While Xbox LIVE achievements obviously rank high on our priority list we find ourselves checking out those games that aren’t being heavily promoted by Microsoft and don’t involve doing various tasks to earn gamerscore on a number of occasions . In fact, some of the most amazing games for Windows Phone are made by small indie-developers like L0RD-0DIN. It’s newest title Rain Will Fall manages to take gaming on Windows Phone in the places it should be going, and while it’s not as polished as we would like, the publisher is clearly heading in the right direction.
As the story begins, you kick off your adventure in Story Mode as a member of an alien race who’s planet is under attack. By diving deeper into the game’s levels you’re able to uncover more bits of the story and make more sense of what is happening. As far as narratives go, this is possibly the indie game we’ve played that bothered to go into as much story detail as it did, and that’s a completely refreshing. We’ve tired of games that push you to do hopelessly mundane tasks without any setup. Then there are the extras like online multi-player and leader-boards. It’s obvious that LoRD-oDIN put a lot of time into keeping the game competitive with other titles.
While there are a bunch of things Rain Will Fall nails it completely misses the mark on fit and finish and the game surfers for it. For example even in the title screen it’s ridiculously hard to read it’s dark blue menu text black background, and the fonts that the game uses in nearly every screen tend to not help the situation at all.
The Verdict
To say that Rain Will Fall takes has gotten us very interested in non-Xbox LIVE games is an understatement. It’s detailed story, various game modes, and reasonable game-play mechanics quickly made it our go-to game of choice while sitting idle. Unfortunately fit and finish issues kept us from fulling enjoying that same game-play. Textures, fonts, assets, and UI design all suffer considerably because of an lack of detail to how the game looks and feels. Still, in a marketplace that’s 40,000 apps strong it stands out, We would have no trouble recommending the game for adventure seekers except for one huge issue, the lack of a free trial. While the title rings in at a very decent $.99 cents, we simply can’t justify those who are on the fence paying full price for any game that can’t first try. We’re hoping to see an update soon that addresses some of our issues, it’s a very decent game.
