Forgive Me Father Review

Forgive Me Father is dark horror first person shooter inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s work where a priest and reporter, the only two people left with their sanity intact, are on a journey to search for answers and a sense of relief.

As mentioned, Forgive Me Father is a fast paced retro styled FPS game that feels like a cartoonish take on DOOM. You’ll come across the usual FPS tropes; kill everything in your path, find new weapons, pick up health, ammo and armor to survive. The game has a decent variety of weapons; a simple knife for some close up action, pistol, shotgun, tommy gun; just to name a few.

However, Forgive Me Father also has quite a few tricks up its sleeve to make it stand out from other FPS. Along with the traditional weaponry, you can also acquire a few supernatural skills. You can find a camera that will temporarily freeze any nearby enemies, a voodoo doll that will damage close enemies, cigarettes that when used will slow down enemies around you; while you remain at full speed. And you can use weed to spawn a curse sword that refills your health with every enemy you kill with it.

Another interesting feature is that as you kill enemies, you level up and earn Experience Points (XP) that can be used to upgrade your skills via the Skill tree. You can increase your ammo pouch size, increase the damage of your shotgun (or any other weapon). Each weapon skill tree has two branching paths giving players a bit of choice in how to upgrade their guns. For example, for the shotgun, you can either increase the rate of fire or have pellets bounce around the walls to spread damage. If you’re not happy about your loadout, you can reset it.

For the completionists, most levels have a few story related collectibles to hunt down. While not necessary to complete the game, they are a nice little insight into the game’s lore and story. Additionally, most areas, also have a hidden secret area to find. While also not necessary to complete the game, discovering these, along with all the story collectibles, are compounded at the end of each level where you are rewarded with a score.

The game’s aesthetic is one of the most visually gripping and appealing I’ve seen in quite sometime. It features hand-drawn graphics to give it a unique style; it’s a bit reminiscent of the original release of XIII way back in 2003 (not the butchered remaster from two years ago). This visual style is refreshing and allows for more leeway in terms of splatter and gore… and there’s plenty of that. The environments are overall well-design; while some assets are reused across similar levels, each area has a distinct style. Enemy variety is quite vast; the further you progress, the more atrocities come to the forefront. The soundtrack is a metal score akin to Mick Gordon’s DOOM 2016 banger; when you’re about to be surrounded, the music cranks up and it gets you ready for the upcoming carnage. The voiceovers are delivered quite soullessly.

As fun as this game is, there are a few nuisances that holds it back from perfection. The first being is the game’s movement/sensibility. While thankfully it’s adjustable, character movement is way too fast and sensible at first; barely grazing either joystick will make move; making precise shooting near impossible. The other thing is that some enemies will crawl after a few bullets. The issue is is that sometimes the ground is filled with remains of the undead that you can’t spot the crawlers until they hit you. Also some level design will be so tight that you won’t see some enemies until they attack you.

Another irritating aspect of this game is the pacing as it varies from level to level. Some level are simple boss fights, others are annoying mazes, while others are mostly made of non-stop waves of enemies that will overwhelm you within seconds. Some areas will require players to also stop and try to “snipe” enemies from afar to avoid getting overrun. There’s also no checkpoint. Although there’s a drunk homeless guy that will allow you to manually save, if you miss him or just don’t save and you die, it’s back at the beginning of the level. This game also has the worst water level ever created.

Forgive Me Father is definitely hands down one of the best first person shooters to release in the last few years. Along with Trepang2, this shooter has kept me glued to the screen; no matter how many times I died, I want to come back for more. Sure, there are a few quirks that can be a bit annoying, such as the sensitive controls, but once you’ve adapted to it, you’ll find one of the more action pack shooter in the last few years. If you’re looking to fill a void left by DOOM (while we wait for the next entry) or simply want to have some big dumb fun, Forgive Me Father is a must play.