Do Not Fall review for PSN

I absolutely loathe Do Not Fall.

That’s not to say it’s the worst game of 2013. I’ve definitely played far, far worse: Fuel Overdose was more ineptly made, Bugs vs. Tanks was more insidious, and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct was just thoroughly terrible. But in terms of games I’ve loathed with every fiber of my being, Do Not Fall easily surpasses them all.

My reason for hating it is pretty simple: the voice acting is annoying. No, that doesn’t do it justice…the voice acting in Do Not Fall feels like a stiletto heel being stabbed into my ears over and over and over. Here’s how grating it is: in a former life, I was a music critic, and I once reviewed an album by a lisping rapper that was somehow connected to Insane Clown Posse, but who wasn’t good enough to have his album released on their record label. I would rather listen to that on repeat than hear Do Not Fall’s obnoxious rat creature squeal “Ready…Go!” ever again.

Of course, it’s only annoying as it is because you have to hear that phrase every time you start or restart a level, and the controls of Do Not Fall are so bad that you’ll be restarting levels with extraordinary frequency. The game’s camera is at an awkward angle, which makes it difficult to judge jumps and walk forward– which, obviously, is a pretty huge problem for a platformer that consists almost entirely of jumping from one dissolving platform to the next as quickly as you can. Couple that with a very short timer, checkpoints that exist at weird, too-far-apart intervals and level routes that don’t make much sense, and the whole thing amounts to an exercise in frustration.

Really, though, it’s the voice acting that makes Do Not Fall truly intolerable. You can try muting it, but then you’re left without any sound effects at all, and that just makes the whole experience feel surreal . Similarly, eventually you’re allowed to buy a new character, who shouts “Ready…Go!” in a much, much less annoying voice…but it takes a long time to earn that much currency, and no one should be subject to hearing the game’s main character shouting for however long it takes them to get to that point.

Actually, I’ll just take that a step further: no one should be subjected to Do Not Fall, period. It’s a terrible, obnoxious game, and experiencing it for any length of time is sheer torture. Avoid it at all costs, and let us never think of its unspeakable horrors again.