L.G.C. |Reviews| — FORCED SHOWDOWN

Your intrepid heroes spin in circles, rebind controls, and eat a bag of decks. FORCED SHOWDOWN faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: FORCED SHOWDOWN
Webzone: http ://store .steampowered .com /app /265000/
Devel: Beta Dwarf
Engine: Unity
Price: 19.99 / CDN 21.99

Wazzat: Welcome to FORCED SHOWDOWN: “The only show in the galaxy with lives on the line!” Pick one of the 4 contestants from across the FORCED universe – each a master of their own style of combat – and try to become a superstar of the show, as you battle through worlds of monstrous enemies and face off against epic arena bosses. You may die horribly and repeatedly, but think of your fans and smile for the cameras!

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Makes with the working

V-

Looking at the steam reviews one would think FORCED SHOWDOWN was about as stable as a rabid emu on a meth binge.
Turns out it’s rather stable on the Linux.
This thing loads from Middle Earf.
You don’t know how to windowed mode, Brad.
Why do you bother detecting my X Clone controlla when you won’t let me configure it?

J-

Crashed on me twice.

P-

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

Looks better than FORCED.

J-

They totally stole the shadowrun returns font

P-

At first, I was genuinely impressed at how good the game looked and, having played FORCED, the performance was actually pretty good.
Then I started to see exactly what corners were being cut.
The most egregious of which, even if you have everything on 11, when you finish one of the “SHOWDOWNS” and the camera does that sick(ening) panning shot around your character, if you pay attention to the bits you don’t often see with the regular camera angle you’ll notice those bits are actually considerably lower resolution.
The textures look all pixely and it’s actually kinda jarring.

Total-

Control

V-

This might be better /w a controlla… but I will never know.
WASD + gerbil works but it seems off.

J-

This shit needs a controller. So badly
The deckbuilding mechanic is solid otherwise
But get some goddamn controller support!
Also, doesn’t capture my cursor, so when I try to hit something on the opposite side of my character, my cursor flies off to one of my other monitors and gets me killed to death

P-

You released a game on Steam which doesn’t work with the Steam Controller on SteamOS.
Are you proud of yourselves?
Not just that but let’s say your players have some manner of quirk or disability which makes it so they prefer/have to play games with the directional arrows instead of WASD, how often do you expect they will reset the controls whenever they start the game before they realize they can’t be assed anymore?
6. It was 6 times for me. 6 times before I realized, no matter how much I enjoy your game, I’m not about to do a chore every time I start it.
If I wanted to do chores, I wouldn’t be playing videogames now would I?

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FUN

V-

I’m rubbish at this game.
Oh look, deck building.
I built my own deck for fk all good it did me.
I mean it kept me alive longer because all health.
Admittedly the first six times I was killed to death were moderately enjoyable.
Even managed to get noped by a boss on two different occasions.
Then it started getting repetitive.
More importantly…
I don’t like games that make the player rely on blind ass-luck.

J-

I too am awful at this game. I am getting better. I can kill 2.75 bosses now!
Unfortunately, part of the reason why is because I have to dodge with these clumsy ass keyboard controls and therefore am subject to all sorts of fun fuckery
I actually like the bit about the deckbuilding. It’s a fun little twist of the forced formula
- I affectionately call mine “fuck plan vom deck”
All the while playing this, I was thinking, gee Jordan, wouldn’t it be fantastic if I could use a controller?
Still, the deckbuilding bit got me hooked. The method you get these cards though is kind of dumb.

P-

I like this game.
Like I mentioned last week on the podcast, this is exactly what Flamebreak could’ve been if they hadn’t decided to use those horrible bobblehead visuals.
Even the deck building aspect, even if completely optional, is well done if you want to optimize your character build.
The combat is similar to that of the original FORCED but improved.
Whenever you hit an enemy or even just a barrel or a pot, there’s a very satisfying thwack and a simple but well put freeze-frame.
That, in my opinion, is how you make the combat feel “meatier” in a 3rd person “eye-in-the-sky” camera game.
That sentence took a few tries for me to get through when I was typing it in the notes.
Summing things up, I like it.
What I don’t like is having to reset the keybindings every goddamn time I restart the game.
It’s 2016, it’s not like there isn’t a freaking ASSET on the Unity Store called Rewired which will take care of most if not all of your control issues.
Not just the forgetfulness of non-default keybindings but the freakin’ controller support.

Total-

Final –