Foreclosed Review - Is It Worth Your Time?

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Foreclosed is a cyberpunk themed action adventure with a comic-book style. But is it worth your time? Well, I take a look at everything related to Foreclosed in my review, so tune in to find out. Thanks for watching!

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INTRO
With the failure of Cyberpunk 2077 to garner the lasting and wide-spread success it hoped to achieve, the door has been left open for other cyberpunk themed games to grasp the undivided attention of gamers eager to lose themselves in a dystopian, fluorescent future. Just recently we saw the successful launch of The Ascent, and now we get Foreclosed, a cyberpunk-themed narrative-driven action adventure. To be clear, this game is not Cyberpunk 2077, nor is it trying to be. It’s not trying to redefine a genre, and it doesn’t aim to keep you busy for weeks on end. But is it any good? Is this the dystopian techno thriller you’ve been waiting for? That’s the question I’m here to answer. I want to thank Merge Games for providing a review code of the game, and with that out of the way, I hope you’ll join me for my review of Foreclosed.

Before we begin, I want to mention that I recently started another YouTube channel called Quest Mode Unscripted where I talk about all things video games completely unscripted and off the cuff. You’ll find impressions of games, opinions, hidden gem highlights, discussions, and more. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, you’ll find the link in the description. Now, let’s take a look at Foreclosed.

STORY
Foreclosed begins with you learning that your identity has been seized, or rather foreclosed. See, in this world, people enjoy the benefits of cyberware implants, but at the cost of losing their identity to the corporation who manufactures their implants. Well, it just so happens that the corporation that makes your implants has gone bankrupt, and now the bank owns the rights to your identity. If that wasn’t bad enough, a bunch of guns for hire are also trying to kill you because, well, apparently your cyberware implants are one of a kind and will sell for a mint on the black market. So, yeah, it’s a bad day. Without getting further into the details. I will say that the story does a good job of explaining how you of all people have the superhuman abilities you have, while simultaneously explaining why dozens of goons are literally after your head.

PRESENTATION
To bring this story to life, the game employs a comic-book style. Certain cut-scenes, and even some gameplay sequences, are divided into separate panels, while dialogue appears in speech bubbles. I had no qualm with the cut scenes being treated in this way, in fact, it’s cool to see the same scene from multiple perspectives, but it was sometimes distracting when gameplay scenes were separated into multiple panels. Controlling your character in one panel while a scene plays out in another, just made me unsure of where to look.

As you can see, the graphics themselves also have the stylized, illustrated look. It not only fits the comic-book motif, but the cell shaded characters and environments, colored in pastel pinks, violets and beiges make the world appear to exist in a perpetually smoggy sunset, which fits the cyberpunk theme perfectly. That said, there are times when the game takes a step a bit too far towards the surreal, but overall, I felt the graphical style served the game well.

However, one element of Foreclosed that holds the game back, at least from a storytelling perspective is the uneven voice acting. On one hand, some acting, particularly by some of the peripheral characters, was actually quite good. But man-oh-man, the main character delivered lines in a way that was at times comically bad. It honestly felt like the developers were intentionally going for a late-night B-movie feel. And heck, maybe they were. The amateur flavor at times added a certain cult-classic charm to the game. Sound effects were also disappointing. Gunshots for example, sounded like toys and none of the action ever sounded as weighty or as crunchy as I would have liked. On the other hand, the music was actually quite good, but it often clashed hard with, again, that dang voice acting.