Angels Fall First
Angels Fall First is a first person combined-arms sci-fi wargame.
AFF focuses on team-oriented tactical gameplay and objective-based scenarios with a high degree of replayability, featuring:
- Wide selection of weapons and tools, ground vehicles and spacecraft to fight with.
- Diverse combat opportunities – assume point to clear a building, hunt with a frigate wolfpack as a lineship captain, issue orders from the bridge of your battleship.
- Fully operational and pilotable capital ships with playable interiors.
- Unique combination of spaceship and infantry combat – board spacestations, shipyards and vessels to capture or destroy them from the inside.
- Dogfighting using space interceptors and bombers, launched from capital ships and stations.
- Gameplay mechanics designed as a mix of modern elements (customization, loadouts, persistence) and inspirations from classic shooters (frantic, fast-paced firefights).
- Commander mode for issuing orders to your squadmates and teammates.
- Full AI support – all scenarios can be played both offline and online identically, supporting up to 64 players or bots filling in for the players if required.
- Rich science fiction universe setting.
Another space game?
Well, we’ve been doing this a long time – AFF has been a rich universe of fiction and art since 2005. We made a Homeworld mod, and kept building from there. Work started on an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod, but was then ported over to UT3 in 2007, culminating in a 3rd place grand prize in 2009’s MakeSomethingUnreal contest.
Angels Fall First as a standalone game is, for us, a mission to enable the player to do as much as possible in a vast environment – whilst still retaining the focussed, fun experience of match based FPS games.
Way back in the back-whens, we loved Tie Fighter. A little later on, we loved Battlefield. We waited patiently for the game which would inevitably unite the vast scale and spacefights with the close and personal firefights and thunderous vehicle battles…
But it never really appeared. Many games came close, but there was always some part missing. You couldn’t get out of your spaceship, you couldn’t get into your spaceship, you had big spaceships but you couldn’t run around in them, you could run around in your big spaceship but you couldn’t fly it and so on and so forth and gahd damMIT! Where was our spacefight groundfight game?
So, we set ourselves to work. AFF exists because it MUST exist. Only in AFF can you spawn in your crew quarters, run to the bay watching the space fight out of the windows, launch a dropship, fight through the defenders to the enemy flagship, breach the hull, run and gun your way to the bridge and SHOOT THE ENEMY CAPTAIN IN THE BACK OF THE NECK.
Calm Down!
Ok. But it’s this slightly twitchy passion which has driven us to create such a monster. We grew old making this, and we got grumpy watching everyone else release their cool games or whatever. We’re from a time when games were about blowing stuff up for points and glory and now FINALLY we want to go out there and share this crazy passion with all of you!
Steam User 56
A wondrous fusion of Battlefront 2 and Battlefield 2142 wrapped in Homeworld artstyle.
Truth be told, there are janky parts. The interface is informatice - too informative, and you'll spend a lot of time just navigating through it at first. There's very few people playing it, though bots are surprisingly good and you can have great, cinematic battles with nobody but yourself. It's good, and it's cheap - dirt cheap on sale.
So, instead of going on and on, i'll just give you an example of one match which made me and the fellas say "yup, this single match was worth every penny spent on the game".
We played as the Empire on the Incursion mission - our objective was to capture enemy space station, nested between the picturesque amalgamation of asteroids. I was chosen as the Commander, and thus, i took the helm of our Task Force command center - an Anubis-class battleship. Yes, that thing is huge, slow, and packs an enormous amount of firepower. One of us chose to be a gunner on it's point defense systems, and another took the interceptor starfighter.
First phase of the mission - disable the shielding stations before we can board the station proper. I hanged back initially, sending fighter squadrons of AI's (and my pal) to go demolish the stations; but it quickly became appatent that these were way too tough, and it will take anything but the most dedicated torpedo-bearing force a lot of time to crack.
