A comic-book style Cyberpunk outing? Sign me up…
Foreclosed is a narrative-driven action-shooter set in a Cyberpunk world filled with action, suspense, and experimental augmentations. Follow the story of Evan Kapnos, his identity recently Foreclosed, stripped of his job, his brain implants and his access to the city Block-chain, he must now escape before his identity and implants are auctioned off.
Foreclosed is a blend of different game styles and mixes up the perspective by sometimes having you move in comic-book style strips on-screen. There’s a mixture of shooting, hacking, puzzle-solving and stealth as you work your way through this Cyberpunk city. The story is fairly decent too, giving you choices that will impact the story as you continue, and you’ll get different abilities to use against your enemies through hacking their implants or improving your weapon to have different firing styles.
If there’s anything to complain about, it’s the fact that the checkpoints are too uneven and even on the easiest difficulty, the enemies on Foreclosed can easily annihilate you if you aren’t careful, making you revert to a checkpoint either close by or potentially minutes beforehand. The checkpoint thing didn’t bother me too much until I got to a stealth section with drones with an awkward camera angle thanks to the comic book layout, making me restart from the beginning each time I got caught.
The aiming and shooting handling are a bit of a mixed bag too, sometimes feeling clunky and inaccurate. Foreclosed shines more telling its story through the comic-book style, but the combat is definitely the weakest link. It’s not the worst offender I’ve come across, but it definitely feels like it could have been so much stronger.
The visual style is superb though and makes me reminiscence of Comix Zone and XIII (The original, not the dreadful remake) and makes me wish there were more games that tried to play like comic-books. The game runs smoothly throughout and the load times are minimal, while the voice-acting and soundtrack are impressive too.
The Verdict
While flawed in its combat and checkpoint system, Foreclosed is a great comic-book adventure that is definitely worth giving a go.