LGR - Forsaken: Six Degrees of Late '90s FPS Freedom.

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.

"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!" 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.

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. 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. 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.

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.