Well, you know what? Turns out these types back at the Naval Academy weren't joking and different ships excel at different roles. And there are none better suited to utterly demolish things as Battleships. So, we pushed in - with fighters providing defensive screen and intercepting hostiles. Without them, mosquito swarm would've tore the Battleship apart sooner or later.
It took us some real cooperation - and commanding AIs - to do that, but we were able to swiftly and decisively dismantle the shielding stations. Battleship suffere some damage, but it was an acceptable trade-off for exposing the stationg and bringing the fight to the enemy. My friends manned the dropships, landing those successfully and began an assault, taking the station corridor by corridor, hangar by hangar. The space went silent as enemy's remaining forces were all tied up in a fight, and ours rushed in.
Until the League's Lineship warped in.
So, while the boys were fighting an epic boarding action, i had my own duel between capital ships, having time to cnusk in a command or tac ability between the broadside battery fire.
Soon after, boarding party singnalled success, taking the last point, while i managed to win a duel and send the enemy lineship's crew to the cold void of space.
Awesome, every moment of it.
Steam User 25
this is the natural conclusion the original star wars battlefront 2 was leading to, this game is genuinely fantastic. its pretty dead, but with bots you can still play with ease, and frankly if more people started playing this game could be the next battlebit
Steam User 23
! Warning first of all. Online multiplayer is basically dead. !
That being said, the game does have a serviceable AI that can lead to some close matches.
What I like:
- You have a huge amount of customization when making your loadout.
Want a 30mm Flak cannon with a backup auto shotgun ✓
Want to run around with 3 automatic sentry guns ✓
- Most of the weapons feel punchy and useful (except the revolver).
And with the above mentioned customization you can tailor most of them to whatever role you want.
- Maps a varied, nicely detailed and for the most part feel very different to play on.
You have cramped space staions, sci-fi cities, assaulting a fortress, sprawling spaceports etc.
- Music and aesthetics.
The music is good if you like classic sci-fi action á la Startship Troopers.
Most weapons/armour/vehicles have a distinct look or projectiles. So after a few matches you will start recognizing what armour types/weapons the enemy is using and act accordingly.
Mixed feelings:
- Ground vehicles.
While they handle ok, their damage output seems a bit low for how vulnerable they are (since every single infantry has access to some kind of anti vehicle.
- Some weapon categories feels a bit under served.
While you have access to multiple different short rifles/SMGs, you only have one DMR, one shotgun other than the double barreled and no pistol that would be worth using as a primary weapon.
What is dislike:
- Flying vehicles.
Something just feels off about them. While their weapons are all right, they just feel awkward to control. Somehow they are extremely floaty while also being very stiff to control.
Technical side:
- I have not experienced any kind of technical troubles and the game runs smooth. (I am however running on a almost brand new high mid-tier rig so your experience may vary).
Overall I do really enjoy AFF and i would recommend it to people who like combined arms fps's that may be a bit chaotic (if you like Planetside this should be right up your alley).
But if you are a bit on the fence (like i was) i would say wait for a sale and expect mostly fighting AI.
Steam User 9
This is a gem in the rough that deserves to have more people playing it.
That's it, that's the review. Buy it. Play it with friends. Get new friends from the community.
Steam User 9
Well this game is surely an evergreen. Still updated after all these years.
Steam User 6
It's really good, just wish there were more people playing.
Steam User 4
I wanna start with this, the online community is dead aside from the discord, but it is not, as of writing this, abandoned. The dev team is small, but the game is still being worked on.
Now, onto the reason I love this game.
This is the best blend of Battlefield 2142 and Battlefront 2 (2005) that I have had the pleasure of playing. My ONLY dislike is the long TTK. Sometimes, I feel like it takes entirely too many bullets to kill someone, but everything else is top notch.
Epic space battles, boarding ships, fighting through the hallways to the bridge, destroying components internally, having to find a ship to escape the exploding ship moments before implosion. All of it, cinematic, and just fun as hell. Highly recommend. Even though the online is dead, the AI is pretty decent and fun to fight with/against. I also LOVE the loadout system. Very well done, wish other games had this.