After the Fall

I put a few sessions into After the Fall specifically looking for the moment it would click, and it clicked hard the second a horde of frozen undead came pouring through a cracked wall while a tank-like Smasher with an ice-armored fist barreled in from the opposite direction. That is what this game is built for, and Vertigo Games knows it. The setup is lean but effective. You play as a Runner in a post-apocalyptic, ice-covered version of 1980s Los Angeles, set roughly twenty years after civilization collapsed. The world runs on DOS terminals, scavenged ammo, and a resource called "juice" that keeps your crew from freezing solid. Each outing is a Harvest Run, a roughly 20-minute push through a linear corridor of Snowbreed enemies, capped by an extraction or a boss encounter. The enemy roster borrows liberally from the Left 4 Dead playbook, including a boomer-type that explodes on proximity and blinds anyone caught in the blast, forcing split-second positioning calls. Special enemy types like the Smasher add genuine threat, and on veteran difficulty the standard horde stops feeling manageable and starts feeling like a genuine problem. The weapon handling is the standout mechanical achievement: dual-wielding, physical reloads, and wrist-mounted item storage all feel considered and responsive in a way that many VR shooters still fumble. The co-op works across platforms, which matters more than it sounds. You can squad up with players on other VR hardware without friction, and the cross-platform support does real work keeping the lobbies populated. There is also a PvP team deathmatch mode if you want a break from the co-op loop, though it is the thinner of the two offerings. A weapon crafting and progression system gives you reasons to replay runs, though the grind is real if you want anything beyond the starter loadout. The criticisms are consistent across reviews and player feedback: content is thin. The number of distinct maps is small, and once you have run them a handful of times the moment-to-moment variety starts to reveal its limits. Playing solo is noticeably duller than playing with a full squad of four, to the point where recommending it as a solo experience feels dishonest. Launch also had a rough patch of technical issues that post-launch updates addressed, so the version available now is meaningfully better than what early players encountered. The player population is another real concern for newer buyers given the game's 2021 release date, though cross-platform matchmaking softens that. If you own a VR headset, have at least one or two friends willing to strap in, and have been waiting for someone to do Left 4 Dead properly in virtual reality, After the Fall is as close as the medium has gotten. Go in without expecting deep content variety, and you will have a good time. Go in hoping for a solo campaign to carry you for twenty hours, and you will hit the ceiling fast.

Alex · Scout Team

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