is poorly documented in-game, or indeed anywhere but the Steam forums themselves. The story, characters, and voice acting are middling at best, but if you can get past that it can be a fun shooter with an action-adventure flair that is sadly in short supply. Adjust your expectations accordingly and wait for a good deal before you try it out, though.

Played it all the way through. A nice little Diversion. Nothing ground breaking in gameplay or story but still very entertaining. I have to say that the puzzles fit in well and the environments are often very beautiful and well done.

Definately worth a play through, although there won't be much here to bring you back once you've beat it. Looks like another case of crammed-in multiplayer that no one asked for forcing the single player experience to be shorter.

This game is enjoyable and fun. Has some bugs (don't try to wander off from the path because you can get stuck), but overall it is OK. If you want a light-weight Indiana Jones adventure, I can recommend this one.

I cannot recommend this game at the full $40 price point, however that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not worth trying out at a discount. The levels are large, gorgeous, and fun to explore and I enjoyed teasing out the solutions to the various puzzles. However, the game was prone to breaking in frustrating ways, some of which could not be solved by loading a checkpoint; this occasionally rendered treasure collection impossible. Moreover, the update made substantial changes to the first couple of levels, and that is poorly documented in-game, or indeed anywhere but the Steam forums themselves. The story, characters, and voice acting are middling at best, but if you can get past that it can be a fun shooter with an action-adventure flair that is sadly in short supply. Adjust your expectations accordingly and wait for a good deal before you try it out, though.

I will only comment on one aspect of this game, the stupid save system, the person (for want of a better word) that put a checkpoint autosave in a game with exploration as its basic gameplay feature, in a game with traps and instadeaths needs to leave the game industry, I hope your company took a bath on this game and you learn from your lesson.

o.k, first i must say that the graphics of that game are really splendid, you got there some fine views... the other things like the plot or the voice acting and puzzles are o.k but not more then that, anyway the importent to me that would drive me to give this game 10/10 points, is the joy that finally someone is doing the good fun old indiana jones games style but with updated good graphics and all, why is everybody always doing all those sad and rotten zombie/ horror games? why don't make a happy and good-feeling-leaving games like this game or ps3 uncharted, that were so enjoyable to play... hope someone high there is reading this review and will do something...

This game contains this direct quote:

"Arctic Nazi Submarine Mummies? Any other time that might be unusual"

And it's fairly typical of the game. I'm not sure if it's just bold-facedly dumb or working on at least some level of irony.
It's definetly not 5 star game play and the writing/ voice acting is pretty atrocious. But it's fun!
Imagine Uncharted had a baby with Indiana Jones. You've got Deadfall Adventures. It's worth keeping up with the gameplay for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ly funny story. And vice versa.

Worth a play if you can pick it up cheaply enough.

This is by far one of the worst Linux game ports ever! The game has a nasty aim bug, apparently you can fix it when you disable mouse smoothing, but that doesn't seem to work for me, so aiming in the game is sluggish and a pain in the butt. Not to mention the occasional hang ups. Nordic games has really messed up the Linux port big time and maybe they should consult Feral Interactive or Aspyr on how to port properly to Linux. Nevertheless, the game performance is good and it runs fairly smooth until you actually have to aim and shoot, that's where it goes down hill. Too bad, this game had potential, but it's definitely not worth 49,99 bugs. If you can get it for 10 or 15 bugs that's acceptable!

The servers were pathetic at best and its story not much better, Performance wise it is also very poor and for the price of £33 there is far more games that fit the genre but massively out-do the game in every way such as Red dead redemption, Fallout and Uncharted. In conclusion the game is basically complete ♥♥♥♥♥.

The negative critique this game received is not justified. The price at the moment ( 40 Euros - 25. Oct. 2014) is a bit much, but if you like Indiana Jones, reasonably easy puzzles with some shooting and can get if for cheap in sale maybe it is well worth it.

