Boomer shooters have made quite a resurgence in popularity in recent years. The throwback gameplay to pure carnage, twitch shooting against waves of enemies is exhilarating and cathartic and a reminder of just how good old-school shooters like DOOM and Quake are. These new shooters, immersing themselves in old-school design have, for the most part, managed to nail that feeling.
Originally released back in 2022 for PC, before coming to console, Forgive Me Father is a retro boomer shooter inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. And now this Lovecraftian FPS has made the jump to Nintendoβs Switch, bringing with it a ton of atmosphere and gore galore.
Playing as either a priest or a journalist, Forgive Me Father is set during the 1930βs. Searching for a missing person in a cursed town, you find yourself thrown into a descending pit of madness and monsters as you delve further into the townβs dark underbelly for answers. The only friends you have in this spiral of madness are the guns at your disposal. And youβre going to need every one of them!
Forgive Me Father mixes 3D-level design with 2D sprites to wonderful effect. Visually the game uses a comic book art style to tell its story and power its visuals. With textures and effects that look like they were ripped straight from the pages of a classic horror comic, Forgive Me Father certainly has a distinctive art style that is immediately gripping, making use of classic comic lighting to create an eerie mood and atmosphere.
That comic book feel extends to the dozens of monsters out to tear you apart as well as fantastic animations and designs that feel like they were pulled from the covers of an EC comic. Comic texts highlight story spots for you to check out while comic font floats across the air when you blow up barrels or perform headshots.
Forgive Me Father is also an incredibly dark and gory game. Everything that you pummel with lead dies or explodes in a truly horrific fashion, leaving vast swathes of corridors covered in gorgeous 2D viscera and gore. Reanimated corpses, hybrid fishermen and tentacled monstrosities all shed their innards for your amusement and itβs all as wonderfully animated as could be.
As is befitting a boomer shooter, the game throws tons of enemies at you, with the most hectic fight sequences occurring when youβre in a locked room and heaps of spawning happening. Thankfully there are enough bullets for you to use. The amount of weapons you have may be small, but they pack a great punch in use. Dual-wielding revolvers are extremely devastating and the double-barrel shotgun can make a mess of multiple enemies, making for the perfect weapon in a mob.
Killing awards you with XP, and the occasional dropped health, to spend in your small, but interesting skill tree. There are the usual upgrades for damage and how much ammo you can carry, but where the game does add an interesting mechanic is in that you can choose to mod your weapons into new types. Opt to mod your machine gun using alien ammo, for instance, and you end up with a laser-spewing weapon whose form also changes, becoming more alien and corrupt in the process. It forces you to think carefully about whether or not you want to keep that revolver a revolver or change it into a semi-automatic pistol.
Level design is kept linear, choosing to push you from one encounter to the next. There is some room for exploration but it is, mostly, a tightly designed and paced experience. Bosses are suitably horrific as well with specific attacks and mechanics you need to pay attention to. Ultimately though, itβs about unloading as much ammo as you can into their bullet sponge butts to survive.
Forgive Me Father runs at a brisk clip as well with no performance issues at all. Regardless of how many sprites were been chucked at me, the game ran flawlessly. However, that seems to come at a price where resolution is concerned. The game does seem to be using a dynamic resolution which looks to be very aggressive while also kicking it at strange times. Iβve been surrounded by hordes while the resolution looked great while at other times, with one or two enemies on screen, the environment would look terribly smeared.
Visual issues are the only problem with Forgive Me Father on Switch. The game is running on UE4, and the texture asset popping raised its ugly head. The two biggest issues for me have to do with the game’s lighting, which is incredibly dark and makes it difficult to tell whatβs going on at times. Thereβs no gamma slider either to brighten the image up more.
Couple that with the DRS and the Switch Litesβ small screen, which makes it difficult to see enemies further from you, and youβre left with plenty of moments where you donβt know whatβs shooting you or where itβs coming from. This is certainly a title that will benefit from a fully featured Switchβs larger screen or docked play.
It would have been nice had the developers included more visual settings to tweak. Most notably a gamma slider and one to turn off the film grain. While the film grain adds a nice visual flair to the proceedings, it doesnβt pair well with the resolution scaling.
Aside from these small visual issues, Forgive Me Father is a tightly designed, fun retro shooter set in the Cthulhu Mythos.
Forgive Me Father Trailer
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