FORCED Review (PC)

FORCED is a cooperative arena-based action RPG. You take on the role of a slave in a gladiator school, condemned to fight to the death in an attempt to win your freedom. As you progress through the game’s many arenas you will fight monsters, solve puzzles, and defeat bosses as your struggle for liberation.

You can switch freely between four classes, each of which is suited to specific roles and has a selection of skills at their disposal that allow for some customisation. The claw class, for example, uses its claws to deal damage quickly to single targets while darting in and out of battle, while the hammer class is slower but deals damage to multiple enemies at a time. Each of the classes have certain quirks, such as the hammer class’ weapon charging over a few seconds when not in use, until it glows to signify that it will deal more damage on its next use.

Throughout the game you will be making use of your spirit guide, a glowing ball called Balfus. With the press of a button you can call Balfus to your current position, whilst holding the same button will have him follow you around. He is used to solve various puzzles, most of which involve guiding him through a torch or shrine and subsequently into something else. For example, an early arena has you guiding Balfus through a shrine that makes him explosive, then over to one of a series of statues. Then you do it again, each time dealing with the enemies that spawn and trying to keep them from walking into Balfus, which would cause him to explode and send you back to the shrine to start over.

Puzzles like this are particularly tedious when playing alone, as you have to walk to every position you want to send your spirit guide to personally and press the button each time. Unfortunately this is representative of the whole game. When you’re playing alone, the game is relatively dull and frustrating, but with other players it really comes to life. Team work is absolutely paramount in FORCED, whether you are distracting enemies while someone else calls the guide through objectives or cooperating to guide Balfus through a corridor from outside, it is clearly the focus of FORCED and, like many coop-focused games before it, the single player gameplay suffers.

When playing in coop there is more room for error as death simply means that you will respawn after a short amount of time provided other players are still alive. In single player you obviously lose this system and there are no checkpoints of any kind in the level, so if you are playing alone and you make it all the way to the end only to be taken out suddenly you have no recourse – you have to restart the whole arena. This quickly grows frustrating, whereas in coop death can simply be an inconvenience as you only have to restart once everyone is dead at the same time.

As you complete arenas you will unlock crystals. Each arena has up to three gems to earn, one for completing it, one for completing it under a certain time, and one for completing a challenge unique to that arena. At first glance the challenges, the time trial in particular, seem a little impossible, but they are there to be returned to when you are a little more powerful, or at least more skilled.

Combat revolves around a marking mechanic. Regular attacks add marks onto targets and your skills take advantage of these marks by dealing more damage to marked enemies, by reducing cooldown on the skill, and so on. You can effectively tailor your class to compliment other players once you unlock enough skills, choosing the right ones to rack up marks on multiple targets with a friend who will deal as much damage as possible to marked targets is an effective combination. Again, single player suffers here, since some classes only really make sense when combined with the abilities of others.

The game does try to make things easier when playing alone as the arenas change based on how many players are in the server, but it is usually to aid with the puzzles rather than the swarms of enemies. Even more frustrating is that enemies are solid, when you are surrounded you just can’t move. You can easily be overwhelmed when alone due to an inability to efficiently dispose of enemies with classes that are supposed to be paired with others, and then be trapped in the middle of a group as they quickly drain away your health bar.

Skills will unlock linearly as you gather the required amount of gems. There are both active and passive skills, as well as up to four slots for each skill type in which to equip them (which are also unlocked as you progress). Your gems are not specific to each class, so you can switch between classes at will without losing any progress. When playing cooperatively you can only have one of each class in the game at a time so you will either have to decide among yourselves or race towards the class you want when selecting it.

FORCED is a good cooperative game that combines combat with puzzles. Provided you manage to avoid the connection issues and lag, you are likely to have a tonne of fun as you work your way through the arenas with some friends. If what you are looking for is a single player experience you are out of luck, and this is a game that really has to be played cooperatively with others.

Score: 7/10

Forced is available through its official website and Steam.