Release Date: 8/15/17
Developer: Housemarque
Platform: Playstation 4
Matterfall is a side-scrolling action shooter that a first blush reminded me so much of Metroid that if not for the name on the banner I would have thought that Sony somehow got the rights to it. The demo that we played featured an early level and had players learn the movement and combat basics for the game. Players battle their way through flame-throwing robots and spider robots, interacting with your environment by charging through barriers, powering up elevators, and sapping power from force fields.
However, the attack controls were less than intuitive with the use of the right joystick to fire your primary weapon in 360 degrees regardless of the way that you are moving. I would anticipate that as with all these types of games the controls would eventually become intuitive and allow you to flow through the game easily but with the limited time that was available to test this game the odd configuration really took away from the gaming experience. This would clearly make the game a better experience and I hope that I will have the chance to pick this up again to give it a more thorough view.
This appears based on what we have been able to see that this has potential to be a pretty family friendly entry into the action shooter genre as there was not any blood, gore or language in any of the content that we have been able to view. Please keep in mind that there has yet to be a rating released but I would expect that this ends up being a T rating for fantasy violence but EFG will keep you posted as we find out more about this over the summer.