Fear The Early Access
HIGH Stunning comic book art style that goes perfectly with classic FPS mechanics.
LOW Wasted narrative potential.
WTF The arena segments devolve into random, chaotic battles.
Released in Early Access last year with a potential 1.0 release sometime in 2022, Forgive Me Father plays like a classic First-Person Shooter of old. Indeed, while controller support is available, this experience is clearly meant for the old WASD + mouse control scheme, which will give great satisfaction to those who cut their teeth on it.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a strictly Lovecraftian FPS and Forgive Me Father delivers on that premise, featuring several Cthulhu-influenced enemies like a purple-headed liquidator that shoots green goo, or mental health patients that turn into monsters, along with classic locations like graveyards and sanitariums.
Unfortunately, while the narrative has potential to deliver a gripping storyline via comic book cutscenes, there’s ultimately little of it to speak of.
Don’t get me wrong, there actually is a story, but it’s delivered via (apparently?) randomly-placed items found throughout play, which need to be interacted with. These story bits are gone the moment the player closes up the popup window that appears, and overall they seem to be of little consequence with regard to what actually goes on in the gameplay.
For example, our protagonist is a priest but, that doesn’t seem to influence the proceedings much, nor do we get insights or many comments from him, aside from a rare “poor damned souls!” bark.
While the weapons aren’t inventive (the usual takes on pistol/shotgun/machinegun/rocket launcher are on offer here) they can be upgraded via experience points. The player can use them to either modify weapons with weird monstrous effects or an akimbo revolver mode, or to upgrade magic powers.
These powers can be useful in tight corners — there’s a cross used for healing (a rare connection to our character being a priest) and the Necronomicon is also available and can be used to go full-on mad while delivering heightened damage. However, most of this stuff is par for the course in the retro-themed FPS subgenre.
At times, Forgive Me Father feels like a great idea that lost its way during development. There’s no denying that it offers a robust package of first-person shooting gameplay, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s so much more it could offer. With more emphasis on the narrative and the addition of more interesting mechanics beside shooting and strafing, this could be a much more robust experience. For now, it’s recommended only to hardcore FPS throwback fanatics.
Disclosures: This game is developed by Byte Barrel and published by 1c Entertainment. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: The game is not rated by the ESRB, but it contains violence, blood, gore and horror with zombies and monsters. Considering the type of content and that it’s horror experience, this is definitely one for an adult audience.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, but many times audio cues are used to communicate enemies’ attacks or proximity and there are no supporting visual cues. Text cannot be altered or resized. In my view, the game is not fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: The game can be controlled via gamepad or classic keyboard and mouse combination, using the mouse to look around and shoot with the left button and moving around and using objects with the keyboard. It is possible to remap the controls.
Years later, he got the idea that he was the most Sega-knowledgeable person in the world, so he opened a website in 1997, The Genesis Temple.
He's a sucker for great stories in gaming, he loves adventure and indie titles, but he never shies away from action and triple-A RPGs.
Damiano's been writing about videogames for 20 years, with no plans to stop. Say hi to him on Twitter at @damgentemp, or on his blog https://genesistemple.com (now dedicated to the history of video game design).
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