I hope you’re ready for something excessively late ‘90s today.
This is Acclaim’s "Forsaken"
released in 1998 for Windows PCs, Sony PlayStation,and Nintendo 64. And this box art is...
well it’s an interesting choice. See, Forsaken is a first-person shooter where you pilot
weapon-laden hoverbikes with six degrees of freedom through dark sci-fi environments.
Not exactly what I’m getting from this artwork featuring bikini model Donna DeCianni.
And it’s only North America that was graced with this packaging, with territories like
the UK, Europe, and Australia getting this still-vague but arguably more fitting box
art instead. However, it certainly did its job of grabbing my attention in ‘98. I mean,
I was just hitting puberty at the time, of course I noticed. Even more so with the infamous
ads found in just about every gaming magazine back then, some more suggestive than others,
with 80% sexy implications, 20% actual gameplay info. And I would’ve liked to have known
a little more about the game because it turns out that it was made by Probe Entertainment
Limited out of Croydon, England. They were a developer I always seemed to enjoy back
then, whether it was for their work porting arcade games like Primal Rage, or developing
video games like Extreme-G and Die Hard Trilogy. In particular though I’m most fond of their
game Re-Volt, which around a half-dozen Probe team members ended up moving onto work on
after finishing Forsaken. By that point they’d been acquired by Acclaim and renamed Acclaim
Studios London, but either way, same folks.
Time for a closer look at Forsaken though, starting by unboxing this brand still sealed
copy of the game I bought specifically for this video and...
uh... where’s the game?
Heh. Yeah I got friggin’ ripped off, everything was in here but the game itself. Oh well
we can take care of that. All fixed. So, other than an invisible CD-ROM, you also get an
Acclaim registration card to register for support for the game you didn’t get. As
well as a Forsaken calendar, featuring plenty more sultry photos of the Forsaken gal, who
in case you're wondering doesn’t appear as a character in the game or anything, she’s
just a mascot of sorts. Oh hey, Shadow Man, I forgot about that being a thing. And lastly
you also get a 21-page instruction manual that, while appearing only in black and white,
is packed with plenty of prose published for your perusal.
After some rather fluid logo animations for the publisher and developer, you’re presented
with an action-heavy intro movie laying out the post-apocalyptic story.
[Narrator] "In a world where science had stepped beyond the realms of humanity"
"and the search for higher learning had broken all known limits..."
"A sub-atomic experiment gone wrong caused an uncontrollable fusion reaction!"
[LGR] It's a tale as old as time: people do science, science goes boom, Earth explodes and is turned into
an uninhabited wasteland. But there’s a lotta scrap left on the surface, namely gold,
and it’s your job to go in and grab as much as you can with getting killed by the government’s
leftover robot sentinels. Naturally, the best way to do this is on flying bikes while listening
to late ‘90s drum and bass.
[drum and bass music of a late '90s variety plays, hoverbikes hovering along]
After this you’ll reach the main menu where you can perform all the main menu things you’d
expect, like peruse the options and become slowly overwhelmed with green text. There’s
a lot going on here, especially in regards to things like graphical options and input
customization. Being that this is a Descent-like 6DoF shooter, the controls are quite the hurdle
straight away, with multiple pages of input options to choose from. After you’re done
studying it’s off to the gameplay, starting with difficulty selection ranging from Easy
to Total Mayhem. You can also choose the AI voice for your computer and your biker from
an assortment of attitude-driven archetypes.
"Fear! The! Badge!"
"Hey man, you're in my space!"
"...this is beard."
Oh look it’s me circa 2012.
Finally, it’s onto the campaign and yeah man. Bask in the pure late ‘90s of it.
[bombastic shooty stuff happens, soundtrack blaring]
So, if you’re only familiar with the console versions this is quite the spectacle indeed.
Forsaken on PS1 is rather similar to the PC game at least, with the same levels and similar
menus, although it’s expectedly not nearly as advanced in terms of graphical tech. But
Forsaken 64 is another beast entirely. As the name implies, this is one of those cases
where the Nintendo version is effectively a separate, standalone experience, having
been developed by a different team and boasting its own unique set of levels and features.
So yeah, for this video we’re looking at the 3D-accelerated PC version of Forsaken,
because it’s awesome. The console versions may be more remembered for nailing 360º first-person
gameplay on those systems, but the Windows version was briefly a noteworthy title in
the PC gaming space due to its benchmarking potential. A number of outlets used Forsaken
gameplay to push the latest GPUs and CPUs to their limit, sometimes referring to the
test as ForsakenMark. Yep, it was not uncommon to see Forsaken right alongside things like
Quake II and Photoshop when testing Pentium II CPUs and Voodoo graphics cards. It was
enough of a selling point that companies like Matrox specifically bragged about how their
cards could run Forsaken at over 100 frames per second. And indeed, Forsaken on a capable
PC of the time is a pleasing ordeal. Higher frame rates, resolutions, and particle effects
than anything offered on consoles of the time, with a generous display of multi-colored lighting
dazzling the senses at every turn. And you will be turning quite a lot in Forsaken, being
that it boasts some of the twistiest, geometrically complicated level designs of its day. Much
like the Descent games that it unapologetically apes, Forsaken is all about navigating metallic
corridors in search of enemies to blast, secrets to uncover, power-ups to power up with, key
cards to unlock passageways, and finally an exit before proceeding to the next mind-bending
labyrinth. There are 16 levels overall in single player mode, each of them taking anywhere
from five to thirty minutes to complete, and that range in completion time largely depends
on how you handle this style of 360º first-person exploration. Keep in mind there’s no automap
or navigation aids on offer, so it really is up to you and your own head-mapping to
make it through. At the same time though, I still never found myself truly lost, with
most levels being cleverly divided up into distinct sections with their own objectives
presented in a rather linear form. Every so often you’ll get some text popping up on
your HUD to let you know what’s up, and as long as you pay attention it stays pretty
obvious as to where to go next. The puzzles themselves are nothing too advanced either,
largely consisting of prototypical FPS conundrums like switches that need switching, systems
that need enabling or disabling, and locked passageways requiring keys or some other credentials.
