The inundation of boomer shooters has done a decent job filling the gap left by AAA shooters that have chased greener, more multiplayer-heavy pastures. But that’s also part of the issue: There are so many boomer shooters now that they aren’t as novel as they were a decade ago. Forgive Me Father, while a rough first start, stuck out for its vivid art direction and adherence to Lovecraftian lore and the creepy, squelching tentacles that come with the territory. Its predictably titled sequel, Forgive Me Father 2, builds on that foundation but isn’t the sophomoric triumph it should be.
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Gunplay, the most important part of that foundation, is relatively solid, though. Thunderous sound effects and flying chunks of viscera give weapons the appropriate amount of power, a feeling further augmented by its booming metal soundtrack that blares during battles. Players are forced to intimately learn each gun, too, since developer Byte Barrel severely restrains the player’s ammo and forces them to cycle through their armory in order to come out alive. It’s the same rewarding design ethos seen in DOOM Eternal and, most recently, in Metal Eden; tiny ammo reserves force players players to engage since they are not given the space to lazily depend on the same two guns the whole time. And even though the team has added reloading into this sequel, shooting feels tight and benefits from the aforementioned feedback each blast yields.
Rating: 3/5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Bold, colorful visual style and weapon design | Combat is decent yet overly punishing and a little repetitive |
| Pulsing metal soundtrack | Upgrade system is incredibly limiting |
Forgive Me Father 2’s Inventive Guns Can’t Fulfill Their Potential
This applies to each and every one of the strange variations. It has most of the genre standbys — pistol, automatic rifle, rocket launcher, shotgun — but all of them also have multiple otherworldly variations. The pistol doesn’t need to merely be a pistol but can also take the form of a weird aquatic creature that soaks up a vial of blood to refill its shots. The automatic rifle can turn into a fishy blob covered in eyeballs that refreshes its ammo reserves when the player character jams his hand up its rear end to push a runic tablet out of its mouth.
Every weapon in Forgive Me Father 2 has two or three oddball forms, and it’s a clever way to fit the Lovecraftian style into its core combat loop since they have unique functions and one-of-a-kind designs. The elaborate (and often unsettling) reload animations alone are worth seeing, and this attention to detail slightly makes up for how vague each of the unhelpful store descriptions are.
These descriptions lack proper stats or tutorial videos that make them all difficult to compare and contrast, but this is just one of the smaller issues regarding Forgive Me Father 2’s upgrade interface. The more glaring problem is how restrictive these systems are. Instead of being able to use these variants as mods or alternate fires, players can only carry one at a time. Passive skills and special Dark Tome abilities that can be triggered during shootouts are also limited, as only three can be activated at a time. And it’s not three each; it’s three total, and there are 40 to choose from.
It’s frustrating to have so many options sitting just out of reach for no discernible reason. The fantasy of frantically switching back and forth between different shotgun types during hectic firefights remains a tantalizing dream, while a vast portion of the player upgrades go unused because it’s hard to experiment with just three slots. It’s difficult to stray from the most useful (and boring) ones when that’s all there’s room for.
Forgive Me Father 2’s Frenetic Firefights Are Sometimes Limiting and Cheap
The combat could use the boost as well. Gunplay, while fundamentally solid, grows a little repetitive in the latter half of its six-hour runtime, and a more intricate loadout could have helped stave off stagnation. Alternate fires are a common feature in the genre for a reason, and their absence is even stranger here since there’s a ready supply of options lying unused back at the hub. The Dark Tome players can channel after enough bloodshed is supposed to yield some variety, but it’s let down by the narrow upgrade pool and lacks the depth it deserves to have.
Forgive Me Father 2 is also a difficult game that likely wouldn’t have been trivialized through a few extra perks and handful of easily accessible firearms. Death can come swiftly, as one wrong move can drain an entire health bar in an instant. Sometimes the challenge is welcome when Cthulhu‘s hordes pour in at a steady clip, but there are many times where Forgive Me Father 2 stacks the deck too much against the player. This can come in the form of dropping into a room full of explosive barrels and surprise grenadiers or having snipers that can track players through walls and instantly kill them when they peek out. Frequent checkpoints and the new quicksave option can help artificially alleviate these struggles, but it doesn’t fully address how Forgive Me Father 2’s annoying difficulty curve is made worse because of the tight grip it has around the player.
Forgive Me Father 2‘s Comic Book-Like Visual Design Is Eye-Catching
Forgive Me Father 2‘s visual design doesn’t feel bound, at least. Bold black outlines and a menagerie of colors make the game look like a comic book. It’s a style that works for its forbidden worlds not bound by reality, as well as its more traditional environments. Its strong core design means its more grounded greenhouses and city streets don’t suffer when compared to its supernatural locales. Boomer shooters don’t often break from the pixelated look inspired by their forbears. And while that style can be done well, Forgive Me Father 2 demonstrates the value of going in a different direction and trying to carve out a unique visual identity.
Forgive Me Father 2, however, does not go far enough in other key places. Firefights can get the adrenaline pumping as the crimson giblets start piling up while electric guitars shred in the background, but this feeling is often diminished through its repressive design. Most of its armory of freakshow guns is held just out of reach, and a vast majority of its upgrades will likely go unused because of the inadequate amount of perk slots it gives players. These insufficiencies get even more frustrating since they’d likely address the staleness that creeps into Forgive Me Father 2’s latter stages, as well as its difficulty that occasionally borders on being unfair. Boomer shooters don’t always have to be power fantasies, but Forgive Me Father 2 illustrates how one suffers when it submits too much of its power over to the Elder Gods.
A PS5 copy of Forgive Me Father 2 was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
