We are able to all agree that falcons are fairly cool. What’s even cooler is the notion that sure of us on the market can utilise these majestic creatures for looking functions, coaxing the hen into their hand with only a easy whistle. In case you occur to see somebody with a falcon connected to their hand and rocking a tweed flat cap, they’re a lower above your common human.
We don’t all have the time nor the means to follow falconry in actual life, so fortunately Falcon Age is the subsequent neatest thing. Initially launched as a VR title, the sport transitions efficiently over to the Nintendo Swap, albeit shedding a number of mechanics alongside the best way and retaining a number of others that might objectively be way more satisfying to execute in VR fairly than a normal management scheme.
You play as Ara, a younger girl who escapes confinement after a prolonged stretch of time performing handbook labour. She befriends a younger falcon within the course of, taking it together with her as she begins her journey in the direction of freedom. Proper from the beginning, you’ll shortly develop fairly keen on the falcon, whose absurdly cute design is straight away endearing. The sport permits you time to familiarize yourself with the falcon mechanics earlier than letting you free on the world, instructing you the best way to feed your companion, bond with it and use it for looking/fight functions.
As you head out into the open world, your falcon grows to full dimension (though you’ll be able to change again to the child model at any level if you want); from right here, you’ll be able to work together with the world’s inhabitants and work along with your falcon buddy to liberate outposts dotted across the atmosphere. The gameplay mechanics listed here are fairly nice, as not solely will it is advisable to utilise your falcon to take out flying robots, however you your self can get in on the motion too with a useful baton/whip software.
Not solely will you become involved in some fairly dicey fight sections, however you’ll additionally want to participate in some extra relaxed actions corresponding to useful resource gathering and planting crops. As you progress by the sport, you’ll additionally unlock equipment to your falcon, together with sun shades and bow ties; it’s actually lovable, and we all the time felt a twinge of regret every time our companion wanted tending to after a very nasty harm.
Our buddies over at Push Sq. reviewed Falcon Age for PlayStation VR, and talked about that the sport is considerably diminished exterior of VR; that also rings true right here. There are specific options, corresponding to the power to casually pet your winged pal along with your free hand, that merely aren’t attainable on the Swap. By itself, Falcon Age for the Swap continues to be a enjoyable expertise, however when held up towards its VR sibling, it’s an objectively lesser sport. Nonetheless, we’d nonetheless suggest giving it a shot if just for its remarkably distinctive premise; in any case, it’s in all probability the closest most of us will get to proudly owning a pet falcon.
