PS4 Review Code Provided By Fas3 Studios
As part of the PlayStation Talents Initiative, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is assisting smaller game development studios in Spain to add more diversity to worldwide game creation. Developers FAS3 Studios are benefactors of this initiative and have unfortunately made an underwhelming PlayStation 4 exclusive title in their latest project, Way Down. Setting aside whatever impressions you had of the film it’s based on, this video game adaptation misses the mark on key areas of gameplay.
Story
Based on the self-titled feature film, Way Down (or The Vault in the US) is a bank heist thriller based in Spain. The game seems to follow the movie script quite closely, in which an amateur team of individuals works together to steal Sir Frances Drake’s treasures that are housed in the Bank of Spain. The main character, Thom, is a genius engineering graduate who’s cooking up an intricate plan to steal the bank’s historic treasures.
You’ll be assisted by other characters; Lorraine, Simón, James, and the team’s ringleader Walter. Each possesses a hodgepodge of skills you’ll need to pull this robbery off! Making matters more complicated, the team can’t track down any recent blueprint or schematic of the bank, leaving them with the incredible challenge of going in completely blind on a building designed more than a century earlier.
The treasure being held at the bank is only to be housed temporarily, with less than two weeks before it will be moved to a new and more secure location. It also happens that the heist is to be done in conjunction with a major soccer tournament taking place nearby. Time is of the essence, and perhaps the most critical part of this game. Miss any of the story’s challenges, and you’re toast!
Gameplay
This game is probably best described as a story-based heist filled with mini-puzzles. The gameplay has you conducting repetitious time-sensitive challenges in which you work against the clock to pull off the robbery at hand. Go from one area to another, moving incredibly slow, as you wander the forgettable levels that mimic scenes from the film.
As you walk around performing various tasks, you’ll have to engage in conversations with NPC’s in order to progress toward some filler puzzle or challenge that will complete the scene. Rinse and repeat, and you’ve experienced the majority of Way Down. It’s true that some other games do the same thing, and end up with more positive reviews. The difference here is that this was so painfully obvious that it felt like a chore to simply play it.
The gameplay can be brutal at times. Make a mistake and you’ll be punished by having to start the entire sequence over again, including dialogue with NPC’s. It would have been great if they at least let you jump to the most recent place in the sequence and simply redo the puzzle or times task. Unfortunately, slow repetitious gameplay dominates this film adaptation.
Visuals and Audio
The graphics in this title reminded me of something we would have expected nearly a decade ago on the PlayStation 3. While I understand this game comes from a small indie developer team, many parts of it are rough to look at and overall, disappointing. There were a few moments where graphically it looked decent, but far too many sections just seemed mediocre and the character models were all too rigid.
The dialogue is in Spanish (rightfully so, as it’s a story based in Spain and created by Spanish developers) so be prepared to read a fair amount of text. I found the general voice acting to be sufficient, but nothing more. It didn’t help that the overall story felt a bit rushed and bland. We’ve seen some version of the story and type of game so many times, it’s a shame that Way Down didn’t do more to separate itself from the others.
Replayability
I’m not sure there’s enough variation in the gameplay to warrant a revisit on this title. The fact that the initial playthrough is painfully slow and boring, I don’t see any need to return to it. This is a game you pick up when on sale, to play in lieu of watching the movie. If you feel like diving into the film’s experience, give it a shot and be prepared to never look back with the expectation of playing it again.
What Could Be Better
This is a small and young developer team, so I’d say their future will be brighter as they continue to learn and grow from misses like this title. This project felt very rushed, perhaps to try and keep the game’s release close to the theatrical one. It came at a cost though and this experience felt entirely rough around the edges.
More time spent on cleaning up the visuals and giving it more of a next-gen appearance would’ve been heavily appreciated. While the game was released specifically for the PlayStation 4, it looked like a cross-gen title from the PS4’s initial release rather than a game coming at the dawn of a next-generation console. I’d like to think that had the team been afforded more time to work on this, we’d have had a much better-looking experience.
The gameplay was unimaginative and boring, with odd design choices where failing to complete a task results in having to start a sometimes very long and tedious task all over again. This game isn’t a roguelike, so being so intensely punished for missing a challenge is very disappointing. Having to redo dialogue all over again as well as redo an entire mission is a major drag on the flow of the entire thing.
Verdict
I can’t in good faith give this game a score above 5/10, mostly due to it feeling like a very unfinished product with cliche gameplay, overall. Save yourself the time and money and skip this one, unless you are in the mood for a bank heist game you haven’t played before.
Way Down is truly a letdown, and far from a Sony exclusive title that we’d normally see from SIE. In all fairness, this isn’t a first-party game, and the team behind it is relatively new. I hope they learn from this failed attempt and come back with a truly memorable experience next time around. This one is simply worth forgetting.
If you choose to give it a shot, you can grab it on the PlayStation Store for $19.99.
