Retro shooters (which I’ve recently found out are now, somewhat ironically, called Boomer Shooters) and I don’t have the greatest history together. The improvements that have been made in the nearly 30 years since the original DOOM was released have for the most part been good for the genre overall. To be sure, the specialisation with the FPS genre has ensured that there’s numerous niches to satisfy even the obscure desire, even those who like to be stuck in the past. However I will give some credit where it’s due, as Forgive Me Father does a whole bunch of things right but it’s core boomer shooter gameplay still retains the same drawbacks that they had all those decades ago. It’s something this genre will never be able to overcome, lest it become what it seeks to avoid.
The town looks devoid of life, in a state of strange disarray befitting that of a ghost town and not the bustling metropolis it is supposed to be. You are the only one left in the town who has retained their senses, the rest reduced to flesh hungry mutants pulled straight from your worst nightmares. It’s up to you then it seems to discover the origins of the horrors that have befelled this town and, if possible, put an end to them. Your sanity will be tested and it seems inevitable that you will give into the creeping madness that claws at your psyche. But, is that really a bad thing when that same madness can be used against the horrors that bring it?
The art style of Forgive Me Father is truly unique, using comic-book stylisation combined with good old fashioned sprites and low FPS animations to really make every frame feel like it was ripped from an old comic book. The influences from the old DOOM and Duke Nukem games are very apparent with the same visual tricks used to make levels look and feel a lot larger than they really are. Of course with this level of simplicity in the graphics performance is a non-issue, likely able to run in solid 60 fps on pretty much any kind of modern hardware. Developing and implementing this kind of aesthetic on modern platforms isn’t easy, so my hats off to the developers for spending the time and effort to craft it.
The core gameplay loop is your typical boomer shooter: focusing on high speed and intensity with no regenerating health. The additional mechanics come in the form of abilities, which differ depending on your character choice, and a talent tree that gives you access to upgraded weapons, abilities and buffs to your base stats. Exploration is still a key part of Forgive Me Father, with numerous secrets, story items and especially challenging encounters to see out. If you’ve played any form of this kind of shooter though you’re likely to know exactly what’s up with it after just a few minutes of play.
For the most part I didn’t mind the combat so much as it certainly capture the golden era of FPS games well whilst also providing enough additional mechanics to ensure it didn’t go stale too quickly. I found myself using the revolver almost exclusively for a good long while as it’s pretty easy to hit headshots and most enemies would be down in 1 or 2 shots without too much struggle. Of course large groups of enemies were a fair bit more challenging, but the use of abilities could make even the largest group of enemies pretty trivial.
What ultimately wore me down though was the repetition, both in terms of having to backtrack/replay sections to find secrets all the time and the lack of diversity in the enemies. You’ll be fighting quite a lot of the same kinds of enemies over and over again and, whilst them being dumb as rocks makes it a little less annoying, it does start to feel quite samey after a while. The boss fights (well, the one I played) felt like first person bullet hells which, in all honesty, I’m not a fan of so even those weren’t enough to entice me to keep playing.
It also probably didn’t help that the journalist is both written and voice acted poorly, her one liners mostly coming off as kitschy and grating at best. This isn’t helped by the fact that the game seems to want you to believe there’s a story there, but it feels like the “inspired by H.P. Lovecraft” vibe is doing most of the heavy lifting narrative wise. The various bits of story you pick up along the way don’t really add much, certainly not enough to justify your character’s motivation for plunging ever deeper into a fully realised hell on earth.
I was hoping that Forgive Me Father would break the mold somewhat for me, shattering my perception that boomer shooters could actually be good and stand up to their modern counterparts. If there is to be a game that will do that I’ve still yet to find it, and for all the things that Forgive Me Father gets right the genre that it places itself in does more damage than good to it. Would I like to see more from this developer? Absolutely. If it was another boomer shooter? Absolutely not. But then again, I feel like I’m not the target audience for these kinds of games, so maybe that’s exactly what they should do.
Rating: 6.5/10
Forgive Me Father is available on PC right now for $28.95. Total play time was 1.9 hours with 10% of the achievements unlocked.