Deadfall Adventures is an exploration-oriented, first-person adventure game with some shooting and puzzles, including puzzles that involve shooting and shooting sequences that require solving puzzles to survive them.

The story is a typical Quatermain-style adventure - while it won't win a Hugo, if you like punching Nazis, shooting Commies, immolating mummies, or applying dynamite to irreplaceable archeological treasures, there is something here for you. The fighting sequences are mainly creative and well done - I enjoyed them more than, say, Bioshock Infinite's. The puzzles are generally straightforward, but they establish a nice, relaxed pace between the high-tension action segments. I took about 20 hours to play through the single-player campaign - I attempted to collect most of the optional treasures, at least the ones that were semi-obvious, along the way. "Normal" difficulty combat was perfectly doable with a gamepad - if you're using a mouse, I'd bump it up to "Hard."

Thanks to The Farm 51 and Nordic Games for porting this to Linux - I played the complete game on Ubuntu 14.04 x86-64.
There are a couple of technical issues, but I'm not sure if they're Linux-specific or not: Load times are massive, over 5 minutes for a "cold start"; the gamepad mappings are odd - "Jump" and "Use" are mapped to the same button, so you need to hold LB to interact with things (or perform mêlée attacks), which simultaneously toggles your flashlight.

Overall, I would recommend this game to fans of the genre.

I am trying not to let my loathing of the protagonist and his companion color my review too much, but if you have an option to turn off the spoken dialog and go with subtitles you will probably enjoy the game much more. I am playing the game on Normal/Normal. Probably should up the combat difficulty as the soldiers and Dark enemies really are kind of a joke. Puzzle difficulty is hard enough for me as these are more distractions than the whole point of the game for me. The notebook pretty much gives you the answer to any puzzle you HAVE to get past, Weapon variety is good, and you are given the tools to get through each level - so much so that you pretty much know what is going to happen next just by seeing what is laying around. The mine cart scenes where too much. WAY too much of a steal from Indiana jones for a game that is already riding firmly on Indie's coat tails. Plus, these scenes are of little interest. I think you could really just sit there and not bother shooting or looking around and you would end up with the same results. The game claims to be about exploration - but does not give you the opportunity in many places. You are not sure which areas trigger a level transition and which do not, so if you happen down the wrong path at some point you can no longer retrieve the treasures that trigger your character progression. The game is worth what I paid for it (~$9) but you would feel gipped if you paid more.

This game is very buggy, but in singleplayer at least, all the bugs I've come across have been innocent, charming ones, like ending up with a handheld flashlight with your tommy gun instead of the gun mounted one it should be, so it looks like you have 3 hands. Also, the cutscenes, AI, and voice acting aren't very good, but no worst then most budget games of this style of gameplay.

So with all of it's problems I will recommend this game (when it's on sale) to two groups of people, people who really, really like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, or anything similar, and people who just saw one of those movies or whatever and want a simple first person shooter to go along with it.

My girlfriend bought me this game. I gave it the best chance I possibly could because I genuinely wanted to like the game she surprised me with. I hate it. The dialouge is out of a C movie (do they make those?). The plot is predictable. The main character seems like a tool. I just feel like this game has been done so many times before. I was hoping for something new. Here's a plus - some of the visuals were pretty slick, but that was overshadowed by the bad animations and shameful dialouge. I literally played the game on mute so she could see I put some time into playing it without having to listen to any words that came out of the character's immovable mouth. Funny thing is, it could have been great. I love the Haggard's books. I've read 4 of them about Quatermain. Quatermain is my homie. That is to say Alan Quatermain, not this unlikeable ****.

Not a great game by any means, it's the equivalent of playing a bad movie. It can be fun at parts, but is pretty ridiculous. I got it for owning an NVidia card, I would not suggest buying it though.

"If only I had a nickel for every bad joke..."

Feels kinda like Drake for the PS3. Easy puzzles though. like the flashlight mechanic, original.