Forgive Me Father 2 Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: N/A

Forgive Me Father 2 is a retro horror first-person shooter developed by Byte Barrel. I haven’t played the first game, but would like to play it after playing this sequel. It’s an overall enjoyable experience that is very “pick up and play”. I think one of its best qualities is how simplistic it is. It mimics the experience that you’ll find in the original Doom games only with a stylized modern look.

The game is highly inspired by the works of HP Lovecraft. It has enemies in it that look like they are right out of a Lovecraft novel (Cthulu enemies). The game honestly doesn’t have much of a story. I could be missing out on the story since I didn’t play the first game, but even then, this game just doesn’t offer much story detail outside of files that you can read. Funnily enough, files are actually labeled as “story” when you walk up to them. Many of the files felt like random gibberish that didn’t have much to do with the current plot.

When it comes to gameplay, Forgive Me Father 2 is very solid. This game has tight controls and looks plain great. All enemies are 2D hand-drawn models. Whenever you move around an enemy, the image moves with you and you can see that it is paper thin. When defeated, enemies explode into pieces and those pieces stay on the ground while you’re there and whenever you come back to that area. It’s so cool to come back to an area of complete carnage and see all the mayhem that you left behind.

The controls are very simple overall. You can carry one of all your weapon types into battle – one melee weapon and many guns. All you really need to know is that the game has a fire button, an interact button, a jump button and a reload button. If you know that, you’re fine. Everything else should come naturally if you’re a fan of old school shooters.

Level design is overall good. The game has levels that are similar to an older Doom game. Go from room to room while fighting enemies then find keys or switches that will open various areas. Eventually you’ll come upon rooms of enemies in a huge number that you’ll have to go “all out” on to survive. The game often introduces new weapons or abilities to you just before a big fight. There are a good number of secret rooms to find per level also. The game has collectible types that you can find and destroy. All secret areas and collectible found are tallied at the end of each level.

The game has a great variety of weapons. There are pistols, shotguns, rifles and grenade launchers along with many melee weapons. Every weapon type has many different variations that you can purchase with coins. All weapons have a type of demon weapon, such as a shotgun with a creature on it, or a melee weapon that is a caged creature that you aggravate while fighting. The weapon variety in this game is really cool and helps to make the experience more thrilling. The coins that you buy the weapons with are in secret areas.

There are also perks that you can purchase. Perks can be equipped to your character at the prison area in between levels. Perks are used through a sort of super meter that builds up as you fight enemies. You can activate a perk once you have enough meter and it only last for a short while. You can get perks such as faster shooting and gaining health through defeating enemies.

This is a very hard game. The game starts out pretty easy and gets kind of tough quickly. The game has many health and ammo pickups, but it also has some very tough rooms. I ran into several rooms full of enemies where I had to constantly strafe while firing at enemies in order to survive – this can be challenging with a controller. I never did run into any challenge that felt unfair however, but the game is definitely up there in terms of difficulty.

The game runs quite well most of the time. It does have some very noticeable slowdown in some areas however. There were some areas with water where the game would constantly slow down. It can slow down during big fights as well. Even though it seems heavily optimized from the beginning, it starts to show its flaws at times later on, sadly.

If you’re a fan of splatterfest games where the blood and guts go flying all over the place when you kill enemies, this is a game for you. The overall mayhem is actually one of the best parts of the game. The game is simple and easy to play. The main flaws that I find with the game is its lack of story and the slowdown. The lack of story can be overlooked if you’re just in it for the gameplay though. If you like old school shooters, this is definitely one to check out.

The Good:
+ Retro stylized look
+ Very fun shooter gameplay – so easy to pick up and play
+ The game is a total splatterfest

The Bad:
- Slowdown every now and then (when things get too frantic)
- Very little story – most of it is told in vague files