Two Warnings About These ‘Forspoken’ Reviews

The reviews for Square Enix’s new open-world action-adventure game Forspoken are in, and as my colleague Paul Tassi reports: They are bad. Well, their average is currently 68/100 on Metacritic, which is definitely bad, but at least a couple reviewers seemed to genuinely enjoy the game, so who knows? Maybe you will, too.

I have two things to say about this—two warnings, if you will:

First, the reviews are currently for PS5 only. There is not a single PC review out there right now, because Square Enix did not send any PC review codes out to critics. The game launches at the same time for both PC and PlayStation 5 players, but for (rather ominous) reasons, only console players get a sense of what they’re getting into.

This is in spite of the fact that the PC requirements for Forspoken are quite demanding, which suggests that many PC players will have trouble running the game (or at least running it at anywhere near decent settings). The minimum requirement for RAM is 16GB, but the game recommends 24GB. That’s at the 720p / 3o fps option, which is pretty damn low for PC gaming (does anybody on PC play at 720p??)

Without any reviews for the game’s PC performance, I can only fear the worse. I’m basically just sitting here waiting for the reports from gamers to start rolling in when the game releases tonight (it’s out on January 24th on PS5 and PC—see what other games release this month right here).

MORE FROM FORBESThe 7 Biggest Upcoming January Video Game Releases On PC, Xbox, PlayStation And Nintendo SwitchBy Erik Kain

Second, I’ve played the demo and it’s terrible. Okay, I didn’t even finish the demo. Life is too short. I played about 20 or 30 minutes of Forspoken before making up my mind. It’s just awful. A few things I hated about it:

• The open-world is bland and boring and it looks ugly. For a game with such demanding specs that’s only releasing on PC and PS5, the graphics are shockingly last-gen. Hell, if I didn’t know what this was and just saw some video I might peg it as a PS3 game, and not even one of the better-looking ones.
• The combat is dreary and dull. You have all these powers but just selecting them is a chore. Meanwhile, you almost never feel like you actually connect when you hit enemies. This should be a game with constant crunchy hits landing. You should feel it when you tear through enemies, but it’s floaty and unsatisfying. I was bored after the third group of mooks. By the tenth I was just annoyed.
• Speaking of annoying, the dialogue between the main protagonist and her magic bracelet is about as cringey as anything I’ve encountered in a video game in the last decade. Truly awful writing, bad line delivery (though this is likely more about the writing than the actors) and it’s pretty constant. The game tries to be funny (I think?) but fails miserably. I would have to change the language or play it muted I think.

After less than half an hour, my mind was good and made up. This game is rough. It’s not fun, it’s not engaging, it looks terrible. The only thing I can recommend is the music, which is quite dramatic and lovely and really wasted on such a lackluster release.

So yeah, sorry to burst your bubble, but a 68/100 Metacritic score feels too high for this game. At least we have the Dead Space remake to look forward to!

Video impressions and gameplay below:

As always, I’d love it if you’d follow me here on this blog and subscribe to my YouTube channel and my Substack so you can stay up-to-date on all my TV, movie and video game reviews and coverage. Thanks!