Developer Barrel Bytes invites you to tread the dark worlds of Lovecraftian horror with Forgive Me Father 2, the sequel to their ballistic and tentacle-filled boomer shooter, Forgive Me Father. With madness your eternal friend and the darkness calling for you, will you journey into the dark worlds of The Cthulhu Mythos?
Story and Setting
Forgive Me Father 2 takes place after the events of the first game and, instead of picking a character whose journey into madness you follow, places you into the straight-jacketed role of the Priest from the first game. Stuck in an Asylum, you’re on a journey to restore your sanity by looking back through your memories at the awful things you’ve experienced. It isn’t just a deep dive into your psyche, but a deep dive into the Priest’s past. But. . . is any of this real?
Forgive Me Father 2 uses its premise to take us into a descent into the Cthulhu Mythos and legendary places within it. From the hearts of the Mountains of Madness to the Nameless City and even to R’lyeh itself, the game is a smorgasbord of locations from some of Lovecraft’s most beloved and influential works.
It also uses the concept of madness to toy around with the story and get you to question the unreliable narrator’s narrative. Some of these moments aren’t just highlighted in the various letters you find prefacing a level, but also in one of my favourite uses of the game’s ideas: the expansion of the Asylum itself.
As you dig deeper into the story, from the trenches of World War 1 to overrun cities, the Asylum itself expands in size, twisting and changing as you get closer to the end of the journey. It’s a really nice effect which had me running back and forth across the hub area to see how it expanded after each mission, looking at new corridors, rooms and even some twisted architecture.
Choices and Endings
The game also has two endings, depending on what choices you make at certain points in the game. It may boil down to good or evil choices, but it at least gives you the feeling that you have some say in the protagonist’s fate.
My only issue with this, beyond having to replay the game again to choose a different outcome, is that it doesn’t affect the gameplay in any meaningful way. You still take on the same levels and the same bosses with just a different cinema for your trouble.
Writing and Voice Acting
The writing is pure pulp horror as well and wouldn’t be out of place in a 1930s issue of Weird Tales. That said, while the letters fit into the pulp mould perfectly, the lines for the game’s voice acting are very hit or miss in both the writing and acting. Most of the time, they flipped between humorous, which I don’t think is what the developers were going for, and cringeworthy.
Visual Style and Performance
Visually, I think, as with the first, that Forgive Me Father 2 is a striking-looking game. The graphic novel-inspired visuals, full of thick lines and a paper-inspired feel, look like they’ve jumped directly off the page.
There are some fantastic uses of reflections and textures, particularly in the R’lyeh level, where scrolling animated textures have been used to simulate the sunken cities’ non-Euclidean look, which gives the game an identity all its own.
The icing on top is the sprite cards for enemies that disintegrate into wonderful puddles of gore when shot, and, when you’re looking at them while moving around, look like cardboard cutouts.
And it all runs at a smooth and flawless pace, keeping the action both fast and furious whenever an Eldritch abomination pops up.
Gameplay and Level Design
Of course, the piece de resistance is the gameplay and level design. Here, Barrel Bytes have striven to improve upon the original in every conceivable aspect.
Level design still favours traditional boomer shooter arena sequences with corridor crawling and doors locked by coloured keys. The combat is fast, punchy as hell and ever so satisfying and keeps the mechanics as addictive as can be.
Weapons, Abilities, and Progression
There’s some great weaponry on display here as well, from a wonderful pump-action shotgun to more exotic, alien weaponry such as a gun that shoots tracking missiles while operating as an assault rifle.
Your opening arsenal is just as useful throughout the campaign as some of the later, destructive weaponry. Weapons are unlocked by finding tokens in the levels that you can then use to buy them from the Asylums’ ever-so-helpful, self-medicating dispensary.
The game also adds a perk and ability system that requires you to unlock them through gameplay. You have one offensive spell slot and two passive ability slots. This requires you to put some thought into your load-out, as you can’t change either weapons or abilities in a level.
Issues and Frustrations
For all the forward steps that Forgive Me Father 2 takes, it still, conversely, retains some of the first game’s problems.
Pacing is a big issue as the levels slip between being fast and punchy affairs that leave you feeling breathless and wanting more, to ones that kind of amble on for longer periods, where even the time between encounters can’t hide that it feels like filler.
Enemy variety also seems to have been scaled back, even within the same enemy types, while some of the more visually arresting monsters are rather sparsely used.
Lighting remains an issue, with too many areas stuck in darkness. The wind-up electric torch, being a passive ability, forces unnecessary sacrifices, and some encounters are frustratingly hard to read even with it equipped.
Final Verdict
Forgive Me Father 2 may not be a perfect sequel, retaining some of the first game’s issues as it does, but it’s still a fantastic addition to modern boomer shooters that fans of the genre should definitely give a try.
Forgive Me Father 2 Trailer
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The game was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.
The review was written by me and edited by my partner.
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