Foreclosed | Xbox Review

Say what you want about CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077, it certainly reignited interest in the genre within the game industry. In the span of less than a year, in addition to 2077, we’ve had Ghostrunner, Cloudpunk, The Ascent, and now Foreclosed. Developed by Antab Studios and published by Merge Games, Foreclosed takes a unique approach with its narrative, presenting it in the style of a comic book. It’s an experience that’s certainly overflowing with style, but the amount of substance is up for debate. Read on and I’ll break it down for you, lickity-split.

A Victim of Circumstance

Foreclosed is set in a dystopian future in the year 2084. In this world, cybernetic implants are like commodities. You’re able to enjoy the benefits of these implants, but it comes at a cost: your identity. You play as Evan Kapnos, who wakes up one morning and learns the company he works for has gone bankrupt, seemingly overnight. It so happens that his former employers are the ones who manufactured his cyberware. Thus, his identity is now in foreclosure and his implants will be up for auction to the highest bidder if his debts aren’t settled. 

Before long, he finds himself pulled into a conspiracy plot, and sets out to determine why his former employer went belly up and why goons with guns want his head, literally. The premise is certainly interesting, and it definitely fits the cyberpunk motif of one man against an oppressive system. But its execution leaves much to be desired in terms of the voice acting, the pacing, and its overall clichéd depictions of evil corporations being evil.

BLAAM! BOOM! POW!

At its core, Foreclosed is a third-person shooter, with some stealth and very basic RPG elements. You start the game unarmed and completely defenseless. Once you finally do get your firearm however, things don’t get any easier or less frustrating. Throughout the game, you get experience points to use on upgrades for your brain implants and  gun that help even the odds a little bit. Though the abilities you eventually unlock are fun and quite cool looking, the frustrating moments you endure through trial and error don’t feel rewarding or satisfying. 

 

 

Aiming in this game is unyielding and imprecise, and it doesn’t help that the enemies are bullet sponges. It can seriously take a dozen rounds just to take down one basic enemy. I found myself getting by with headshots. In fact, in my doing so I unintentionally unlocked an achievement to execute 75 headshots. Cover shooting is also an issue here, in that it’s utterly absent. Sure, you can crouch behind objects, but when aiming and shooting you are completely exposed to enemy fire. As you’re firing round after round into one spongey enemy, three others have a direct line of fire on you and they don’t miss, even from far across the room.

Metal Gear Vapid

I would be remiss as a critic if I didn’t mention the stealth system. Though not as prevalent in the gameplay as the shooting, it’s still worth talking about as it’s just as basic. One of the cyber abilities you gain is overloading enemy implants to knock enemies unconscious. But after a silent takedown, you can’t move or hide the body. So, I would patiently wait for opportunities to get my target alone and out of sight. I later learned that it didn’t matter as the other guards would carry on ho-hum, even when coming across fallen comrades. Imagine how peeved I was in all that time I wasted.

 

There are also a few sequences where the camera shifts to an isometric perspective, reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid. Despite my love for MGS, I found this to be one of the most frustrating moments of the game. In one sequence in particular, you must avoid patrolling drones while hacking access points in three separate areas to unlock gates to the next area. The issue here is you’re at the mercy of an unforgiving checkpoint system. So even if you get close to the end and you’re spotted…too bad, back to square one. I had to redo this sequence over and over, to an agonizing degree.

A Graphic Novelty

I know so far I’ve been quite harsh in my review, but one area where the game really stands out is in the graphics and art style. As I said in the opening, Foreclosed is presented like a comic book. Cutscenes will often split into different panels, action words like pow, boom, and other onomatopoeias appear when performing actions, and the dialogue is in speech bubbles.

 

The art style has a hand drawn cel shaded look with vibrant colors. One would think since this a cyberpunk thriller, the game would naturally want to be shrouded in shadows like a noir comic. The designers instead went in the other direction, with various shades of purples, pinks, and yellow. The best word I can think of to describe it would be “synthwave.”

No Future

It pains me to say that I can’t recommend this game. I was really looking forward to playing this one when I saw trailers leading up to its release, but I have to be honest in my experience. I would primarily say that my playthrough with Foreclosed was frustrating. So much so, in fact, that I stopped caring about the story. Couple that with a bland protagonist with a gruff internal monologue with clichéd lines, and it’s easy to ignore.

Third-person shooting is 95% of this game and being as infuriating as it was, playing through it just became a slog to the point that I lowered the difficulty to story mode. And that’s saying something, as this game is quite short and can be completed in about four hours. It was an interesting premise with a cool comic book style, in a genre I adore, that just couldn’t make it off the ground. The negative reactions left behind by the Cyberpunk 2077 launch created a giant void with plenty of opportunities to be fulfilled by other games. I wish this were one of them.

 

This review is based on an Xbox copy of Foreclosed provided by Evolve PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.