Occasionally there’s a time limit or an explosion about to go off so you’re rushed
to find a solution, but even those few moments are pretty straightforward and never felt
unfair to me. The single biggest challenge, of course, is surviving craploads of AI baddies
that very much follow the Doom philosophy of play. That is, you enter a room, there
are a bunch of things that want to kill you, so they swarm from every direction firing
maniacally. And then in seemingly empty rooms there are going to be tons more enemies waiting
to spawn in once you trigger them by picking up a thing or entering the area. The variety
in enemy types is a bit of a letdown, although not out of character for this era of FPS,
with the same basic sentinels, tanks, turrets, and floating mines appearing throughout the
campaign. They can at least apply some decent tactics in terms of dodging, and the projectiles
move at just the right speed to keep track of, helping to keep you in that gameplay sweet
spot between overwhelmed and fully in control. The rear-view and weapon-view windows you
can toggle certainly help quite a bit in sticky situations as well. And it pays to stay thoroughly
on top of your surroundings to find secrets, containing everything from more exotic pickups
and weapons like nitro, golden power pods, and a flamethrower, to hidden crystals which
can be collected to reach a secret level at the end of the game. There are also a few
moments where you’ll come into a boss battle of sorts, taking the form of a one-off larger
enemy AI, or even one of the other bikers you can choose from. Regardless though, the
goal remains the same: shoot everything and collect all the loot until you find the exit.
And of course, you get a screen at the end of each map indicating the number of bots
you killed and how many collectibles you acquired. All this to say there's particularly distinctive
here, but if you’re a fan of straightforward, retro FPS design and don’t mind a bit of
navigational tomfoolery, you can’t really go wrong with the gameplay in Forsaken.
Because augh, as predictable as the combat can get, there’s a notable “oomph” to
the gameplay, a certain punchy feeling to every slice of the action. The enemies being
robotic certainly helps. I don’t know, there’s a special kind of innate satisfaction that
results from shooting metal with more metal. Bullets versus silicon, explosives versus
armor plating, it’s inherently raw and dangerous and I love it. Certainly helps to have a weapons
loadout as immediately satisfying as you get in Forsaken, with not a single weapon feeling
underpowered. At least, not for very long. The way this works is very much like a traditional
shoot-em-up game, with primary and secondary weapons that will be discovered and picked
up on each level. What you find doesn’t carry over into the next level, so each instance
rediscovering a certain favorite like the beam laser or the pyrolite is exciting. And
the secondary support weapons like rockets, bombs, and mines all admirably perform their
role of being a show-stopper whenever things get too hot to handle otherwise. Continuing
in the shooter vein are the power pods which increase the overall strength of your primaries,
and holy crap this is the kind of over the top nonsense I look for in a shooter. Fully-powered
transpulse and sussgun fire is pandemonious bliss, helped in no small part by the deeply
satisfying sound effects that go along with them.
[meaty sussgun firing sounds, exposions]
Pairing forsaken with tinny speakers
or cheap headphones would be a crying shame. Not only for the bombastic sound effects,
but the energy-infused soundtrack by Stephen Root and Dominic Glynn, two of the same composers
as Acclaim’s Re-Volt and Extreme-G series.
[late '90s banger of a tune plays]
While the Redbook audio soundtrack can be
played in a CD player as-is, a selection of its tracks with several remixes got its own
release under the title, “Forsaken: The Music by The Swarm” through No Bones Records.
And yeah, if you dig this particular era of UK breakbeat, drum ‘n’ bass, house, and
IDM, it’s well worth seeking out.
By this point, you might think I’d completely recommend seeking out the game in general
too. And yeah I mean, pretty much. Odd marketing aside, there’s a reason that it’s remembered
and received continued attention and several well-made updates to keep it playable over
the years. Things like the impressive ForsakenX source port that lets you play the game on
modern versions of Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, alongside plenty of engine updates and bug
fixes. Then there’s Forsaken Remastered, introduced in 2018 by Nightdive Studios. It
not only provides a fresh version of the game that can be purchased on PC distribution platforms
like Steam and GOG, but also ports the game to Xbox One for the first time. And hopefully
that means there will be a bit of an audience for multiplayer once again because yeah, that
is just delightfully bonkers. It’s the usual assortment of deathmatch, team deathmatch,
capture the flag modes, and loot-collecting game types, but with that chaotic concoction
of Forsaken action and speed that continues to appeal. At least, it does to me, being
an unwavering sap for just about any late ‘90s FPS with gratuitous colored lighting
and shooting action of a certain speed. So if this looks like an appealing kind of mindless
nonsense, you would be remiss to forsake Forsaken.
[character screams, explodes]
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for watching!