Forced Showdown review - The smoothie of sweet masochism

*Copy purchased on release
Builds Tested: PC 41.0
Price: 20 USD / 20 EUR

Couple of days ago I was making the usual rounds on my favorite Youtube channels and I came across something that looked way more engrossing than either Hyperlight Drifter or Enter the Gungeon - two games that have dominated press coverage this week. When I looked at the first minute of a let's play and I said to myself: "someone is ripping off the Warcraft universe aesthetic" . Couple of moments later, when Idiotech started explaining what it actually was, I wondered to myself: "is it a Hand of Fate clone?". As it turns out Forced Showdown is neither. It is actually the sequel to the largely unknown 2013 title "Forced" that combines the elements of literally every major genre. Don't believe what people say about this game; it is far from a  simple twin-stick rogue-lite and CCG hybrid. It's a game that does a lot of things amazingly well while also inexplicably failing at others. I have enough strong opinions on the game to write both a glowing 10/10 review as well as an angry 3/10 one. However, this is anything but a title that we should be indifferent to and sadly enough that's exactly what the sales numbers seem to be indicating.

So what is this sexy Frankenstein's monster exactly? It is a game with a rather straight-forward central conceit. You are a contestant in a type of cosmic Hunger Games. Every run starts with you entering a televised tournament that consists of beating  5 levels that in themselves are divided into 7 regular stages and a final boss stage.You will eventually - after some unlocks - have 4 champions and 3 companions to choose from. Your champion is equipped with 3 unique skills that can be upgraded and augmented. Basically the core gameplay loop consists of you trying to beat 3 major tournaments in the action RPG mode while upgrading your character and your power-ups in between the levels as well as slowly chipping away at the permanent progression elements that give you different bonuses and power-ups.

The combat scenarios are procedurally generated and randomized by a bunch of interesting positive and negative modifiers that always keep them very fresh and enjoyable. In a way, It could be described as a much more polished version of the action encounters found in Hand of Fate with a lot more customability. The card collection element is another aspect of the game seemingly reminiscent of Hand of Fate. Be that as it may, the card collection mechanic is not actually a card collection system but an intricate power-up system with a Hearthstone-like theme. Basically, before every run you choose a deck of 30 cards. Throughout the level you keep drawing cards that can only be activated with mana. Every stage you are given progressively more mana, which in turn allows you to use stronger cards. Unused Mana points are discarded upon starting a stage - you use them or lose them. This makes for some amazing tense situational mana management decisions where you are really required to figure out optimal card synergies. Imagine the amazing variety of a game like the Binding of Isaac with a very interesting balancing twist. And while Isaac will let you breeze through the run if the RNG gods are on your side, Showdown resets the power-ups after every level i.e 5 times in every run.

In short, the core gameplay loop is just damn good. The combat feels amazing and requires you to truly master your skills to really strive to be effective. And being effective is a must since the game is really difficult. Not being aware of your skills and how you've upgraded them will definitely result in a painful death. Every type of enemy requires different positioning and cooldown management. Fighting bosses requires a high degree of pattern recognition and the boss design itself is a sight to behold. With time you will start realizing what your preferred play style is and the power-ups in your deck will all merge into a complex game plan that you can customize to an insane degree. Every action RPG combat connoisseur will most likely appreciate Forced Showdown as it is, in some ways, the second best action combat system I have experienced in the last 5 years. Losing out to only Dark Souls is really nothing to be ashamed of.

 At the same time it has to be said that the game is extremely iterative. Personally, I think that's actually not too bad since it's all put together in a really neat and cohesive way. However, the game certainly wears its inspirations on its sleeve. The aesthetic couldn't possibly be more Blizzard-adjacent even if they tried. The card art design is clearly inspired by Hearthstone to an almost worrying degree. The quirky sense of humor is extremely silly and reminds me of games like Borderlands. I didn't mind it but the boss taunting certainly goes over-the-top with the entire "haha, it's a TV show" theme. At the same time, you can clearly feel that a lot of love has been put into combining all these different elements into something that plays really damn well.

That's why it's a shame that this fascinating experience really lacks polish in so many unnecessary places. If you're a stickler for detail you will most definitely get frustrated with this game. For example, you start it up and jump into a fairly regular tutorial. For some inexplicable reason you can actually fail the tutorial. I ended up having to redo the tutorial 4 times after failing the boss stage. That unfortunately meant going through all the instructional prompts each time. That's ultimately the theme of the entire experience. It's a great game bogged down by some very questionable design decisions. The lack of difficulty options feels like a big missed opportunity since the game can get extremely difficult with some bad RNG and each run feels like a much bigger time investment than something like Isaac. Besides, this is no Dark Souls, the difficulty is just a feature without a narrative reason for adjusting the difficulty of the single player experience.

 The permanent progression system is handled by a slot machine mechanic that arbitrarily gives you random cards based on a dice roll which makes the strategic element of deck-building really hard to control for the first 3-4 hours of gameplay. The most egregious of all the weird design decisions is placing all but one champion behind an achievement gate.  By the time you unlock the other champions, the odds are you will already be proficient with the default Paladin class. The game really fails at encouraging the player to experiment with the other champions. Besides, it might be just me but the paladin clearly feels like the strongest and most accessible class.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the technical problems of the game. I tested the game on both my brand new Titan X Alienware and an older rig with AMD R9 270x. A game that just looks OK should not really be struggling to maintain 30 FPS on Medium. I'm the kind of person who can overlook the 30 FPS lock if it's consistent and stable, which is sadly not the case here. Forced Showdown is certainly a game that should not run the way it does. Also, do not try to Alt Tab while playing on older rigs, you might get a punishing FPS drop upon return. As for the high-end, The Titan X runs the game at around 80 to 90 FPS. Not getting 120 is certainly a very peculiar thing. And for god's sake dear devs, speed up the Destiny-like controller cursor for the menus; I can literally feel my beard growing while operating the bloody thing!

Forced Showdown is a very good game that was perhaps taken out of the oven a bit prematurely. The core gameplay loop, though, is one of the most satisfying action RPG experiences out there. It is iterative in the best possible way; it distills the best aspects of its many inspirations. It definitely is a game that expects you to "git gud" which of course might put you off. At the same time, it is an experience that really makes failing fun. After 15 hours of gameplay I'm still stuck on the final boss of the first tournament.   Yet, going for just one more run has never felt so fresh and exciting. The number of cool combat scenarios is mind-boggling.  It certainly scratched my rogue-lite itch in a way that I have never experienced before.  And that alone warrants a strong recommendation.

Final Verdict:  7.5/10 - Great but flawed