Having a game with quality is important because a good game is one that can be enjoyed and not one that is just long. This is definitely what Antab Studio went for with FORECLOSED because despite the game being pretty short, it is quite the experience. Now that Merge Games brought it to multiple platforms, players can dive into this comic-book-style shooter and make their way through an interesting story. However, the game isn’t without some issues and is rather easy overall, but let’s get into the details before jumping to any conclusions.

Story

Waking up to find out that the chip that regulates your life has expired and you need to head to court in order to rectify yourself can be frustrating, but it’s when you step out to do this and are immediately under attack that things get serious! Not only do you need to make it to your court hearing on time, but somebody out there is trying to kill you. Luckily, you are picked up by an unknown ally, and your weekend through hell can start to be made clearer.

Gameplay

You start off in your apartment which will give you time to get used to the controls and interaction options that will consist through the game. Shortly after this, you will be given the chance to try sneaking, stealth takeouts, and eventually, obtain a gun. One of the things that makes this game easy is that the gun is infinite, so there is no need to worry about ammo or reloading. Also, there is no recoil, so once you got your crosshairs on your target, just start lighting them up!

As you make clear rooms and/or waves of enemies, you will gain experience. Every time you level up you will be given an experience point which can be applied to an add-on for your gun or ability on your character. Once you pick what you want to unlock, don’t forget to equip it. If you put an ability on your gun, each bullet will cause a small overheat charge and so you will have to watch that. Abilities that your character can use do a bit more overheat charge percents, so you can only use so many before waiting for the cool down.

Your health works a lot like the overheating aspect as well. If you take damage, your vision will slowly start to become more grayed out and color will start being lost. All you have to do is wait and it will recharge itself back to full health, so just take cover.

Another way to earn experience points is to find hidden green nodes that you can hack into. Hacking just requires you to hold a button down, so all you really have to do is find them. When you are near one, a wifi-style meter will pop up that is green and when you start getting close the bars on the sides of the center dot will start to fill up. Once they are all lit up, you are right next to it. There are progression-based versions of this as well, but they will be blue and are set up to where you have to find a few of them to unlock a door.

When it comes to actually hacking into certain items, such as tanks that can explode or certain doors and power systems, you will have four randomized direction-based inputs. If you mess up the input, there is a wait for it to reset which takes about five seconds.

My suggestion for this game, which you will end up doing but the sooner you do the quicker the game becomes even easier, is to get the ability that lets you lift enemies as soon as possible. This ability lifts enemies in the air and immobilizes them for at least fifteen seconds. It can also be used to remove a shield from an enemy holding one. Sure, you can only use it two times before cooling down, but most of the time you can just immobilize a couple of enemies and kill the others. By the time the immobilized ones get back up, you can quickly take them out as well.

Audio and Visual

Giving the whole game a comic-book-style look was pretty unique and they did a great job pulling it off. Not only were cutscenes set up with the multiple panel layout, but they even incorporated that into parts of the game as well. I thought the whole artistic style they used in this game was well done and intriguing.

I was pretty impressed with how good the voice acting was as well. It didn’t seem like they cheaped out on any of the character’s roles, even if they were a shorter one. Plus, the sound effects and music were both fitting to the point that it all blended together and helped increase the overall experience.

What Could Be Better

I don’t understand why they bothered giving players multiple choices when it came to the dialogue sequences. Based on the choices I was making, there was stuff that I just simply didn’t say yet the return dialogue from the other characters was as if I did. For instance, I never asked for my unknown ally’s name yet I knew it in the next scene. It just seemed like the response was going to be the same no matter which one I picked, with only a few exceptions.

Unless they were aiming to make this game easy, the lack of difficulty options to choose from with the easy use gun mechanics was an interesting choice. Not to mention the AI barely moved around and when they did it was slowly. If they were aiming to make this a beginner’s difficulty shooter, that is fine, but I don’t understand why they didn’t take the time to add harder difficulties for those who enjoy a challenge as well.

There should have been some camera control options. Unless you were in the middle of a battle, there were no camera control options. So anytime you were moving around a map with an overview angle, you can’t look slightly in any direction, which became a problem during the sneaking attempts - especially the mandatory sneaking section at the end of the game. While it wasn’t hard to work around it, not being able to tilt or pan the camera even a little bit felt like a hindrance.

Conclusion

FORECLOSED is a unique way to enjoy a shooter-based comic book. They really let players take on the role of the main character and play through the intense scenario that they have been put in. I really enjoyed my playthrough of the game and was a little disappointed that it turned out to be fairly short. Hopefully, the team will consider creating a second game for this series or perhaps a new game with a similar style because I definitely wasn’t done with the game when it ended! Even if you aren’t new to the shooter genre, this is a game that is worth checking out.