After The Fall: Complete Edition Review: Ice, Ice, Baby

After The Fall made a gory splash when it debuted on PC and the Meta Quest in 2021. The closest thing VR had seen to Left 4 Dead, this co-op zombie shooter put players in control of a survivor tasked with clearing the frozen, post-apocalyptic streets of Los Angeles of Snowbreeds, icy ghouls created by a designer drug mishap that lurk around every corner, hungry for flesh. While a bit too linear and lean in enemy variety, it was a ton of fun to roll in with a squad of up to four players and loot and shoot your way through its icy urban environments, making for one of my most-played VR games of the year.

Now, with the PSVR2 finally upon us, owners of Sony’s shiny new headset have a chance to cull the undead hordes in glorious 4K with After The Fall: Complete Edition. Featuring a host of updates to take advantage of Sony’s new VR hardware, this definitive version of the game looks and feels better than ever, but does this reanimated creature have enough meat on its bones to satisfy shooter fans in 2023?

Prepare To Be Immersed In The Horror

So, what new features does the PSVR2 version of After The Fall: Complete Edition bring to the table? First and foremost is the boost in visual fidelity. The urban tundra of post-infection LA has never looked better, thanks to the headset’s 4K OLED displays, which render the world and its shambling inhabitants with razor-sharp clarity. Throw in an improved 110-degree field of view and HDR, and you have a game that’s noticeably more attractive than ever, with vibrant colors that immerse you in the environment, whether it be the blinding white of snowy fields filled with ghouls or the true blacks of darkened subway tunnels as you fend off the shambling horrors as they emerge from the inky black shadows.

Of course, After The Fall is far from the most graphically striking game out there, considering it was designed with both PCs and the humble Quest hardware in mind. Still, this boost in visual quality is welcome nonetheless, and a significant improvement over the original PSVR release that was sadly marred by the dreaded screen door effect.

In addition to the crisper presentation, After The Fall: Complete Edition also makes excellent use of the PSVR2’s haptics to make you feel every gunshot and brutal impact. The variable resistance of the Sense controller’s triggers, combined with the distinct rumble each weapon produces, makes every gun feel unique in your hands and immensely gratifying to wield. After a while, it got to the point where I could have fired off a round with my eyes closed and known exactly what weapon I was holding. This sounds like a minor detail. However, in practice, it’s the kind of stuff that goes a long way toward upping the immersion and making you feel like part of the game world. Further adding to this is the use of the PSVR2’s headset rumble feature, which delivers a subtle jolt when you take damage, making those strikes from the Smasher type Snowbreed and his Buick-sized fists feel all the more threatening.

A Bountiful Harvest

As for the game itself, After the Fall is just as satisfying as it was when it initially dropped back in 2021. The core gameplay loop begins with you at your base, a shelter located in the Los Angeles underground. Here, you can upgrade your weapons, take on quests, and craft new weapons with the blueprints you collect while undertaking Harvest Runs, which are the meat and potatoes of the experience.

Harvest Runs are missions where you and up to three other players set out to locations around Los Angeles to kill Snowbreed and collect the shiny, life-sustaining orange ichor they drop. Much like Left 4 Dead, these missions take place in hand-crafted maps but feature an AI director-style system that makes no two runs play out exactly the same. Weapons, power-ups, and boss-type Snowbreeds are all random (save for the final challenge at each stage), making each run feel unique.

And that’s a good thing, too, because you’ll be spending a lot of time grinding throughout After The Fall’s campaign to source blueprints in the form of floppy disks, which you must redeem at arcade machines in safe rooms scattered in each map to unlock new gear. And if you fail to complete your mission, your precious SMG, assault rifle, or whatever goodie you found is gone forever. Speaking of weapons, each of the guns you collect can be outfitted with various accessories to help you customize your ideal tools of destruction. From different optics, grips, stocks, barrels, and more, personalizing your arsenal with top-of-the-line kit is incredibly satisfying, making it easy to keep coming back for “just one more round.”

Feel The Freezerburn

When it comes to comfort and accessibility, After The Fall: Complete Edition offers a variety of options to suit VR gamers of all kinds. For example, you can choose between snap or smooth rotation options along with standard or teleport forms of locomotion, and there are various vignette intensities to help minimize motion sickness. Additionally, reloading your guns can be as simple as pressing a button.

That said, veteran VR players will probably want to choose manual reloading, which requires you to eject your spent magazine, load a new one, and rack the slide or charging handle to load a new round before you can get your pew on. Of course, having to reload your weapons manually ups the challenge considerably. Still, players who do so are rewarded with a generous Harvest bonus after each mission, incentivizing players to learn how each of After The Fall’s weapons operate so they can better reap the rewards.

All these elements combine to create a delightful shooter that’s fun solo but truly shines when you’re playing with an entire squad of friends. But that’s not to say After The Fall: Complete Edition isn’t without its issues, the most glaring of which is a genuinely disappointing lack of enemy variety. While there is a handful of powerful boss-type Snowbreed who appear throughout the missions, such as lumbering Smashers with fists the size of Buicks, bile-spewing Eaters, and other creatures lifted from the Left 4 Dead playbook, they don’t appear often enough. Instead, more often than not, you’ll spend your time gunning down hundreds of run-of-the-mill ghouls that all behave the same, which makes After The Fall’s gameplay feel a bit long in the tooth too soon. The stages also suffer a similar fate, with little in the way of visual variety to make them stand out from each other.

Conclusion

Despite a disappointing lack of variety that holds it back from achieving shooter greatness, After The Fall: Complete Edition is a welcome addition to the PSVR2’s launch lineup. Offering an exciting blend of punchy, zombie-blasting co-op gunplay that takes full advantage of the strengths of Sony’s new headset and a satisfying progression system, it’s a game no fan of Left 4 Dead should miss.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available on: PSVR2 (reviewed); Publisher: Vertigo Games; Developer: Vertigo Games; Players: 1 – 4; Released: February 22, 2023; MSRP: $29.99

Editor’s note: This review is based on a digital copy provided by the publisher.