I can identify with Clarke, but Albert might as well be a Vulcan for all the passion and emotion he has. Just look at Isaac Clarke in Dead Space, a game that Afterfall pretty blatantly takes inspiration from: Clarke may turn into a killing machine, but he screams when he's hurt, and also clearly feels disgusted and horrified as he yells while squashing his enemies beneath his boots. I get that this may be intentional because you're supposed to wonder if he's losing his mind, but it made his reactions in cut-scenes seem forced and totally fake. Wooden voice acting occasionally attempts to portray his horror as he witnesses events around him, but he never feels believable Having been so sheltered his whole life you'd think he'd be sickened by his actions, but he takes to dismembering people like a completely detached killer. He may be a seemingly weak psychologist, but he dispatches mutated and mad people without batting an eye.

Albert's propensity for ravaging his enemies doesn't add to the tension, either. Sometimes overturning a box or having noises down the hallway result in no confrontation works far better than having enemies predictably erupt from the shadows in every room. If films and other horror games have taught me anything, the key to making tension and scaring the audience lies in knowing when to pull a punch, something Afterfall basically never does. Some may look different, sure, but they'll still run straight at you and present next to no challenge on Medium difficulty. Only it can't capitalize on the momentum it builds early on, instead squandering it with room after room of the same foe. At first it succeeds, with dark environments that make good use of lighting effects and some eerie sound effects that make the early enemy appearances intense. As a self-proclaimed horror title, Intoxicate wants Afterfall to scare its audience. The trite ending clears up some of the more bizarre plot points, but it would have been nice if those moments were originally presented in a way where Albert acknowledges his own mental issues and combats them, creating drama instead of maddening confusion. Albert's insanity seems like an accidental result of, it poor story telling rather than clever use of narrative devices to convey his deteriorating mental state.

Story is delivered through awkward cut-scenes that rarely make sense, leaving me wondering why Albert cares about anyone, and unsure why he's doing what he's doing. Of course the underground society erupts into chaos as an epidemic of apparent madness sets in, and it's up to protagonist Albert Tokaj to try and stop it and survive. Select groups of Polish citizens were put into shelters, where they've been living for years and dealing with 'Confinement Syndrome,' a mental illness that comes from being cooped up.

As the developer's website attests, 'the story and the idea for the universe were conceived within the minds of dozens of people working remotely and refining the details over internet message boards.' Like a person with multiple personalities, an amalgamation of ideas and half-cocked alternate history ideas formed the universe of Afterfall, where World War II ended in a shaky peace treaty and, invariably, a world-ending nuclear apocalypse. The befuddled mess that is Afterfall's story feels like the byproduct of a writer stricken with psychosis.

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